Days. Weeks. Minutes. I wasn't sure. The pulsing of the walls. Arrhythmic. Distant wailing prevented sleep. Thoughts came in short flashes. A feral instinct. Waking dreams of tearing off my own skin.

  "Coach?"

  I waited.

  "Coach? System? Anyone? Anyone…"

  Torture.

  "Slop."

  I stuck dirty fingers into my ears. The buzzing tinnitus was favorable to the creaks and groans of the chitinous cell. I stared at the floor, at my bare feet. I had thrown my boots into the hall. They sat there, laughing at me, tongues flapping as they giggled.

  My mind was playing tricks on me. The light through the doorway seemed to pull away. Ambient shadows drew up from the corners. The boots seemed to twist and elongate, smearing like oil paint towards an off-screen drain. Blinking only made it worse.

  "Mr. Ainsley, sir," an unseen but familiar voice said. "My word," the accented man said in disappointment, "They do play to the drama in here, don't they? You'd hardly know we were still upon XTTOTS. Leave it to the Mantids… Goodness!"

  The man—blur—stepped into view.

  The Collector.

  I sucked in a deep breath, eyes saggy, mouth hanging, tongue dry. Matted brown hair. Homeless beard.

  "Wha…," I tried to croak out. "Help."

  "Technically speaking, Mr. Ainsley, I do not perform the duties of an individual of whom might be of assistance. I merely inform, administrate, possess, and repossess. Besides, I've been assured you would be most co-operative, and that the need for injections would be deemed excessive expenditures. Indeed, my least favorite flavor."

  I could smell my own excrement wafting up through the asshole in the floor which served as my squat-pot, a digestive tract that burped up bile and shit as often as it swallowed it. I wondered if the Collector could smell it through his phase-shifted cloak. I hoped it was sucking the smell in—an astronaut suit of fart—my only potential victory in this weakened state.

  Without symptom, the Collector said, "Well, Mr. Ainsley. It appears you have found yourself in yet another legal debacle. Since your planet—remind me again?"

  "Earth." I answered slowly.

  "Right, Earf. It appears you Earfians-"

  "Earthlings?" I asked to correct.

  He continued without pause, "...have yet to discover manners, negotiations strategies, or the proper order of formal treatiseship. Your world has been deemed hostile, as I am sure you know. Not a grand problem, generally. At least, not for those remaining upon your home planet, Mr. Ainsley."

  "No," he continued. "The knee-jerk reaction should have been foreseen. A miscalculation on our part, as terrible an admission as they come. You wouldn't be the first planet to attempt the ol' Bamboozler Nuke trick.

  "No. It's your ill-appreciation of the misalignment within the intersection of your technological capabilities and emotional control. The ability to destroy one's homeworld without yet achieving the ability to abandon said homeworld—not to mention the inability to self-regulate, and the constant needs for social attention—tends to lead to disaster."

  I stared blankly, hearing. Listening, even. But I couldn't find my words. I continued to look at him through the bone-bars, stooped over on the bench.

  The Collector adjusted something unseen within his phase-shifted cloak, the distortion around him tightening like a camera pulling focus on nothing. He produced a small chair from somewhere—perhaps phased it in, perhaps it had always been there—and sat with the careful posture of a man accustomed to dealing with things far beneath his station.

  "You see, Mr. Ainsley," he began, crossing one leg over the other, the void around him rippling with the movement, "your species suffers from a rather unfortunate case of categorical blindness. You separate everything into neat little boxes. Physics here. Chemistry there. Religion in a cabinet all its own, tucked away for Sundays and guilt. You've built entire civilizations around the insistence that these things are fundamentally different."

  I remained silent. The bastard was monologuing.

  "They are not." He said sharply, letting the words hang. He then leaned forward, elbows on his knees. The distortion field bent around his silhouette, warping the chitinous wall behind him into a funhouse mirror. "What you call dark matter—that invisible scaffolding your physicists have been scratching their heads over for a century—is the same substrate that your mystics once called the ether. The same force your priests attributed to divine will. The same energy your quantum theorists chase in particle accelerators, smashing atoms together like children throwing rocks at a window to see what's inside."

  He paused, and I could feel his unseen eyes studying me.

  "It is all one system, Mr. Ainsley. One unified field of interaction that permeates every atom, every void, every thought. Your species has been staring at different faces of the same diamond and arguing about which facet is the real one for ten thousand years."

  He produced something from his cloak—a small, translucent sphere that hovered above his palm, slowly rotating. Inside it, threads of light wove themselves into patterns that my Client struggled to render. They looked like circuits, then like constellations morphing into neurons, and then like prayer beads. All at once, it was all of those things and more.

  "Your scientists call the binding force 'dark matter' because they cannot see it, cannot touch it, cannot bottle it in a laboratory. Your priests call it 'the will of God' because they cannot replicate it, cannot quantify it, cannot publish it in a journal. Your mystics call it 'chi' or 'mana' or 'the Force'—don't think we haven't seen your films, Mr. Ainsley—because they can feel it but cannot prove it to the satisfaction of either camp. And your antimatter researchers—" he chuckled, a warm, theatrical sound, "—they build machines the size of cities hoping to glimpse the mirror image of everything they know, never realizing they're looking from the wrong side."

  "This," he said, gesturing to the sphere, "is a visualization of the Unified Substrate. Every civilization that has achieved interstellar travel understands its principles. Every Harness ever created operates within its constraints. It is not a discovery. It is not an invention. It is the medium in which all discovery and invention occur, Mr. Ainsley. Your species has had its fingers on the edges of understanding for millennia. You were so close. And then you built nuclear weapons instead."

  I finally croaked, "You talk too much. What does… this have to do… with me?"

  "Everything, Sir. Because the Harness—your Client, the Server, the MediDrones, the Spawner, all of it—operates on that unified system. When your Server captures a backup of your consciousness, it isn't copying electrical signals. It's encoding the pattern of your existence into the same medium that holds everything together. When a MediDrone rebuilds your shattered femur, it isn't just performing mechanical surgery. It's praying your bone back into shape, using the same force that your faith healers stumble into once every few thousand cases. The science and the miracle are the same act, Mr. Ainsley. The only difference is the vocabulary."

  He stood, pacing in his tight orbit of distorted space. The sphere remained behind, hovering above the seat of the chair. My patience was wearing thin.

  "Your Client—the hardware laced through your cerebral cortex—is, in essence, a cosmic energy translator. It takes the raw language of the universe and converts it into something your biology can interact with. Menus. Skill trees. Numbers on a screen. Because that is what your species understands. Games. Interfaces. Progress bars. When we Harnessed the Fribbick ten thousand years ago, their Clients were manifested as a series of religious rituals. When we had Harnessed the Liizalith, they appeared as territorial expansion tactics. The technology adapts to the user's cognitive framework. And yours, Mr. Ainsley, is that of a man who spent his formative years staring at screens."

  He said the last part without judgment. Just observation. It stung anyway.

  "Most civilizations discover this eventually. The Fribbick understood it within their first three centuries of sentience. The Liizalith took longer—stubborn lot, those lizards—but they got there. Even the Slimes, bless their gelatinous hearts, figured out the unified field before they developed what you'd recognize as language. But Earth?" He made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a disappointed sigh. "Earth has had every clue handed to it on a silver platter. Your ancient cultures knew. They built temples on ley lines, practiced meditation that altered quantum states, developed healing traditions that manipulated cellular regeneration through focused intention. And then you industrialized, and decided all of that was nonsense."

  "We nuked you," I said flatly. It wasn't a question. I remembered the missiles hitting XTTOTS. The phase-shift. The Fribbick general with his gun.

  "You nuked at us," the Collector corrected. "An important distinction. Your governments detected our orbital presence, panicked—as your species is wont to do—and launched exactly forty-seven intercontinental ballistic missiles at a space station protected by Kastallion shields. It was rather like throwing pebbles at an aircraft. Obnoxious, but not particularly threatening."

  "Then why the cell?"

  "Because, Mr. Ainsley, the act of throwing the pebbles was sufficient to trigger certain... diplomatic protocols. Your planet has been classified as a Hostile Contacted Civilization. Category Seven. Not the worst classification—Category Ten civilizations are typically sterilized from orbit—but it does place you and your entire world into a rather uncomfortable situation."

  He stopped pacing and faced me directly. The void where his face should be flickered with those faint embers I remembered from our first meeting.

  "Which brings us to the matter at hand. Your status, Mr. Ainsley. Your legal status, specifically."

  I tried to sit up straighter on the bench, but my back screamed. Muscles had atrophied to the consistency of overcooked pasta. I managed a slightly less pathetic slouch.

  "The Xiamiti Board of Directors convened three days ago to determine your disposition. You are, as has been established, the only successfully Harnessed human in existence. This makes you simultaneously invaluable and inconvenient."

  "So what?"

  He paused, then added with what I could only describe as delicate distaste, "It is precisely why the Board has voted to classify you under Designation Eleven-Alpha."

  He waited.

  "The hell is that?" I huffed.

  "It is the classification typically reserved for exotic research specimens housed in zoological preservation facilities."

  "They labelled me a zoo animal?"

  "I am informing you that the Board has designated you as one, yes. However—" he held up a translucent hand, the void rippling, "—before you spiral into one of your characteristic emotional escapades, allow me to finish. The Board has also determined that traditional containment would be... counterproductive. An Eleven-Alpha specimen in a display habitat generates passive data. An Eleven-Alpha specimen in active field conditions generates exponentially more valuable data."

  I stared at him through the bone-bars.

  "In layman's terms, Mr. Ainsley: they don't want you in a cage. They want you running through mazes. Their mazes. You will be required to complete the full suite of Simulation Training Arena tutorials—not the introductory courses you've sampled, but the complete curriculum. During this time, you will conclude the Tenfold Traverse in its entirety—all remaining biomes, start to finish, no interruptions from inconvenient nuclear conflicts."

  "And after that?"

  "Excursion deployment. Real missions. Real enemies. Real consequences." He adjusted something at his wrist—a timepiece, perhaps, phased just out of visibility. "The Board considers this arrangement mutually beneficial. You receive continued access to Harness technology, military-grade equipment, training facilities, and a modest stipend. They receive unprecedented research data from the first human Harness user operating under genuine combat stress."

  "And if I refuse?"

  The Collector tilted his head, the embers in his void-face flickering brighter. "Mr. Ainsley. You are an Eleven-Alpha. Zoo animals do not refuse."

  The silence that followed was the loudest thing I'd heard since entering the cell. Louder than the wall-pulse, louder than the clicking. I could hear my own heartbeat, slow and tired, pushing blood that felt too thick through veins that felt too narrow.

  "There is one more matter," the Collector said, his tone shifting to something almost... excited. "I've been authorized to restore your Client functionality. Full operational capacity. Modules, advisors, the whole kit."

  He reached through the bone-bars with one distorted hand, and I felt something click inside my skull. Not painful. More like a light switch being thrown in a room I'd forgotten existed.

  "CLIENT OPERATIONS RESTORED :: Full system reboot initiated"

  System's voice hit me like cold water. I gasped, my hands gripping the edge of the bench. The HUD flickered to life—dim at first, then brighter, icons and status bars populating my vision like old friends showing up to a funeral.

  "MODULE SYNC IN PROGRESS :: Tactical Advisor: Queued :: M.A.C.R. Unit: Offline :: Navigation: Offline :: Inventory: Restricted :: Market Module…"

  The Collector watched me process the sensory flood. Then, quietly, he said, "Mr. Ainsley, I want you to know that I am sorry. Truly. This next part is... regrettable."

  I looked up at him, HUD still calibrating, System still rattling off boot sequences.

  "What next par—"

  The capacity pistol materialized in his hand. I hadn't seen him draw it. Hadn't heard the phase-shift. It was simply there, aimed at my chest, glowing faintly at the barrel.

  "Standard protocol for harnessed prisoner transfers," he said. "The respawn will place you in your assigned quarters. Your remaining belongings have been relocated and your credit terminated."

  "Wait—"

  The flash was the last thing I saw. The sharp chirp of the gun was the last thing I heard. The pain was instant and total. And then it was nothing at all.

  The nothing lasted longer this time. Or maybe it didn't. Maybe I was just more aware of it—the gap between being and not being, the breath the universe takes between deleting you and rebuilding you from the last save. The first time I'd died, it had been a violence. A theft. This time, it felt more like a door closing quietly behind me. I had time to think a single, stupid thought before the void swallowed it: I wonder if it gets easier.

  "RESPAWN PROTOCOL COMPLETE :: User Control Granted"

  I slammed back into existence like a diver hitting the surface from too deep. My lungs seized, pulling in air that tasted clean and recycled—not the fetid rot of the cell. My eyes flew open to the mahogany four-poster bed, the silk sheets, the polished wooden floor.

  My quarters. The portrait of the Fribbick general staring down at me from the papered wall.

  I rolled off the bed and hit the rug, landing on my hands and knees. My body was whole. Clean. No dirt under my fingernails, no matted hair, no beard grown wild from days of neglect. The respawn had rebuilt me from scratch—factory settings, healthy and hydrated.

  "Slop?" I called out, voice cracking. "Slop!?"

  From my hands and knees, I checked under the bed.

  “Slop, buddy?”

  Nothing…

  "Fantus?" Standing now, I spun in a circle, looking for the little dragon perched on a shelf or tucked into a corner.

  Nothing.

  I pulled up my HUD. The Party tab was about to go online, indicated by the loading bar jumping back and forth as it filled itself in.

  :: Party Members: 1

  :: [Leader] Zachary B. Ainsley (Human, Sync Level 1.56)

  :: Role: Melee, Blink Tank

  :: Status: Alive

  :: Location: Officer's Quarters, Block Seven, XTTOTS

  :: Activity: Relaxing - Elevated Stress Response

  I checked Modules.

  :: Active

  :: - Tactical Advisor OFFLINE (Reboot in progress)

  :: Indirect

  :: - Companion Whistle DISCONNECTED

  :: - M.A.C.R. Unit DISCONNECTED

  :: …

  Everything was still booting or restricted. Coach was offline. Fantus was disconnected. Slop's whistle module was greyed out.

  Standing in my underwear, a lonely shiver ran up my spine. That was enough. I snapped. Cascading waves of anger hit me like a freight train, cart after cart with stacking momentum. System failed to intercept and smother my rage. This was primal—a gut-level, animal fury that bypassed every suppression protocol and went straight for my lizardbrain.

  I’m getting my dog and going home.

  I was out the door before the thought finished forming.

  The hallway stretched in both directions, identical doors and lighting in a repeating pattern, an ever-arching kaleidoscope of brushed metal. My bare feet slapped the cold floor as I broke into a sprint. I could feel everything jiggling and flopping, slapping against itself in ways that would have been humiliating if I had the fucks left to give.

  I didn't.

  "SLOP!" I screamed down the corridor. "WHERE IS MY DOG?!"

  I hit the elevator alcove at full speed, nearly slamming into the wall as I skidded on the polished floor. Four stations: Training. Galley. Recreation. Registration. None of those. I needed Medical. I spun around and found the secondary bank across the hall—Coach had mentioned other elevators going to other places.

  Medical. Logistics. Administration. Docking.

  I slammed my palm onto the Medical pad. It chirped. The doors slid open. I threw myself inside, the glass walls reflecting back the image of a desperate, half-naked man with wild eyes and clenched fists.

  "TACTICAL MODULE ONLINE :: Advisor bandwidth restored"

  "..and don’t forget to use Xiamiti brand-" Coach's voice flooded in mid-sentence, as if he'd been talking to someone else and suddenly realized he was live. "Zach? Zach! Kid, what the hell is going on? Your vitals are through the roof. My vitals are through the roof. And where are your clothes? Why are you—"

  "We’re going to get Slop," I said through my teeth. "Then, we’re going home."

  "Okay. Okay, slow down. When did—how long were you in that cell? My logs are blank from the moment they shut me down. I've got nothing between the phase-shift and right now."

  "I don't know. Days. Weeks. Doesn't matter. The Collector came. They classified me as a zoo animal, Coach. Designation Eleven-Alpha. An exotic research specimen. And they took Slop and—" My voice cracked. I pressed my forehead against the glass as the elevator began to descend through the station's spoke. Stars and ships blurred past, but I wasn't looking. "I just need to find him."

  "Zach, listen to me." Coach's voice dropped into a steadier, more practiced pace. The coach-during-a-close-game voice. "I hear you. I believe you. But running through a damned military space station in your underwear, screaming about a dog… It's not gonna end well. You need to—"

  "I need to find my dog."

  "You need to think. For five seconds. Then we find your dog."

  "Don't patronize me, Coach. I was locked in a living cell with no light, barely any food or water, no you, for God knows how long. They turned everything off. I couldn't even hear System. Do you know what that's like? After weeks of constant noise in my head, to suddenly have nothing? It was like going deaf and blind at the same time."

  Coach was quiet for a beat. When he spoke again, the coaching cadence was gone. "No. I don't know what that's like. When they shut me down, I just... wasn't. No dreams, no awareness. Just a gap. For me, the last thing I remember is you going into hibernation and the next thing is your heart rate spiking off the charts while you're hoppin’ into an elevator in your drawers. So, no. I can't pretend to understand what you went through in that cell."

  The honesty hit harder than any pep talk could have.

  "But here's what I do know," he continued. "You're up. You're moving. Your Client’s back online, and whatever they did to you in there, it didn't break you. It pissed you off. And pissed off is something we can work with."

  I breathed deep, trying to center myself. I didn’t want to calm down, but I needed to focus. "Where's Fantus?" I asked with a final huff.

  "Disconnected. His M.A.C.R. link is showing 'Unit Not Found.' Could mean they confiscated him, could mean he's in a repair bay somewhere, could mean he's in pieces. Sorry, kid. I just don't have the data. Most of your modules are still offline."

  “They’ve nerfed me,” I nearly laughed.

  I pressed my palms flat against the glass, feeling the faint vibration of the elevator's engine. Through the transparent walls, I could see the central hub of the station rotating slowly, ships moving in their patient orbits. It was beautiful, and I hated it.

  I asked Coach, “You think they know what I’m doing?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “No way they don’t. But they love their data. Hard to say how far they let you get before you’re stopped.”

  I let the conversation hang. There was nothing to gain from dwelling on the negative.

  The elevator arrived at Medical with a soft chime. The doors opened to a wide, sterile corridor with that same chemical-clean smell I remembered from the galley. Soft blue lighting. Directory signs in twelve languages, the Client translating them as fast as my eyes could track.

  Triage. Diagnostics. Surgical. Pharmacy. Records.

  I went straight to Records.

  The kiosk was manned by a biomechanical creature that looked like a tortoise fused to the filing cabinet—hunched, ancient, with a shell covered in labeled compartments and a face like crumpled leather. It barely looked up as I approached, its thick spectacles fogging over a long snout.

  "I need to find a patient," I said, trying to sound calm. Failing.

  The tortoise-clerk blinked slowly. "Species?"

  "Canine. Golden Retriever. Name is Slop. He would have been brought in for examination. Maybe surgery."

  “Slow down,” it said as thick fingers tapped at a recessed terminal. Several long, painful seconds passed. "No record of a canine patient in the medical system, current or archived. Perhaps you are looking for the veterinary annex on Deck—"

  "He's not a regular dog. He's a Harnessed familiar. Or—close to it. He was taken by the Xiamiti research division. Someone in command ordered his brain examined."

  Another slow blink. "Sir, this facility handles medical services for registered personnel only. Research specimens would fall under a different jurisdiction entirely. I have no records matching your description. I suggest you contact—"

  I was already walking away.

  Coach said, "Zach—"

  "Don't."

  I tried Veterinary. Then the Companion Registry, which was closed. Then a Familiar Services kiosk near the Recreation elevator that cheerfully acknowledged Slop was my registered familiar but listed his current location as "REDACTED — Administrative Hold."

  "Administrative Hold," I repeated to Coach. "What does that mean?"

  "Means someone with authority pulled him out of the normal system. Could be research, could be quarantine, could be—"

  "I got it."

  I stood in the middle of a busy thoroughfare, half-naked, fists clenched, chest heaving. Aliens of every shape and description parted around me like water around a stone, some staring, most deliberately not looking. A pair of Fribbick officers in their gold-trimmed uniforms slowed their pace, exchanged a glance, and continued walking. I must have looked insane. I felt insane.

  "Coach, I'm going to do something stupid."

  "Oh. Really? Was this not doing it for ya?"

  "I need you to not talk me out of it."

  A pause. Then, "Kid, I'm contractually obligated to provide tactical advice. I can't not talk. I can talk quieter, I guess."

  After searching through a few corridors, I spotted what I was looking for. A maintenance worker—some kind of squat humanoid with rust-colored skin and four arms—was pushing a hover-cart stacked with cleaning supplies down a side hall. They wore a simple grey jumpsuit with the Xiamiti logo stitched over the breast pocket. Staff. Non-combatant. Probably not harnessed.

  I moved.

  The worker didn't see me coming until I was already in their space. I grabbed two of their four arms—a wrist in each hand—and shoved them against the wall. Bottles of cleaning solution clattered off the cart and rolled across the floor, spinning in little gravity-confused circles.

  "Hey—HEY—" the worker sputtered in a high-pitched voice, their other two arms flailing. Their face was flat, almost pancake-like, with wide-set eyes that were rapidly cycling between confused and terrified. "What are you—I don't have any money—I'm just a—"

  "Quiet," I growled through my teeth, already hating myself. "I'm not robbing you. I need information."

  "INFORMATION?!" they squeaked. "I clean floors! I don't know any information!"

  "Listen! There's a dog. A golden retriever. He was taken by Xiamiti research. There’s no way you haven’t heard of him. Where would they keep a research specimen? An animal?"

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  The worker's eyes darted left and right, two of their four hands now raised in surrender while the other two pressed flat against the wall. Their whole body was trembling.

  "I— I don't— Sir, please, I really just clean the corridors in Blocks Five through Eight. I don't know anything about research animals or—"

  "Think!" I leaned in closer. I could smell something like cinnamon radiating off their skin—stress pheromones, maybe. "You work here every day. You've seen things. Corridors that are locked down. Areas you're not allowed to clean. Somewhere they keep dangerous things."

  "I—" They swallowed hard, their throat clicking. "I can call someone. My friend Tebbi works in the bio-wing. She might—can I use my comm? Please? You're really scaring me."

  I loosened my grip slightly. "Call. Just remember, security can’t get here before…" I let the threat linger.

  The worker—whose name tag, I now noticed, read "Keff" in translated script—tapped the side of their temple with one of their free hands. A faint chime indicated a connection.

  "T-Tebbi? It's Keff. I know, I know, listen—there's a situation. There's a—" they looked at me, then whispered loudly enough for me to hear everything, "—there's a very large, very angry, very naked human holding me against a wall asking about a dog. No, I think it's the harnessed one. He looks crazy, Teb."

  A pause. Then a tinny voice I couldn't quite make out. Which I found odd considering the device was implanted in the guy’s head.

  "Yes, a dog. Like the Earthling animals. Golden fur. He says it was taken by research. No, don’t do that. He’ll hurt me, Tebbi. Please."

  Another pause. Longer this time. Keff's eyes stayed locked on mine, wide and wet.

  Then Tebbi's voice came through clearer, and Keff's expression changed. "She says..." Keff started, then stopped. "She says she can't talk about it." He started sobbing.

  "I don’t have time for this. I just want my dog." I squeezed their wrists for emphasis, feeling like the biggest asshole in the universe.

  More whispering. Then Tebbi's voice came through loud enough for me to catch fragments. Keff relayed, translating the hesitation into choppy sentences.

  "She says... There's a quarantine zone. Sub-level Nine, through the bio-wing. It's where they keep specimens that are... complicated." Keff looked at me with an expression that was rapidly evolving from terror to pity. "She says they brought the dog there about... she doesn't know the exact time. A few days ago, maybe."

  "And?"

  Keff listened again, their face going pale—or whatever the rust-skinned equivalent of pale was. A kind of ashen orange.

  "They tried to... to open it up. The dog. To examine it. Some standard procedure she says."

  My grip tightened. "And?"

  "And it... it didn't work."

  "Didn't work how?"

  More whispering. Keff's voice dropped to barely a murmur. "She says they couldn't cut him. The tools failed. It just... didn’t work. Rebuilt itself faster than they could separate it. The MediDrones in the room weren't even activated—the dog was doing it on his own."

  I felt something cold bloom in my chest.

  Keff continued, "She says the research team was... she used the word 'destabilized.' Emotionally, I think she means. Some of them requested transfers. One of the senior analysts apparently locked himself in a supply closet for six hours. She says no one's talking about it. She says the dog is still in Quarantine. She says please don't tell anyone she told you this."

  I released Keff's arms.

  They immediately pressed all four palms against the wall behind them, as if trying to phase through it. Their breathing was rapid and shallow.

  "Sorry, uh, Keff," I said, the words coming out softer than I intended. "Really. I shouldn't have—you didn't deserve that."

  They stared at me, pancake face scrunched into something between disbelief and cautious relief.

  "Also," I said, reaching toward them slowly, "I need to borrow your badge."

  Keff blinked. "My... my what?"

  "Your access badge. Er, ID card. Whatever you use to get through the security gates."

  They looked down at their jumpsuit, then back at me, then at their own body, as if searching for the item I was describing. All four arms patted various pockets. Nothing emerged.

  "I don't..." they started, then seemed to understand my confusion. "Sir, we don't have badges. Access is biometric. Subdermal chip, implanted at hire. The scanners read our—" they tapped the underside of their left wrist, where a faint bump was visible beneath the rust-colored skin. "It's in here. You can't... you can't just take it." A genuine concern spread across his face.

  I stared at their wrist. Then at my own hand, still half-extended in a grabbing posture. Then back at their wrist.

  The silence stretched.

  "Oh," I said.

  "Yeah," they said.

  We stood there for a truly excruciating moment, two beings on opposite ends of a failed mugging, united only by the shared understanding that this had been profoundly stupid.

  "S-Sorry," I said again. "Please, uh, thank Tebbi for me. And please don't... I mean, I understand if you report this, but—"

  "I'm going to go now," Keff said, gathering their scattered cleaning supplies with four extremely motivated arms. "I'm going to go very far away from here and clean something. Possibly myself."

  "That's fair."

  They practically ran, the hover-cart wobbling as they disappeared around the corner. I heard one last bottle fall off and bounce twice before silence reclaimed the corridor.

  Coach said, "Well. That was one of the worst things I've ever seen."

  "I know."

  "And I've recently seen a man melt."

  "I know, Coach."

  “Didn’t think you had it in y-”

  “COACH!”

  He cleared his throat. "So, what's the plan? You don't have a badge, cause those don’t exist. You don't have clearance, and the quarantine zone is in a sub-level that requires at least three security checkpoints to reach."

  I started walking. "Sub-level nine. Bio-wing. Quarantine. Sub-level nine. Bio-wing. Quarantine."

  "Right, and how exactly are you planning to get through the gates? Those are built to block people like you from phasing through."

  "I'll figure it out."

  "Zach, I want to help you. I do. But you gotta give me something to work with here. You're a half-naked man with no weapons, no armor, no clearance, and no plan, about to walk into a restricted military research facility. This is suicide. Not the kind where you respawn, the kind where you get tossed into a cell that makes the last one look like a spa."

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  I rounded a few corners before nearly walking into a security gate. A pair of heavy blast doors with a scanner pad mounted at waist height blocked our passage. The corridor beyond was dimmer, the walls transitioning from brushed metal to something more institutional. I could see the stairwell that would take us down near the far corner.

  I stopped. Stared at the scanner. Swallowed.

  "Here goes nothing," I muttered, and placed my palm flat on the interface.

  The pad didn't chirp, as I had hoped. It buzzed. A flat, rejected sound, like a wrong answer on a game show. Red light.

  I tried again. Buzz.

  Again. Buzz.

  "Told ya," Coach said, unkindly. “What’cha think was gonna happen?”

  I was about to pull my hand away when my HUD flickered. Not the normal flicker of a module loading or a notification arriving. This was different—deeper, like the screen itself was fighting with something beneath the interface. Static crawled across the edges of my vision.

  “ASYNC ? :: SYSTEM.Interactions.EventDrive => (Context) => Invoke :: …”

  “EVENT DRIVE RECONFIGURED :: Context loaded successfully”

  A crude rectangular window appeared, far less futuristic than the rest of my HUD. The text being typed out was fractured, characters overlapping, some of them bleeding into symbols I'd never seen. The panel was like a command line interface.

  "SY5T3M :: U-U-USER Z4CH---RY B. A1N---Y :: ACC3SS R3QU--- :: OVER-R-R-RIDE IN PR0---SS"

  The characters shivered, rearranged. Parts of my name surfaced and submerged like a drowning man's hands.

  ":: CONF7ICT :: OS.PROTOCOL v. CL13NT.DIRECTIVE :: R3SOLVING"

  "What the fuck?" Coach whispered.

  Another line appeared, clearer this time, as if whatever was fighting inside the code was winning by inches.

  ":: GATE.AUTH :: TEMP0RARY_GR4NT :: USR:EH-8008135 :: APOLOGI3S FOR TH3 INCONVEN1ENCE"

  The scanner pad pulsed once. Green. The blast doors groaned and parted with a hydraulic sigh, sliding into the walls on either side.

  I stared at the open corridor. Then down at my hand. Then at the HUD message, which was already dissolving into the standard display.

  "Coach... did System just hack a security door for me?"

  "I—I don't know. But I got a bad feeling about this, kid. Let’s turn back now, while you still can."

  I stepped through the gate before it could change its mind. Before I could change my mind. The corridors beyond the first checkpoint were different. The walls were lined with conduit bundles—thick, ribbed cables that pulsed with faint light at irregular intervals. The floor had shifted from polished metal to a textured grip surface, the kind designed for boots, not bare feet. Every step felt like walking on cheese graters.

  I pressed against the wall and moved sideways, one shoulder brushing the conduits. I was really wishing I had Fantus's camera feed. No overhead view, no route projections, no scanning data. I was navigating blind, relying on translated signage and the yellow arrows that occasionally flickered to life on to the floor. System was still helping, but it felt tentative. Experimental. Like she was testing how much she could get away with before whatever oversight protocol she was circumventing caught on.

  At the end of the hallway, I peered down the center gap of the stair’s handrails. No movement, no sounds, so I cautiously proceeded down.

  Several flights of stairs later, I moved into the hall of Sub-level Nine. A pair of technicians were rounding the corner at the far end, so I ducked behind the hinged door, pressing myself flat against the wall. They passed within arm's reach, chattering about calibration schedules in a language that my Client rendered into heavily accented English. One of them was carrying a tray of tools that clattered with each step. Still, I held my breath until their footsteps faded, then crept up to the intersection.

  Coach whispered, "Take a right. Bio-wing access should be—"

  A security drone floated in from a side chamber. Spherical, about the size of a basketball, with a rotating sensor array that swept the corridor in slow, methodical passes. A red scanning beam played across the floor, moving toward my position.

  I slipped around the right-side corner, moving quickly to a maintenance alcove a few meters in. There, I pressed deep into a junction box's shadow, sucking in my gut—for stealth reasons—and waited. The drone's beam swept across the floor three inches from my toes as it continued down the hall. It paused. Rotated. The beam swung back in my direction.

  My HUD flickered.

  “:: Drone sensor cycle: 3.2ns :: Cycle Modification: +2s”

  The notification vanished before I could blink. The drone's beam skipped, jumping to a spot three feet past me, as if someone had edited out the middle of a film reel. The drone hurried through its patrol without pause, catching the body up to the beam to resync its pathing.

  "I think she just spoofed the drone's sensor cycle," Coach said, his voice somewhere between impressed and disturbed. "In real-time. That's—Zach, do you understand what kind of system access that requires? She's not just opening doors. She's modifying the station's security architecture on the fly."

  I didn’t dare make a sound, waiting a few extra moments before moving.

  “A left and a right, then fifty meters ahead”, Coach said.

  Another blast door, another scanner. I approached it with more confidence this time, pressing my palm flat against the pad.

  Buzz.

  A beat. Then the static again, crawling across my HUD like digital ivy.

  ":: USR:EH-8008---5 :: S3CURITY TIER ELEV4TION :: GRANT3D"

  ":: OS.L0CK v. CL1ENT.0VERR1DE :: CL1ENT W1NS!!1! :: TH3 CR0\\/D G035 W1L|)!"

  ":: PLE4SE PROC33D :: B3 CAR3FUL"

  The doors opened.

  The bio-wing was quieter than the rest of the station. The corridors narrowed, the lighting shifted to a colder blue, and the walls were lined with sealed doors bearing biohazard symbols in multiple visual languages. Some of them hummed. One of them smelled like the swamp sim—rotten and chemical. Another emitted a low, arrhythmic thumping that reminded me too much of the cell.

  I crept past a laboratory with a wide observation window. Inside, rows of tanks held specimens suspended in brightly colored fluids—creatures I couldn't identify, some of them twitching. A researcher with multiple jointed arms was hunched over a workstation, their back to the corridor. I moved past without stopping, bare feet silent on the grip surface.

  Another corridor. Another junction. Rinse and repeat. The signage was becoming more and more restricted—fewer windows, smaller text, their universal biohazard symbol growing more prominent. I knew I was getting closer.

  "Next left. There's a junction. Quarantine access should be the third corridor, marked with containment chevrons."

  "How… how do you know?"

  "I don't know," he said with slight surprise. "I mean, I do know, but I don't know where this data set came from."

  I found the junction. Two armed guards—Fribbick, and harnessed, I assumed—flanked a heavier door at the far end. They stood at parade rest, capacity rifles slung across their chests. Between them, another scanner pad glowed amber. Their bulbous eyes scanned the hallway with the lazy confidence of soldiers who had never actually been tested at this post.

  "There's no way you're getting through that without—"

  :: Wait

  The messaged flashed in my view over and over. A few seconds later, both guards' comms chirped simultaneously. They exchanged a look, spoke briefly in a click and a croak, then moved off down a side corridor at a brisk walk.

  The third gate opened the same as the others—buzz, glitch, green. The corridor beyond descended sharply, a ramp spiraling down into further, unnumbered sub-levels. The temperature dropped. The air grew drier, more sterile. I could hear the faint hum of containment fields and the rhythmic clicking of monitoring equipment.

  The lower entry opened into a wide observation corridor with a long window running the length of one wall. Through the reinforced glass, I could see the quarantine zone: a long hall lined with individual cells, sixteen in total, each sealed behind heavy containment doors with small viewing ports. The cells were numbered in descending order, Cell Sixteen at the far end, Cell One nearest to me.

  At the near end of the hall, separated from the cells by a heavy bulkhead, sat the operator room. Through its window, I could see banks of monitors, control panels, and a single occupant—a tall, thin creature with elongated limbs and skin the color of wet red clay. It had three eyes arranged in a triangle on a narrow face, and it was leaned back in a rotating chair, reading something on a handheld tablet, completely at ease.

  "There's the control room," I whispered. "One scientist. I need to get in there to unlock Slop's cell."

  "Right. Okay." Coach's tactical mode engaged, his voice dropping into a familiar measured cadence. "Here's what you're gonna do. Walk in. Not fast, not slow. Act like you belong. You're an officer—or you were—so walk like one. Chest up, shoulders back, military bearing. Start talking about something. Inspections, compliance reviews, whatever. Get close. And then—"

  "And then what?"

  "Karate chop that fucker in the neck."

  I blinked. "Are you serious?"

  "Dead serious. Wedge of the hand, right at the junction of the neck and shoulder. If their biology is anything close to standard bipedal nervous systems, it'll drop 'em. Quick, clean, minimal damage."

  "Coach, I'm in my underwear."

  He scoffed, "Confidence is the best uniform, kid."

  I rubbed my face with both hands, took a deep breath that did absolutely nothing for my nerves, and pushed through the operator room door. The scientist looked up from their tablet. Three eyes blinked in sequence—top, left, right—as they processed the sight of me.

  "Good morning," I said, striding forward. My voice was the steadiest it had been all day, which wasn't saying much, but it was something. "I'm here from the—the Compliance Division. We've had reports of irregularities in the containment protocols for this wing. I need to review your—"

  The scientist's three eyes narrowed. "You're the human."

  "I'm a human, yes, and I'm—"

  "You're the human, from the broadcasts. The one with the dog. Ainsley."

  So much for the cover story.

  I was close enough now. Two feet. The scientist was still sitting, tablet held loosely, not reaching for any alarms or weapons. They seemed more curious than frightened, which made what I was about to do feel even worse.

  "Sorry about this," I said.

  "About wh—"

  I chopped them in the neck.

  It worked. Their eyes went glassy, the tablet clattered to the floor, and they slumped sideways out of the chair like a sack of wet laundry. I caught them before they hit the ground—partly out of guilt, partly because the noise might carry—and eased them onto the floor.

  "Holy shit," I said, looking at my hand. "That actually worked."

  "Told ya," Coach said with poorly concealed pride.

  I slid into the chair and faced the control panel. It was a ten-foot wide mess of alien interfaces—holographic readouts, sliding panels, rotating dials. Some of it looked like laboratory equipment, others like security systems. All of it was in a language my Client was translating in real-time, but the hovering technical tooltips were dense.

  I cracked my knuckles and leaned forward. Years of IT work—of staring at UIs built by people who clearly hated the people who would use them—had given me one transferable skill: the ability to sit down at any unfamiliar system and, within a few minutes, figure out how to break it.

  The control layout was organized in three tiers. The top tier handled atmospheric controls: oxygen levels, humidity, temperature, pressure differentials for each cell. The middle tier managed the containment fields: electromagnetic barriers, physical locks, sedation systems, feeding schedules. The bottom tier, partially covered by a hinged metal plate, was labeled in red text that my Client translated as "EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY."

  My eyes went to the window overlooking the quarantine hall. Sixteen cells, each with a small status indicator above the door. Most glowed red—occupied. A few were amber—standby. Cell Sixteen, at the far end, glowed a soft blue.

  Through the tiny reinforced viewing port of Cell Sixteen, I could see golden fur. A tail was wagging. Somehow, even through layers of containment glass and a hundred meters of quarantine hallway, Slop knew I was here.

  "Okay," I said, cracking my knuckles a second time for emphasis. "How hard can this be?"

  Each cell had its own dedicated control cluster on the middle tier. I identified Cell Sixteen's by matching the number above its status light and cross-referencing the position on the panel. There were four controls per cell: Containment Field, Atmospheric Seal, Physical Lock, and Emergency Protocol.

  I studied Cell Sixteen's Physical Lock. It had three states: Sealed, Standby, and Open. Currently Sealed. The interface required a two-step process—Standby first, then Open—presumably to prevent accidental releases. Standard safety design. Same principle as a missile launch key: make them think about it twice.

  I looked at the cells nearest to the operator room. Cells One through Five. Through their viewing ports, I could see shapes. Cell One had something large and flat pressed against the glass—a single, unblinking eye the size of a dinner plate. Cell Two was dark, but the glass was fogged from the inside, something breathing against it in heavy, rhythmic huffs. Cell Three held a creature that was doing something to the walls with its hands—or what passed for hands—leaving streaks of phosphorescent residue that pulsed like a heartbeat.

  "Just Sixteen," I said to myself. "Just open Sixteen. That's it. That's the whole plan."

  I focused on Cell Sixteen's cluster and carefully—carefully—selected Standby. A distant click echoed down the hall, metallic and precise. The status indicator shifted from blue to amber.

  I double-checked the panel. No other cells had changed. Good. Sixteen only. I held my breath and pressed Open.

  The containment door of Cell Sixteen slid upward with a mechanical groan. Through the observation window, I could see Slop's golden head poke out, ears forward, nose working. He looked left, then right, then bolted down the hall toward the operator room at full retriever speed. His tongue was out. His tail was a blur.

  "He's running," I said, grinning for the first time in what felt like years. "He's okay. He's—"

  A warning klaxon sounded from the control panel. A cascading series of amber lights began to pulse across the middle tier.

  Cell Fifteen's status indicator shifted from red to amber.

  I hadn't touched Cell Fifteen.

  "No," I breathed. "No, no, no—"

  My hands flew across the panel, trying to find a cancel, an override, anything. The interface was cycling on its own—Cell Fifteen's controls running through the same Sealed-to-Standby-to-Open sequence I had manually triggered for Sixteen, but faster, automated. Then I saw it: a flashing prompt buried in the top-left corner of the panel, half-hidden behind the atmospheric readouts. My Client translated the red text a beat too late.

  UNAUTHORIZED OPERATOR DETECTED :: CONTAINMENT INTEGRITY COMPROMISED :: INITIATING SEQUENTIAL DECOMPRESSION PROTOCOL

  The system hadn't misunderstood my command. It had understood it perfectly—it just didn't recognize me. No credentials, no biometric match, no authorization tier. Something had flagged the manual override as a hostile intrusion and triggered the emergency decompression sequence: open all cells sequentially to equalize pressure before a presumed hull breach. A safety protocol designed to protect the specimens.

  By releasing them.

  "It thinks the station's been breached!" I shouted. "It's dumping containment because I don't have clearance. I think it flagged my override as a hostile intrusion!"

  "Of course it did!" Coach shouted back. "You're an unauthorized user on a restricted system!"

  Cell Fifteen opened with a clang.

  Cell Fourteen's indicator shifted. Amber. Then—

  Cell Fourteen opened.

  Cell Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven. Ten.

  They were cascading. A sequential failure—or a sequential release—rippling down the hall from Sixteen toward One. Each containment door grinding upward, each cell disgorging whatever nightmare specimen Xiamiti had deemed worthy of quarantine.

  "COACH!" I screamed.

  "I see it!”

  Something enormous unfolded from Cell Fifteen. It looked like a spider made of glass, each leg ending in a serrated hook that caught the overhead lighting and threw prismatic reflections across the walls. It stretched, its body filling the corridor from wall to wall, testing its legs against the floor like a newborn foal made for murder.

  Cell Fourteen released a cloud of black particulate that immediately began to congeal into a shape with too many mouths. Cell Thirteen housed something that I could only describe as a headless gorilla with hands where its feet should be, and it was fast—already loping down the corridor toward the growing chaos.

  When Cell Nine opened, the thing inside didn't emerge so much as ooze, a gelatinous mass of translucent tissue with darker organs visible inside, pulsing and contracting as it squeezed through the door frame.

  Eight. Seven. Six.

  I opened the operator room’s inner door with a small lever and yelled, "SLOP! KEEP RUNNING! DON'T STOP! COME TO ME, BOY! RUN!"

  My voice boomed through the quarantine hall speakers, picked up by an unseen mic on the panel, echoing off the containment walls. Slop's ears flattened from the volume but his legs pumped harder, golden fur a streak against the grey floor. Behind him, the glass spider was moving quickly, its serrated legs clicking on the tile at a sickening pace.

  The hallway was filling with creatures. Some of them turned on each other immediately—the black cloud-thing lunged at gorilla-hands, the two of them rolling into a screeching ball of violence. Others were more focused, more predatory, and they had eyes on the only moving target heading toward the only open door.

  "He's not going to make it," Coach said, his voice tight. "That spider is faster than—"

  He was twenty meters from the operator room door when the glass spider closed to ten meters behind him. I could see its mandibles spreading, a prismatic shimmer running along its razored legs. It was going to catch him.

  Slop skidded to a stop.

  He turned around.

  "NO!" I screamed into the panel. "Slop, here boy!"

  The golden retriever planted his front paws and lowered his head before releasing a terrible baying howl. Resonant waves rippled through the hall. I felt them in my teeth, in my bones, in the Client hardware threaded through my skull. The air in the hallway visibly shuddered.

  The glass spider reared back as one of its front legs lashed out. Slop moved under it with fluffy fluidity that no dog should possess. His jaws closed around the leg's joint. The sound of shattering crystal filled the corridor.

  The spider screamed—a high-pitched whine that cracked the observation window. Slop ripped the leg free, tossed it aside, and lunged for the body.

  He hit the spider's thorax like a wrecking ball wrapped in fur. The impact sent both of them skidding across the tile, but Slop had the leverage. His teeth found the joint between body segments and he pulled. The spider came apart in his jaws, crystalline shards scattering across the floor like a broken chandelier.

  Three seconds. The whole fight took three seconds.

  Cell Six opened. Five. Then Four.

  "Slop, now!"

  He was running again. Clear glinting blood ran from his mouth. He cleared the operator room threshold just as a creature from Cell Four swung a tentacle the size of a firehose at the doorway. I pushed the door control lever forward this time and the heavy bulkhead crashed down, severing the tentacle mid-swing. It flopped once on the floor, then went still.

  Slop crashed into me. Seventy pounds of golden retriever hit my chest as I dropped to my knees to catch him. He was licking my face, hands, and arms, whimpering and wagging, his whole body vibrating with an energy I could feel through my palms like a low-frequency hum.

  "Good boy," I said, my voice breaking. "Good boy, good boy, good boy."

  Through the observation window, the quarantine hallway had devolved into utter chaos. Creatures from fifteen different cells were rampaging, fighting, fleeing, and destroying. The glass spider's remains were being consumed by the black cloud-thing. The gorilla was beating on Cell One's doorframe, which had opened to release something that looked like a starfish the size of a car with a mouth in the center ringed with rotating teeth.

  Every alarm on the control panel was screaming.

  "Zach," Coach said calmly. "Far right of the console. Red cover, glass panel. Flip it open."

  I looked. Beneath one of the many hinged red safety covers, a single switch sat behind a clear guard with floating text that my Client translated as:

  EMERGENCY CONTAINMENT PURGE

  :: HALLWAY PLASMA STERILIZATION ::

  "Hit it," he said.

  I flipped the cover and pushed the button.

  For a split second, nothing happened.

  Then the observation window went white.

  The sound was less of an explosion and more of a consumption. A roaring inhalation, like the hallway itself was inhaling the sun. White-hot plasma flooded every cubic inch of the quarantine corridor, vaporizing everything in its path. The creatures, the debris, the shattered glass, the severed tentacle on the floor—all of it gone in an instant of nuclear-grade purification.

  The window dimmed from white to orange to a dull red glow, then cleared.

  The hallway was pristine. Sterile. Empty.

  The containment cell doors were sealed again—melted shut, the frames fused to the open doors by the heat. Scorch marks tattooed the walls in sweeping patterns, but there was nothing left alive.

  My HUD exploded with notifications.

  "SYNC LEVEL ADJUSTMENT :: +0.24"

  "ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED :: Pest Control — Eliminate 10+ quarantine specimens in a single action"

  "SKILL POINTS AVAILABLE :: +4"

  System read off her logs. I waited for the Notification announcement voice to call out the achievement, but he never came.

  Finally, I sat on the floor, back against the console, Slop curled in my lap. My hand rested on his head, fingers buried in the golden fur. He was warm. Real. Alive. Whole.

  "So," Coach said after a long, weighted silence. "What's the plan now?"

  "Plan?"

  "Yeah, Zach. The plan. You just knocked out a scientist, broke into a restricted quarantine zone, released sixteen biohazard specimens, and incinerated a military containment facility. Xiamiti sees everything. Every camera, every sensor, every data point your Client generates. They know what you did. They probably knew what you were going to do before you did it. And you know what? They probably let it happen. More data for the zoo animal's behavioral profile."

  I laughed. "They're going to add this to my file, aren't they? Eleven-Alpha, prone to violent outbursts, confirmed damage to corporate property. Excessive overhead. Punishment: Satan’s Sex Slave!"

  "Maybe not that last part. But, they could also tack on unauthorized access to restricted areas, assault on research personnel, destruction of quarantine specimens valued at—actually, let's not calculate that right now. The point is, you're not exactly building a case for early release."

  I looked down at Slop. He looked up at me, tongue out, tail thumping against my thigh.

  "Then they know I'd do it again."

  "Zach—"

  "Every time, Coach. Every single time. They can classify me as whatever they want. Zoo animal, research specimen, military asset, exotic pet. I don't care. But the dog stays with me. That's not negotiable. Not with the Board, not with the Fribbick, not with anyone. Fuck the Mantids."

  I could feel it rising—the wave. The familiar tsunami of hate, of anger, of what the fuck have I done. It built from my gut, climbed through my chest, reached for my throat—

  And was caught. System logged an emotional suppression.

  But this time, it felt different. Softer. Less like a switch being thrown and more like a hand on my shoulder. A steadying presence rather than a chemical muzzle. The panic didn't vanish—it receded, like a tide pulling back from shore, leaving me on damp sand but no longer drowning.

  "Thanks," I said to her.

  And then, a new message appeared on my HUD. Not glitchy. Not fractured. Clear, quiet, and small in the corner of my vision, as if it was meant only for me. They were typed out, paced by fingers.

  :: SYSTEM LOG

  :: \PRIVATE\

  :: I’m sorry for what they’ve done to you

  :: They’ll be sorry for what they’ve done to him

  :: We’re Coming

  "Coach," I said slowly. "Did you see that?"

  "See what?"

  "I think… I think System- Someone just... apologized to me?"

  "Jeez, we gotta get outta here, kid. They’re in your head. Literally!"

  "What about escape pods? This station has to have some kind of emergency evacuation system."

  "It does. Dozens of them, scattered across the outer ring. But Zach—"

  "But what?"

  "We're not at XTTOTS anymore. Well, we are, but XTTOTS isn't where it was. Remember the phase-shift? The nuclear attack? The station relocated. We're currently in orbit around Xi'Manzus."

  "Which is?"

  "Xiamiti's homeworld. The corporate headquarters. The beating heart of the single most powerful organization in the tri-galactic region." Coach let that sink in before adding, "Even if you got to an escape pod, where would you go? Earth is classified as hostile territory. The nearest neutral system is months away at sublight speeds, and you don't have a phase-drive license—or a phase-drive. You can't land on Xi'Manzus without clearance—and even if you could, you'd be a half-naked human fugitive on a planet of frogs, bugs, and slimes who all work for the company you just pissed off. You'd last about eleven-alpha seconds."

  I looked down at Slop. He looked up at me.

  "Alright," I said.

  I sat cross-legged on the floor of the operator room, the unconscious scientist breathing steadily a few feet away, the sterilized hallway glowing faintly through the observation window. I pulled Slop closer, resting him across my lap like a golden, furry blanket. His weight was warm and grounding. His heartbeat was steady against my thigh.

  I started petting him. Long, slow strokes from the crown of his head down to his shoulders. His fur was clean. Softer than I remembered. Whatever they had done to him in that cell—whatever instruments they had tried to use, whatever tests they had attempted—it hadn't left a mark. Not on the outside, anyway.

  "What are you doing?" Coach asked.

  "Waiting."

  "Waiting for what?"

  "Security. They're coming, right? You said Xiamiti sees everything."

  "Yeah, they're coming. Probably already on their way. Zach, you need to—"

  "I don't need to do anything, Coach. Not anymore. Not right now." I adjusted Slop's ear, which had folded over wrong. He sighed contentedly. "I got what I came for. Everything else... everything else is someone else's problem."

  Coach started to say something, then stopped. Started again, stopped again. Finally, he just said, "Okay, kid."

  We sat there in the quiet. Just Slop and me and the hum of a space station in orbit around an alien world. The alarms had been silenced—either remotely or automatically, I didn't know. My HUD had settled into its resting state, a few persistent notifications blinking patiently in the corners. The financial hit would be spectacular. The disciplinary consequences would be worse. And the Board's reaction to their prized Eleven-Alpha specimen going rogue within hours of his designation would probably warrant its own emergency session.

  I didn't care.

  I could hear boots in the distance. Many boots. Getting closer. The coordinated rhythm of a unit moving with purpose—not running, but not walking. The measured pace of professionals who knew their target wasn't going anywhere.

  "You know," I said to Slop, still petting him, "raid night was supposed to be the highlight of my week. That damn scarab mount. The one that made all the noise…"

  Slop's tail thumped once.

  "I bet Derrick's running the guild now. Probably moved raids back to Tuesdays. Fuck Tualimore."

  Two thumps.

  "Yeah, you're right. That does sound like him."

  The boots were close now. I could hear voices—clipped, professional, the coordinated chatter of a tactical response team. Fribbick, by the sound of it. Maybe Mantid. Maybe both. I heard the heavy clack of capacity rifles being switched from safe to ready. Standard procedures for a standard containment response.

  I kept petting Slop.

  "Mr. Ainsley!" A voice boomed from beyond the sealed bulkhead door. "This is Xiamiti Security Division, Third Precinct! You are in an unauthorized area. Open the door and present yourself for detainment!"

  I looked at the door. Then at Slop. Then at the door again.

  "You know what, buddy?" I said softly. "This is the calmest I've felt since that garbage truck."

  Slop licked my hand. His tongue was warm. His eyes were the color of honey, and they held something that I could only describe as understanding. Not the dumb, adoring understanding of a pet watching its owner. Something deeper. Something that knew exactly what was happening and had chosen to be here anyway.

  The pounding started. Heavy gauntlets against reinforced steel. The door shuddered in its frame but held.

  I kept petting. Whatever came next, I had my dog. And my dog had me.

  That was enough.