Kreuzberg Beginnings

The landlord wanted three months' rent upfront, and I paid it without blinking — which was the first clue Matthias had that I wasn't quite what I appeared.

"You didn't even haggle," he said, standing in the doorway of the cramped office above a shuttered bakery in Kreuzberg. Two desks, one chair, a radiator that clanked like a dying man. "Nobody with sense pays full whack without a fight."

"I've done my fighting for this decade." I rolled my shoulders, feeling the old scar tissue pull. The dark green scarf — my mother's — sat loose at my throat despite the warmth. "We need to move fast. Vireo Energy doesn't exist yet, and I want contracts signed before anyone realises we're a threat."

Matthias laughed, that low rumble that made the cheap windows vibrate. "A threat. Two men in a room the size of a broom cupboard."

"Two men and a patent." I slid the folder across the desk. "Grid-balancing software. Predicts load spikes before they happen. The regulator's bringing in new efficiency mandates next spring — every mid-sized utility in the country will need something like this to avoid fines. I've read the consultation papers."

I hadn't read them. I'd lived them. In my first life, the Bundesnetzagentur's 2016 ruling had caught half the sector flat-footed; companies that adapted early made fortunes, and Voss Industries had spent eighteen months and eleven million euros playing catch-up. I remembered the exact wording of the directive. I remembered the date it was published. I remembered Elara screaming at her analysts because the family firm had missed the boat.

This time, I intended to be the boat.

Matthias studied the schematics for a long time, his calloused forefinger tracing the architecture. "This is elegant," he said quietly. "Where'd you learn to code like this?"

"Bad dreams," I said, and he didn't ask again.

---

The contract came through nine days later — Stadtwerke Potsdam, small enough to move quickly, forward-thinking enough to take a punt on two unknowns. Four hundred thousand euros over two years. It wasn't empire-building. It was a foothold.

Matthias opened the acceptance email, read it twice, and then did something I hadn't expected: he put his head in his hands and wept, just for a moment. When he looked up, his eyes were wet and fierce.

"Six years," he said. "Six years I've been fixing other people's machines, thinking I'd never build anything again. And you walk in off the street—"

"I didn't walk in off the street. I came because you're the best engineer in this city and I needed you."

"That's not what I—" He stopped, shook his head, and poured us both a coffee from the filthy machine in the corner. "To Vireo, then."

"To Vireo."

The coffee tasted like burnt rubber. I drank it anyway. For one bright, absurd moment, I felt almost happy.

---

The email arrived that evening, and the happiness curdled.

*Dear Mr Voss,*

*My name is Sophie Lindqvist. I'm a freelance journalist working on an investigation into labour practices at Voss Industries' logistics subsidiary in Duisburg. I've obtained internal documents suggesting systematic underpayment of agency staff and the suppression of a 2014 safety report. I understand you're a member of the Voss family. I'd welcome the opportunity to hear your perspective.*

*I should be clear: I'm not looking for a puff piece. I'm looking for the truth.*

She'd attached nothing. No documents, no names. A fishing line, cast carefully.

I read it three times. In my first life, I'd never met Sophie Lindqvist — or if I had, she'd been one of the dozens of journalists who'd come sniffing around after the collapse, and I'd been too drunk and too disgraced to give anyone a straight answer. But I knew the Duisburg story. I knew it because it had broken in 2017, two years late, and by then the paper trail had been shredded and the workers who'd talked had been paid off or sacked. The scandal had died in a fortnight.

Sophie had the documents *now*. Before the trail went cold. Before Elara's people got to the witnesses.

I typed a reply, deleted it, typed another. Then:

*Meet me tomorrow. 11:00, Café Brückner on Oranienstraße. Come alone.*

---

She was smaller than I'd pictured — dark curls escaping a bun, ink on her fingers, a vintage dress the colour of dried blood. She bit her pen while she waited, and when she saw me she didn't smile. Good. I didn't trust journalists who smiled.

"You're not what I expected," she said, once we'd sat down.

"What did you expect?"

"Someone older. Angrier. Someone who'd deny everything before I'd finished my first question." She tilted her head. "Your cousin Elara sent me a cease-and-desist within four hours of my first email. You asked me to coffee."

"You said you had documents."

"I said I had *suggestions*." She pulled a folder from her bag but kept it closed under her palm. "I have three former employees willing to talk on the record, a leaked safety report that was never filed, and a payment ledger that doesn't add up. What I don't have is anyone on the inside who'll confirm what it all means. Every door I knock on, someone's already slammed it."

"I'll confirm it," I said.

Her pen stopped moving. "Why?"

*Because in two years, a man named Dieter Krause will fall asleep at the wheel of a forklift on the night shift, and the report that would have prevented it is sitting in your folder.* *Because Elara will bury it, and three families will get settlements with non-disclosure clauses, and nothing will change.* *Because I stood in that cemetery and watched them lower my mother into the ground while the family lawyers argued about the will.*

None of that was sayable.

"Because it's true," I said. "And because I've decided I'd rather be useful than loyal."

Sophie studied me for a long moment. There was something in her face — not trust, not yet, but the first cautious flicker of curiosity. The look of a person recalibrating an assumption.

"That's a very convenient conversion," she said. "The prodigal son, suddenly on the side of the workers."

"Convenient for both of us."

"And what do you get out of it?"

I should have lied. A good businessman would have lied. But I thought of Matthias weeping over a contract, of the clanking radiator, of the four hundred thousand euros that would keep the lights on for another year — and the truth came out anyway, raw-edged.

"Voss Industries is a rotting house," I said. "I've no interest in inheriting the rot. I'm building something of my own, and I need the ground cleared. Your article does that. Your idealism does that." I met her eyes. "So yes, Ms Lindqvist. I'm using you. The question is whether you're using me back."

She laughed — a short, surprised sound, like a gull. Then she opened the folder and slid it across the table.

"Read it tonight," she said. "And Mr Voss? If you're lying to me, I'll find out. I always find out."

"I know," I said. "That's rather the point."

Outside, Berlin was grey and gold and indifferent. I tucked the folder under my arm and walked back towards the bakery, and for the first time in either of my lives, I felt the shape of something beginning.