? ? ?

  Then, halfway back down the corridor, the world sang at us.

  It wasn’t audible at first. It was… pattern.

  Frankie’s projection flickered, his edges shimmering like he’d been drawn with a trembling hand.

  “Uh,” Frankie said. “Guys.”

  Chloe looked up so fast I thought she’d sprain her neck. “What?”

  Frankie’s eyes went wide. “I’m getting a three-beat. It’s not sound. It’s not comms. It’s—”

  My suit sensors spiked in a way that made no human sense: a subtle oscillation across multiple bands, like the environment had decided to hum in triplets.

  Mercy’s voice hit our comms hard. “I see it. I see it. Hold position.”

  Chloe’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. “It’s here,” she breathed, like she’d been waiting her whole life for the universe to confirm it wasn’t empty.

  Trevor’s voice went thin. “What is it doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Mercy said, faster now. “But it is coherent. It is structured. It has directionality—”

  Frankie’s whole projection vibrated. “It’s doing the poem thing,” he said. “It’s doing the stupid poem thing again. The universe is singing at me. Hate that.”

  Mercy’s overlay appeared in my HUD: a rough vector arrow, not a coordinate—just a direction carved out of our brief data. It pointed deeper into the city, toward a denser band of infrastructure visible on our horizon map.

  “There,” Mercy said. “Origin region is deeper, toward a service-dense zone. This is not enough for a fix, but it is enough for pursuit.”

  Chloe made a strangled sound of joy.

  I felt something cold settle into my chest—the kind of focus that locked you onto a goal so hard you forgot to be afraid.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. We mark—”

  ? ? ?

  And then it snapped.

  Not a fade. Not a gentle drop-off.

  A hard quench.

  Frankie’s projection stuttered like someone had yanked his power cord. The drone feeds smeared for half a second—depth data collapsing into nonsense. My comms popped with a sharp pressure glitch that made my teeth click.

  Chloe flinched like she’d been slapped.

  “What—?” Trevor started.

  “It stopped propagating,” Mercy said, voice tight. “The repeating path collapsed. Local relays are no longer repeating the modulation. I have… seconds of data only.”

  Frankie blinked rapidly, as if trying to clear water from his eyes. “I feel… empty,” he said, and for once there was no joke in it.

  Chloe’s breathing went fast, loud in our helmets. “If it happened once, it can happen again.”

  Trevor’s voice cracked with anger. “Or it was a fluke and we just wasted our only—”

  “We didn’t waste anything,” I said, because if I let Trevor’s fear become the story, we’d never move. “We got direction. That’s not nothing.”

  Mercy’s overlay sharpened slightly as she processed. “I can constrain the origin band further,” she said. “Not to a point. To a region. There are multiple possible relay concentrations in that direction.”

  “Good,” I said.

  Trevor stared at the arrow in my HUD like it was an accusation. “We should consolidate. Fortify. We’re one day in and we’re already chasing—”

  “I’m not waiting,” Chloe said, voice fierce. “Not after that.”

  Frankie’s projection steadied, though his edges still looked faintly wrong. “Cool,” he said, forcing cheer. “So the alien megacity has firewalls. Love that for us.”

  I couldn’t help it—my laugh burst out, sharp with adrenaline. “Mark it,” I said. “We go toward the relay region. We don’t sit here and hope it comes back.”

  Trevor’s jaw clenched, but he nodded once, because underneath the fear he was still Trevor: a man who could argue forever and still move when the moment demanded it.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  We backed out of the corridor, out of the building, back onto the terrace where the light felt too wide and the city looked too big to ever forgive us.

  We sprinted the last stretch to camp, not because something chased us, but because the cut had lit a fuse in my bones.

  By the time we hit the shelter bubble, my heart was hammering like it wanted out.

  “Okay,” I said, breath loud in my helmet. “We’ve got a direction. We’ve got a camp. We’ve got—”

  “We’ve got no idea what we’re doing,” Frankie supplied.

  “Correct,” I said. “We’ve got no idea what we’re doing.”

  Chloe laughed, almost hysterical. “We’re the first,” she whispered. “We’re actually the first.”

  Trevor sat hard on a crate inside the shelter and rubbed his face through his gloves like he could scrub the feeling off. “From a human history standpoint,” he said, voice muffled, “this is… catastrophic.”

  “From a science standpoint,” Chloe said brightly, “this is the best day of my life.”

  Frankie floated in the middle of the bubble like a tiny, luminous disaster. “From a Frankie standpoint,” he said, “I would like to go home.”

  “There is no home,” Mercy said softly over comms.

  Nobody spoke for a second.

  Then Mercy, like she regretted opening her mouth but couldn’t stop herself, added, “Chloe’s heart rate remains elevated. Adrenaline markers are high. Also—”

  “Mercy,” Chloe said flatly.

  “—also your oxytocin is—”

  “Mercy.”

  “I will stop,” Mercy said, and sounded faintly offended, which was new and unsettling.

  I said, because my mouth had to keep moving or I’d start shaking: “We eat. We sleep. We plan. Tomorrow we start moving in that direction.”

  Chloe nodded, eyes wild.

  Trevor swallowed and nodded too, slower, like agreeing hurt.

  Frankie sighed. “Cool,” he said. “We’re doing this. Great. Fantastic. I hate it.”

  Outside the shelter, the light-rivers along the terrace shifted a fraction—not brightening like a promise, not dimming like a threat. Just changing, the way the world changed when it had its own rules and you weren’t part of them.

  I watched until my eyelids felt heavy.

  Then I forced myself to look away.

  Because if I kept staring, I might start believing the city had a face.

  And that was how you started making mistakes.

  ? ? ?

  I dreamed of triplets.

  Not words. Not images. Just rhythm—three pulses, a pause, three pulses, a pause—like someone knocking on a wall you couldn’t find.

  When I woke, my mouth tasted like recycled air and fear.

  The shelter bubble was dim, lit by a strip lamp we’d printed and stuck to the ribs with adhesive that smelled like regret. My pod unzipped with a soft hiss, and cold air washed over my faceplate.

  Outside the bubble, the city’s light had shifted again. Not day and night the way Earth taught you. More like the dome’s spectrum had been re-tuned while we slept, turning the distant terraces into pale ghosts.

  My calves ached. My shoulders ached. My brain ached from trying to hold too much scale at once.

  I crawled out, blinking, and immediately froze.

  The microfab had been busy.

  Two new printer shells squatted beside the original unit, glossy and incomplete, like eggs waiting for something to hatch out of them. They were smaller than the main printer but still big enough to make my stomach drop at the thought of hauling them.

  Mercy’s voice came through, a hint of pride in it. “Good morning, Xander.”

  I stared at the shells. “You… printed two more?”

  “I directed the microfab to replicate exterior casings overnight,” Mercy said. “Internal components will be assembled from noncritical systems and spare stock. This increases your redundancy.”

  Trevor was already up, sitting at the fold-out table with a mug of concentrate in one hand and his tablet in the other, like caffeine and information could form a shield.

  Chloe sat cross-legged on a crate, hair a mess, eyes puffy, studiously not looking at me like she’d been crying and was mad about it.

  Frankie hovered above the table, projection dimmer than usual, as if he’d turned down his brightness to save power or mood. “I would like it on record,” he said, “that I did not agree to reproducing printers like rabbits.”

  “You did agree,” Mercy said.

  Frankie’s eyes narrowed. “I did not. I merely panicked and said ‘sure, whatever, just don’t let us die.’”

  “That is agreement,” Mercy said cheerfully.

  Trevor took a slow sip of concentrate and sighed. “If we are going to move toward that vector,” he began, and immediately I could hear the shape of a speech forming.

  “Don’t,” Chloe said without looking up. “Don’t make it a thing.”

  Trevor’s jaw tightened. “We need a plan.”

  “We have a plan,” I said. “We go that way.”

  “That is a direction,” Trevor snapped. “Not a plan.”

  Mercy’s avatar appeared above the table—a small projection, not her full dramatic hologram, just a compact version of herself that looked like she was trying not to take up too much room in our fear.

  “I have been thinking,” she said.

  Frankie groaned. “Oh no.”

  A map bloomed in the air above the table.

  Not top-down, not clean. More like a knot diagram: terraces and walkways rendered as lines and loops, thickness indicating stability, gaps where we had no data. Our camp sat at the center like a bright scab.

  Mercy highlighted our recorded routes from yesterday in pale lines.

  “As you may recall,” Mercy said, “you did not die.”

  “Big fan of that outcome,” I said, because if I didn’t joke now, I’d punch the table later.

  “Same,” Frankie added weakly.

  Mercy shifted the map, showing faintly outlined corridors we’d glanced at and not entered, doors we’d approached and found sealed, ramps we’d avoided because they looked like they dropped into a lung.

  “There are consistent patterns in the mechanical response of this environment,” Mercy said. “Certain corridors exhibit reduced structural variance and lower biological signatures. They tend to coincide with doors that are already partially disengaged and with field gradients that do not spike when you approach.”

  Trevor leaned in despite himself. “You mean—”

  “I mean there are routes where the floor does not try to prank us,” Frankie said.

  Chloe finally looked up, eyes bright. “Like it’s got lanes.”

  Trevor’s expression hardened. “Don’t.”

  Mercy held up a hand. “I am not assigning intention,” she said quickly. “I am describing what we observed. When you approach certain intersections, some doors cycle open while others remain sealed. When you approach certain spans, local pressure shifts. When you approach certain corridors, your drones experience reduced depth resolution. This is repeatable.”

  Frankie squinted at the map. “So the good news is, we found the part of the world that doesn’t immediately drop us into a blender.”

  Trevor didn’t smile. “And the bad news?”

  Frankie pointed at a band of tight loops and jagged lines farther out. “That.”

  Mercy overlaid the arrow vector from yesterday’s ping. It pointed directly into the jagged mess.

  Chloe’s smile went sharp. “Of course it does.”

  Trevor set his concentrate down with careful slowness, like he was putting down a weapon. “We should improve camp before we go,” he said.

  “We are improving camp by making it temporary,” I replied. “We’re not going to sit here and pretend this terrace is a fortress.”

  “It’s not,” Chloe said softly.

  Frankie floated lower. “It’s a bandaid,” he said, surprising me with the lack of joke. “On a planet-sized bruise.”

  Mercy’s voice softened. “I recommend you print additional drone units,” she said. “And spare filter cartridges. And a secondary shelter module for relocation. You should also consider caching supplies.”

  “Thank you,” Trevor said automatically, grateful to have something concrete.

  We spent the next hour doing what humans did best: turning terror into logistics.

  We printed.

  Drone shells came out warm and smelling of polymer. We assembled them with numb fingers, snapped in sensor arrays, tested propellers. Chloe calibrated their sampling rigs like a woman building her own religion.

  We printed filter cartridges and packed them like gold.

  We printed a small additional shelter module—lighter ribs, less comfort, designed to be carried and deployed fast.

  We marked supply crates with dumb labels because dumb labels made the world feel less sharp. Chloe wrote “SCIENCE” on one. Frankie wrote “EMOTIONAL SUPPORT” on another. Trevor tried to correct the spelling of “EMOTIONAL” and Frankie refused out of spite.

  We argued about water.

  We argued about whether to carry extra battery mass or extra feedstock.

  We argued about whether to bring the big cutter tool.

  We argued about the latrine beacon placement like it mattered.

  And under it all, the arrow sat in my HUD like a splinter.

  After we’d packed enough to feel like moving wouldn’t instantly kill us, we did what the arrow demanded.

  We went back out.