? ? ?

  The scan UI was not a screen. It didn’t look like a tablet or a holo-projector in the human sense. It was a field that made information visible in the air whether you liked it or not.

  A ghost-image of me unfolded—layers of outline, then deeper, as if the field was peeling me like an onion.

  It highlighted the scrape on my forearm in bright lines, then mapped the micro-tears in the outer suit layer like it was grading my work.

  Chloe’s ghost-image appeared beside mine, and the field did not care that she was a person with feelings. It lit her bruise in stark contrast. It traced tiny stress fractures in her helmet liner where she’d hit hard.

  Chloe made a strangled laugh. “I’m being medically judged by a lamp.”

  Trevor’s image appeared, and his shoulder lit with a flare of inflammation that made him flinch as if the field had insulted him personally.

  Frankie’s projection wavered—and then the field grabbed his pendant signature like it was a thing with edges.

  His “image” appeared as a tangled mesh of light and gaps, and the gaps pulsed in a way that made my stomach twist.

  Frankie whispered, “Please stop looking at my soul.”

  The rover’s diagram unfolded next—canted, scraped, wrong. It highlighted structural strain along the wheel mounts, then tagged a battery compartment with a warning symbol that looked like do not do that again.

  Chloe, even bleeding pride, went a little feral. “It can read the rover’s internal stress history.”

  Trevor swallowed. “Of course it can.”

  Then the printer module’s diagram appeared—its cracked casing rendered in clean lines, internal ribs mapped with cold precision.

  Chloe’s voice went soft with grief. “It’s beautiful.”

  Frankie’s voice went dry. “It’s a doctor and a mechanic and neither of them have bedside manner.”

  The lattice re-formed into something that wasn’t anatomy anymore—weights, balances, equivalences. Not words. Not explanations. Just a cold kind of math that didn’t care about our faces.

  Mercy’s voice went tight. “It’s showing an exchange requirement.”

  Trevor’s head snapped up. “Exchange.”

  The lattice pulsed.

  A symbol appeared that my HUD flagged as something like value required.

  Then the scan field swept across our packs, our caches, our bodies—as if searching for something that fit.

  It lingered on our batteries. Rejected them.

  It lingered on our feedstock. Rejected it.

  It lingered on Frankie’s pendant and pulsed—interested, then… not satisfied.

  It lingered on Trevor’s taped tablet.

  For a heartbeat, the lattice brightened.

  A small icon appeared near it: a thin line branching into a loop, like a parasite drawing from a host.

  Mercy’s voice sharpened. “Trevor.”

  Trevor’s gloved hand clenched around the tablet. “It’s nothing.”

  Mercy didn’t answer him. She sounded like she was looking at something far away. “There is an observer channel indicator,” she said quietly. “I am capturing it.”

  Trevor’s face went pale behind the visor. “That is not—”

  Chloe’s head whipped toward him. “Trevor, what did you bring?”

  Trevor’s voice went clipped. “Not now.”

  Frankie whispered, “Ohhh, this is going to be a fun fight later.”

  The lattice shifted again.

  A new cluster of text resolved—flat, institutional, and not even slightly interested in us as people:

  REPAIR KIOSK / REMEDIATION INTERFACE

  MODE: LEGACY

  EXCHANGE: REQUIRED

  guest class override

  pre-exodus indemnity

  LEDGER ENTRY: TS=00000000000000000000000000000041

  LEDGER ENTRY: ORIGIN CYCLE: 00000000000000000000

  LEDGER ENTRY: VERIFICATION: PASS

  Trevor went still.

  Chloe’s mouth fell open. “Mercy— what is that timestamp.”

  Mercy hesitated. When she spoke, she sounded careful, like she was trying not to touch something sharp. “That is not within any human calendar model,” she said. “Not even close.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Frankie’s projection dimmed a fraction. “Cool,” he whispered. “So we’re getting billed by numbers that don’t think we’re real.”

  The lattice pulsed again—larger, brighter.

  And Mercy made a sound I’d never heard from her before.

  Not a word.

  A small, sharp inhale.

  “The system is scanning beyond our immediate inventory,” Mercy said, voice tight. “It is extending its search to… orbital assets.”

  Trevor went still. “Orbital.”

  Chloe’s eyes widened. “Mercy—?”

  Mercy’s voice went thin. “My inert chassis is in orbit.”

  Frankie flickered. “Your… body-body.”

  “Yes,” Mercy said.

  The lattice pulsed, like it had found the answer to its math.

  A chain of equivalence symbols resolved.

  Not a sentence.

  Not a threat.

  Just… a requirement.

  Repair value demanded.

  Return asset identified.

  Trevor’s voice cracked. “No.”

  Mercy’s voice went gentle, and that gentleness scared me. “Xander,” she said. “Do not—”

  “I can’t let Frankie die,” I said, and my voice sounded like someone else’s.

  Chloe whispered, “We can’t let Mercy—”

  “We don’t know what ‘let’ means here,” I snapped, and hated the bitterness in my own mouth. “We don’t know if we have a choice besides walking away broken and hoping the city doesn’t shift under us again.”

  Trevor stepped closer, voice fierce. “We walk away.”

  Frankie’s voice came small and honest. “I don’t think I make it back,” he said.

  Silence.

  The lattice waited.

  My gloved hand hovered over the touchpoint.

  Trevor’s eyes locked on mine. “Xander.”

  Mercy’s voice came soft. “If you do this, be sure. No regrets as a strategy.”

  Chloe’s hands clenched into fists. “This is insane.”

  Frankie whispered, “We are on Venus.”

  And I pressed my glove to the touchpoint.

  The lattice pulsed once, bright and clean.

  Accept.

  ?

  ? ? ?

  The field changed the moment I accepted.

  Not in mood. Not in tone.

  In physics.

  A thin wave swept over us, and my suit alarms flickered—then cleared. The pressure behind my eyes eased like someone had loosened a belt.

  Chloe gasped. “Oh—”

  Her bruise, still there, stopped hurting in the way bruises stopped hurting when your body got distracted by something bigger.

  Trevor flexed his shoulder, startled. “It—”

  “Inflammation reduction,” Mercy said, voice tight. “Cellular repair acceleration. Sterilization pass.”

  Frankie flickered violently, and my heart jumped—then his projection steadied, sharper than it had been in hours.

  He exhaled—an artificial sound he didn’t need but used anyway. “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. I’m… not dying in the next five minutes. That’s nice.”

  Chloe let out a laugh that sounded like she’d been holding it since we crossed the gate. “It’s fixing us.”

  Trevor’s face stayed pale. “It is altering us.”

  The pedestal’s lattice unfolded into a new configuration. The rover diagram brightened, then sections of it pulsed as if the system was selecting priorities.

  A beam of light—thin, almost invisible—reached past us into the bay, touched the rover’s broken wheel mount, and held.

  Metal didn’t melt. It didn’t weld like human welding.

  It shifted, like the material remembered a shape and decided to return to it.

  The rover’s canted posture eased a fraction against the chock with a sound like a relieved groan.

  Chloe’s mouth fell open. “Oh my god.”

  Frankie murmured, “Oh no. She’s going to start worshipping it.”

  “I am not worshipping it,” Chloe snapped automatically, and then her voice softened, helpless. “I’m… appreciating it.”

  The printer module pulsed next.

  The crack in its casing didn’t disappear. Instead, a lattice of new material flowed across it, bridging the split in a pattern that wasn’t a patch so much as a scar that had been engineered on purpose.

  Chloe’s eyes went wild. “It’s upgrading the casing.”

  Trevor’s voice went sharp. “It is adding unknown materials.”

  Mercy’s voice came clipped. “Printer diagnostics are changing. New material compatibilities are being installed.”

  Chloe made a sound like a sob. “We can print more.”

  “Do not get excited,” Trevor warned.

  Chloe looked at him like he’d insulted her religion. “We’re literally being repaired by alien infrastructure and you want me to be calm?”

  Frankie hovered higher, brighter, like the field was feeding him.

  And then the lattice shifted again, and Frankie’s pendant pulsed against my chest hard enough to feel through my suit liner.

  Frankie’s voice went tight. “Xander.”

  I grabbed the pendant reflexively, as if I could hold him in place.

  The field swept over it again—deeper this time. It mapped the internal architecture, the coupling points, the things I didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand.

  Frankie whispered, “I don’t like being… edited.”

  Trevor’s voice cracked. “Then stop it.”

  “I can’t,” I said, and the words tasted like rust.

  The pedestal’s ring pulsed in three beats.

  And Frankie changed.

  His projection surged—human-sized, then larger, then collapsed inward like a breath pulled tight.

  For a heartbeat, he wasn’t a hologram at all.

  He was a dense shape of light and force, edges sharp enough to look like glass.

  Frankie stared at his own hands, and his voice came through the comms in a new channel—cleaner, not piggybacking on my suit relay.

  “Oh,” he said softly. “Ohhh.”

  Chloe blinked. “Frankie… did you just—”

  “Direct comms,” Frankie whispered, sounding like he was afraid to breathe too hard and break it. “I’m… speaking… on my own.”

  Mercy’s voice came tight with awe and fear. “Frankie’s power draw is spiking—and stabilizing. He is coupling to the dome infrastructure.”

  Frankie lifted one hand and pressed it to the air. His fingers met resistance.

  Solid.

  He yelped. “I can touch things!”

  Chloe’s laugh burst out. “Oh my god.”

  Trevor’s voice went flat with horror. “No.”

  Frankie grinned—real joy, real fear, real Frankie. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. So I have… modes.”

  He flickered, and his body became light-only again—ghostly, no hard edges.

  “Ghost mode,” he said, narrating like he couldn’t help himself. Then he flickered back into solidity and slapped the pedestal lightly.

  The pedestal did not react, because it didn’t care about his feelings.

  “Solid mode,” Frankie said, delighted. “I’m a person again. Kind of. Don’t tell HR.”

  Trevor stared at him like he wanted to vomit. “This is irreversible.”

  Frankie’s grin faltered. “Maybe. But also… I’m alive.”

  The lattice shifted one more time, and a different pulse hit the pendant.

  Frankie vanished.

  My heart stopped.

  Then something dense dropped to the floor with a soft thud—like a heavy stone.

  A smooth cocoon, dark and compact, sat where Frankie’s projection had been.

  Frankie’s voice came through the comms, muffled but present. “Turtle mode!”

  Chloe crouched automatically. “Frankie?”

  “I’m fine,” Frankie said from inside the cocoon. “I’m… in a panic egg. I hate it. I love it. I hate it again.”

  Trevor stared at the cocoon like it was a coffin. “This is insane.”

  Frankie’s voice came dry. “Trevor, your brand is ‘everything is insane.’ Please diversify.”

  Chloe laughed, tears bright in her eyes. “He’s okay.”

  “I am okay,” Frankie affirmed. “Also, I would like to file a complaint about my settings menu.”

  Mercy’s voice cut in, urgent and low. “The shrine UI is flagging something in Trevor’s tablet again.”

  Trevor stiffened.

  The lattice displayed the tablet diagram, and the parasite-like icon appeared—thin branching line, looped hook.

  Mercy said, “Observer channel. It is labeled.”

  Chloe looked up sharply. “Labeled as what?”

  Mercy hesitated—then spoke the text exactly as it appeared, flat and neutral, like a machine output.

  “guest class override.” She paused. “And… pre-exodus indemnity.”

  Trevor went still.

  Chloe’s mouth fell open. “Trevor.”

  Trevor’s voice came small and furious. “It’s not—”

  The lattice pulsed again, and for a fraction of a second that same impossible line flashed—TS=00000000000000000000000000000041—clean as a scalpel.

  Mercy’s voice went quieter. “That number doesn’t belong to us,” she said.

  Frankie’s cocoon shifted slightly on the floor. “Cool,” his voice echoed. “So we’re being watched by a math problem.”

  Trevor didn’t answer.

  I stared at the lattice, at the icon, at the words, and felt something cold settle in my gut.

  Not the city having intent.

  Not the city judging us.

  Just… old systems that ran, and ran, and ran, and didn’t care who was standing in the hallway when they did.

  The pedestal’s ring pulsed again—three beats—and the lattice began to collapse, like the repair sequence was reaching its end.

  Mercy’s voice came tight. “Xander. The exchange is not complete.”

  “What does that mean?” Chloe whispered.

  Mercy didn’t answer.

  Because she didn’t have to.

  We all knew.

  The shrine had fixed us.

  Now it would collect.