- Chapter 082 -

  Don't be a Stranger

  The week had evaporated. It wasn't a matter of days passing, but a series of tasks completed, a timeline rushing toward a critical milestone. Now, that milestone was sitting in his living room, drinking wine and looking uncharacteristically nervous.

  Valerie was leaving.

  In the Collective, departures were apparently treated like shift changes, efficient, dry, and devoid of ceremony. You packed your bag, you clocked out, you left. Mark had vetoed that immediately. If she was going to face the judgment of a High Council and a potentially dangerous soul trial, she was going to do it on a full stomach and with a proper send-off.

  The living room had been converted into a reception area. It wasn't a raucous affair, just the core team, plus Sam, all gathered around the low table. The air smelled of a rich tomato sauce, savory herbs, and the overwhelming, sugary promise of chocolate.

  Carl stood by the kitchen counter, unveiling a cake box from The Sweet-Tooth with the flourish of a magician. Inside sat a chocolate monstrosity the size of a tire.

  "Put it on the ledger," Carl announced, slicing a massive wedge. "Deduct it from my share of the light-drill profits. Assuming, of course, we make money with the thing."

  "I'll file it under 'R&D Expenses,'" Mark noted dryly. "Staff motivation."

  He moved to the table, using his cane more for balance than support now. The spread was simple but effective. A large pot of the minestrone-adjacent soup that had turned out surprisingly well, and a bowl of pasta with a meat sauce that had actually thickened properly this time.

  The bread, however, was questionable at best.

  Sam sat with a roll in his hand. He squeezed it. It didn't yield. He tapped it against the edge of the wooden table. Thunk. Thunk. The sound was indistinguishable from a hammer hitting oak.

  "Impressive," Sam said, his face deadpan. He looked at Mark. "If the Militia runs out of ammunition for the catapults, I know who to call. This isn't food, Mark. It's a weapon of war. Blunt force trauma in every bite."

  "The yeast didn't do its thing," Mark admitted, taking a seat. "I messed up with the temperature I think. Stick to the soup."

  "I intend to," Sam said, dropping the roll onto his plate with a heavy clatter. "Before I need to ask Valerie to repair my jaw."

  Despite the culinary mishap, the mood was light. It was a pocket of warmth in the face of the coming separation. They ate, they complained about the Guilds, and for an hour, the looming threat of Titan and the trials felt distant.

  Then, the entertainment began.

  "Remember, this stays here!" Mark said, gesturing to the quartz array sitting innocuously on the shelf. "What happens in this room stays in this room. If the Engineers find out we have a working holographic interface before we're ready to launch, I'm blaming Carl."

  "And I'll blame the primitive," Carl retorted, his mouth full of cake.

  Mark activated the array. He didn't need to concentrate as hard anymore, practice had allowed the motion to be passive at this point. He fed the simple intention of activation and it started.

  The ball of water rose from the bowl on the coffee table, hovering in the air, catching the light of the room.

  "Who's first?" Mark asked.

  Tori didn't hesitate. She leaned forward, placing her hand on the secondary control stone Mark had added to the table, a remote control point. Her Heart of Dreams flared, as she did not need to work around the interface like the others.

  The water shifted. The sphere broke down, stretching and thinning until it formed a perfect, translucent orchid. It rotated slowly, the petals unfurling in a loop. It was delicate, beautiful, and while the design seemed completely impossible to Mark, he got the feeling there was more to it for Tori. Another time perhaps.

  "The quality is terrifying," Tori murmured, watching the water ripple. "I can see the veins in the petals."

  "My turn," Dawn said, nudging Tori aside.

  The huntress placed her hand on the stone. The orchid collapsed, splashing inward before reforming instantly. The water darkened, taking on density. It shaped itself into a topographic map of the valley, the peaks of the Iron-Tooth rising from the coffee table in liquid relief. She traced a path through the mountains with her mind, a glowing line of water highlighting a trail.

  "Tactical planning," Sam noted, leaning in, his mind immediately seeing the application. "Real-time terrain mapping. The commanders at the garrison would kill for this."

  "Which is why they can't have it," Carl reminded him. "Not yet."

  Sam took the control. The mountains dissolved. In their place, a complex assembly of gears and pistons formed, moving in perfect synchronization. A combustion engine? No, a crystal-steam engine. He pulled the image apart, exploding the view to inspect the internal components, then snapped it back together.

  "It reads the visualization perfectly," Sam said, impressed.

  Valerie sat quietly, watching the display. She looked tired, but the fear that had haunted her for weeks was receding.

  "Your turn," Mark said gently. "Guest of honor."

  Valerie reached out. She touched the stone with her fingertips.

  The water shimmered. It didn't form a flower, or a map, or a machine. It formed a heart. Not the stylized symbol of romance, but the anatomical organ. It beat, a slow, rhythmic pulse. The valves opened and closed. The water flowed through the chambers, mimicking the circulation of blood. It was a masterpiece of biological understanding, rendered in fluid.

  She watched it beat for a long moment, the blue light reflecting in her eyes.

  "It's... honest," she whispered. "It shows exactly what you know. Nothing more, nothing less."

  She pulled her hand back. The heart splashed down into the bowl, returning to just water.

  "Thank you," she said, looking around the room. "For this. For everything."

  As the second round of cake was demolished, the mood settled into a comfortable, sugar-fueled lethargy. Mark wiped a crumb from the table and reached for the stone interface dial.

  "For reference," Mark said, his hand hovering over the runes, "it's probably useful that you all meet Tony."

  Tori, her cheek bulging with a massive bite of chocolate sponge, mumbled a confused, "Mmph-oo?"

  The others looked equally puzzled. They knew the names of his friends, his enemies, and his neighbors. Tony was new.

  He closed his eyes. This wasn't like projecting a map or a flower. He had to reach deep into his own mind, towards the granite walls he had erected, and pull the image of the Guardian into the forefront. Pushing a ‘live’ memory was harder than the others, visualising the raw, crackling energy of the beast into intention was difficult.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The ball of water didn't just ripple, it convulsed. The sphere lost its surface tension, billowing outward like a sudden storm cloud.

  Chairs scraped against the floor as the group instinctively slid back, giving the unstable projection a wide berth. Pigment bled into the water, deep, electric blues and blinding, stark whites and a moment of icy pale blue.

  Mark frowned, sweat beading on his forehead. The interface was fighting him. The complexity of the construct, the fur, the muscle, the arcing energy, was pushing the array to its limit. He gritted his teeth, forcing the image to stabilize.

  "You're straining," Sam commented with a laugh, watching Mark's knuckles turn white. "Need more practice on the…"

  Sam cut himself off with a sharp, intake of breath. "By the Founder's Hammer!"

  The water coalesced. It slammed into a solid shape, hovering inches above the table.

  It was the Tiger.

  It was rendered in perfect, liquid fidelity. The massive shoulders, the paws the size of plates, the fur a shifting pattern of deep blue and jagged white lightning. It didn't look like the other projections, it looked like it had just phased through the wall.

  And then, the sound kicked in.

  A low, vibrating growl filled the room. It wasn't the sound of water gurgling. It was a bass-heavy, throat-rattling warning that resonated in the chest cavities of everyone at the table.

  Dawn’s hand went to her belt, a reflex action. Carl leaned back so far his chair tipped onto two legs. Valerie pressed a hand to her mouth.

  Only Tori held her ground. She didn't flinch. She leaned forward, her eyes narrowed, glaring at the floating, growling beast with a mixture of professional scrutiny and intense curiosity. She was inspecting the architecture of his psyche, checking the seams of the monster he had built to keep himself safe.

  "Tony," Mark exhaled, releasing the tension in his shoulders but holding the projection. "Hes my guardian, the one who guards the gates."

  The water-beast shifted. It didn't loop like a recording. It turned its massive head, the liquid "fur" rippling with a fluid independence, and scanned the room. Its gaze, crackling white sparks passed over Sam, then settled on the chocolate cake with a low, inquisitive rumble that vibrated the silverware.

  "That's not a static memory like the others," Tori said, her voice rising in pitch. She leaned over the table, ignoring the proximity to the construct's jaws. "It's reacting. It's looking at the cake. Mark... did you… did you just summon your Guardian?"

  Mark slumped back in his chair, wiping sweat from his brow with his sleeve. The connection was a heavy drain, a live data stream far more taxing than he had guessed.

  "I didn't bring him out physically," Mark wheezed, catching his breath. "I just... switched the memory." He gestured vaguely at his head, then the stone array. "Instead of pulling something fixed, I’m focusing on the active internal of my guardian. It felt like a logical step. A live feed."

  Tori threw her hands up, nearly knocking over her tea.

  "Academically, that is not how it works!" she snapped, looking between him and the tiger. "Guardians are psych-constructs! They exist on the threshold of the subconscious to filter trauma! You don't just... hook them up to a water fountain and invite them to a dinner party!"

  She paced a tight circle, her healer's mind clearly struggling to reconcile the theory with the growling puddle on the table.

  "You're externalizing an internal defense," she muttered, horrified. "It's like... it's like… I don’t even know what it’s like! Why do you have to make up your own rules!"

  "He seems happy enough," Mark noted. Tony chuffed, a sound of wet static, and batted a paw at a floating mote of dust.

  Dawn hadn't moved. She wasn't analyzing the magic or the ethics. She was staring at the tiger with a hunter's unblinking focus. She looked at the set of the shoulders, the width of the jaw, the way the muscles bunched and released even in liquid form.

  "It's not a monster," she said quietly, her voice filled with reverence. "It's amazing."

  She looked at Mark, a new respect in her eyes.

  "You built a perfect predator," she said. "Then you named it Tony?"

  "Tony is a great name!" Mark shouted, a defensive reflex born of a thousand cereal commercials. "It's iconic! It implies... enthusiasm." He realized he was explaining a mascot to a room full of people who hunted monsters for a living and snapped his mouth shut.

  Sam ignored the outburst. He picked up his table knife, pointing the tip directly at the snout of the hovering water-beast. His eyes were wide, calculating armor thickness and strike points.

  "Do these things actually exist?" Sam asked. "Because if there are cats that size running around... that would be terrifying. I'm going to need a far bigger hammer."

  Tony didn't like the knife. The liquid head lowered, the white-lightning eyes narrowing. A growl started deep in the construct's throat, vibrating the cutlery on the table. It was a warning. Put down the sharp thing.

  And that was enough.

  The projection didn't dissolve. It didn't splash.

  It stopped.

  The fluid motion of the water froze instantly. The deep blue pigment leached away, replaced by a sudden, opaque white. The growl was cut off in mid-rumble. In the span of a single heartbeat, the dynamic, living hologram transformed into a solid, heavy sculpture of ice.

  Gravity took over. The ice-tiger dropped the six inches to the table with a heavy, brittle crack, shattering into a thousand glistening shards that skittered across the wood and onto the floor.

  Mark blinked. He felt the connection in his mind snap, not with the agonizing tear of a forced exit, but with a clean, sudden silence and a weight off his stressed mind. The feed had been cut. He checked his internal wall, everything was intact. The library was secure. Tony sitting at the gates.

  "Ah," Dawn said. She dropped her face into her hands, her voice muffled by her palms. "I am so sorry."

  "What did you do?" Tori asked, looking at the melting pile of ice on the table.

  "She didn't do anything," Carl said, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He pointed toward the front door.

  Sitting just inside the threshold, visible only because he wanted to be, was Taz. The snow leopard was sitting perfectly still, his tail wrapped neatly around his paws. His cold blue eyes were fixed on the spot where the bigger, louder cat had been.

  Taz let out a short, sharp chuff. He looked smug.

  "Apparently," Carl laughed out, "he took offense to the competition. A bigger cat in his territory? Totally unacceptable."

  Mark looked at the pile of ice, then at the invisible-when-he-wants-to-be leopard. "He flash-froze my tiger," Mark said, resigning himself to the puddle now forming on his dining table. "That's... actually very impressive."

  The adrenaline of the tiger incident faded into a comfortable, low-energy hum. The conversation drifted away from magical theory and predators, settling into the mundane rhythms of local gossip and complaints about the weather. It was a normal evening, or as normal as it could be in a house carved from a mountain by a guild of angry stone-masons.

  Eventually, the clock on the wall dictated the end of the evening. Sam was the first to move, grumbling about early shifts and the garrison's lack of decent coffee. Carl followed, eyeing the waterlogged spot on the table where the ice tiger had shattered with professional disapproval before heading out to the snowy streets. Tori gave Mark a final, searching look, a healer checking her unpredictable patient one last time, before wrapping her cloak tight and stepping out into the cold.

  Valerie lingered. She stood by the door, her travel bag slung over her shoulder. The white robes of the infirmary were gone, replaced by a sturdy traveling cloak of deep grey. She looked ready for the road, but her hesitation was palpable.

  Mark leaned on his cane, facing her. This was the first significant departure since he’d arrived. A stakeholder leaving the project.

  "Good luck," Mark said. "With the trials. And with... the rest of it."

  Valerie nodded, her hand resting on the latch. "It won't be easy. But it's necessary."

  "Don't be a stranger," Mark said.

  Valerie frowned, the idiom bouncing off her. "A stranger? Mark, we've known each other for weeks. I know your spinal column better than I know my own family's history. How could I be a stranger?"

  Mark smiled, a tired expression. "It's a phrase from home. It means... don't let the distance become a silence. Send a message. Visit when you can. It means you're welcome here, always."

  Her expression softened, the confusion melting into a warm, genuine gratitude. "I will," she promised. "I won't be a stranger."

  She opened the door, the wind swirling a few snowflakes into the hallway, and then she was gone. The latch clicked shut, a final punctuation mark on the evening.

  Mark turned back to the living room. Dawn had already vanished upstairs, her silent retreat leaving the ground floor empty. The house felt suddenly vast. The silence wasn't the peaceful quiet of the morning, it was heavy, pressing in on the spaces where people had just been.

  He moved to the table. The puddle of water from the shattered ice-tiger was soaking into the wood. He grabbed a cloth and began to wipe it up.

  Goodbyes were an inefficiency he had never mastered. Back home, people moved jobs, changed departments, drifted away. It was natural. But here, the circle was so small. Losing one person, even temporarily, felt like a foundation cracking.

  He gathered the plates, stacking them with a clatter that sounded too loud in the empty room. He washed them, dried them, put them away.

  He stood in the center of the living room, leaning on his cane, looking at the empty chairs. The project continued. The work remained. But his team was down a specialist, and the silence was a loud reminder of just how few people in this world actually meant anything to him.

  He turned off the lights, leaving the room to the moonlight and the mountain.