The badge stopped meaning "to protect and serve" the day Phoenix Corp bought the department. There is no police force on this grid. There is SecuroServ, and SecuroServ does not work for you. It works for whoever signs the contract, and the contract is never written in your favor. Law here is a product. Order is a service. You are a line item.
Behind every uniform sits TITAN, the database that remembers everything you would rather it forgot. It does not file you under a name. It files you under a number, and that number is how dangerous the corps have decided you are.
Forget wanted stars the way the old world meant them. On the grid your standing is a Threat Index, a rating from zero to five that TITAN carries on your record. It does not blink on when you commit a crime and fade out when you lie low. An agent puts it there, a supervisor signs off on it, and it stays until someone clears it. The higher it climbs, the harder the whole city becomes to move through, because TITAN does not just watch you at five stars. It changes how the world treats you at every step up.
| Index | Classification | What it means | What it does to you |
|---|---|---|---|
| ★★★★★ | FLAGGED | Minor corporate interest. Your name surfaced once. | Cameras read you a touch sharper. Mostly a note in the margin. |
| ★★★★★ | MONITORED | Known associate, or on file from a prior incident. | Cameras sharper still, ICE runs a tier hotter when you jack in, and your plate reads "monitored" on a run. |
| ★★★★★ | WANTED | Active interest. There is an approved incident on you. | Cameras half again as likely to catch you, neural traces close faster, civilians may phone you in, and a plate run pings dispatch. |
| ★★★★★ | HIGH VALUE | Multiple incidents. Considered dangerous. | Cameras nearly always tag you, traces snap shut, corp-zone NPCs turn cold or hostile, checkpoints flag you on sight, and lethal force comes onto the table. |
| ★★★★★ | TERMINATE | Extreme threat to corporate stability. | Every camera sees you, every hack trips an instant trace, your name broadcasts to every agent on duty, and in Zone X the order is to remove you, not to talk. |
Stars do not fall off on their own. Time does not clear them. You can sit clean for a month and still walk into a corporate zone reading TERMINATE. The only way down is to pay it down, work it off, or beat it in tribunal. The grid forgives nothing it was not paid to forgive.
A star is not a reflex. An agent has to file on you. They open an incident, attach the violation codes, write the narrative, and recommend an index. A street agent can recommend, but it takes a senior or a supervisor to approve it before the number actually lands on your record. Class A scuffs are pocket change. Class D is the kind of thing that comes with an elimination order attached.
CLASS A minor: trespass, unlicensed vending, a recording you should not have made, a corporate-zone traffic stop. Fines, maybe a star.
CLASS B criminal: assault, robbery, theft, unlicensed iron, unlicensed chrome. Real fines, real stars.
CLASS C major: data theft, organized activity, extortion, an agent put down. Heavy fines, three stars, tribunal territory.
CLASS D high threat: hacking the corps, terror, the assassination of a corporate officer, treason against the coalition. No field fine. This goes to tribunal, and tribunal can sign your termination.
They do not always know who you are, and that does not save you. Go dark, spoof the cameras, blur your face, keep your name off the net, and TITAN simply files you as an UNKNOWN SUBJECT against your last plate, your description, the footage. The stars still stack. The day someone finally puts a name to the ghost, every one of those unknown reports merges onto you at once. Anonymity buys you time. It does not buy you a clean record.
SecuroServ is the umbrella. Underneath it, three contractors actually walk the streets, and they are not the same animal. Know which one is looking at you, because the rules they play by change with the logo on the chest.
| Force | Turf | Posture |
|---|---|---|
| Phoenix Security Division PSD | Citywide. The bought-and-rebranded LSPD. | The professional face. Corporate-clean, well-equipped, everywhere. Lethal force comes out at four stars. They impound, they cite, they process. |
| Gruppe Sechs G6 | Corporate sectors (the orange and red zones). | Private contractors with heavier kit than Phoenix and no civil-rights obligations to slow them down. Lethal at three. Aggressive by design. |
| Merryweather MWR | Zone X. The black zone. Restricted, military. | The most dangerous force on the grid. They do not impound and they do not cite. In Zone X the lethal-force line sits at one star. They were not hired to detain you. |
When an agent walks up on you, they are holding the whole database in one hand. Approach you, and a few things become available to them, all of it logged, all of it landing back in TITAN.
| They can | What it means |
|---|---|
| Identify | Pull your record on the spot: your name, your Threat Index, your outstanding fines, and whether the badge in front of you is cleared to use lethal force on you. |
| Detain | Cuff you. You are restrained until they release you, and they can walk you wherever they are going. |
| Frisk / Search | A frisk reads your iron fast. A full search opens your pockets, but only once you are detained. |
| Cite | Write you a corporate fine on the spot for a Class A or B. It lands on your record and you pay it through your Neural Link. |
| Process | Book you. Charges filed to TITAN, your weapons pulled into evidence, the formal record opened. |
Your side of the stop lives on F5. The citizen menu is yours, badge or no badge. From it you can pull My SecuroServ Record to see exactly where you stand, Pay Corporate Fines straight off your Neural Link, read My Citations, or Surrender with your hands up when the smarter play is not to run.
A fine sits on you until you settle it, and an unpaid balance is its own kind of risk: the corps notice debt, and debt is leverage. Open the Neural Link, hit F5, and pay it down. Stars are harder. A number that high was signed by a supervisor, and it comes off the same way it went on: pay the corporate fines tied to it, complete the corporate service handed down, or take it to the tribunal and beat it. Nothing about it is automatic. The grid is a ledger, and a ledger does not forget a balance just because you stopped looking at it.
This is the part that makes the Threat Index more than a scoreboard. Every star you carry quietly tilts the city against you, and most of it you will only feel as bad luck until you understand it was never luck.
Every node on the grid reads a flagged signature sharper than a clean one. At one star it is a nudge. At five, no amount of Rigger blur keeps you off the feed. The eyes that ignore the crowd lock onto you.
Jack into anything the corps own with stars on your record and the ICE was already waiting for your pattern. Traces start faster, the security rates a tier higher, and at the top the trace is instant and dispatch is already moving before you are out.
At three stars a civilian who sees you might make a call. At four, corporate-zone locals stop pretending you are not there, and some of them turn hostile. The crowd you used to disappear into becomes a hundred witnesses.
A monitored plate reads "monitored" on every run. A wanted plate pings dispatch the moment a unit checks it. At the top, anything registered to you flags across every system at once. The car that used to be cover becomes a flare.
A cop cannot simply decide you are finished, but the grid keeps a faster instrument than a courtroom. A security officer files a writ against you: a capture order, a search, a seizure. On its own it is paper. It does nothing until an Adjudicator signs it.
The Adjudicators are the Justicary. Judge, jury, and sentence in one coat, and they do not sit behind a bench waiting for you to be dragged in. A Justicar is called to the scene and rules on the spot. The moment one seals the writ it goes live, and the doctrine is simple and ugly: they do not look for you. They take you, and the questions come after.
An active writ is not a request. It is standing authorization to put hands on you wherever you are found. Capture first, sort it out later. If your name is on a sealed writ, the smartest place to be is somewhere a unit is not.
If you are the one carrying the database instead of hiding from it, the work runs off two keys. F4 is your toolkit on duty: clock in at the armory, draw your rank loadout, pull a unit from the motor pool, run dispatch, work tactical gear, and open the TITAN MDT. The terminal itself lives right inside your Neural Link (F1) as a tab that only exists for badges, where you search subjects, file incidents, run plates, file writs, and rule tribunals.
The MDT is locked to the badge. If your job is not security (or, when it exists, the courts), the tab is simply not there. Rank decides your reach: a street agent files and recommends, a senior approves and rules, a supervisor signs the heavy stars and the elimination orders. The pay is per minute on the clock, and the database remembers every report you ever filed under your name.