Retrieving the container from the crevice took six hours.

  Six hours of careful maneuvering, winch work, and prayer that the crane cable wouldn’t snap under load while I hauled a two-ton shipping container up a forty-degree slope with waves crashing twenty feet below.

  The Windwalker made finding it easy.

  Getting it out? That was all sweat and engineering.

  I anchored the wrecker on solid rock, ran the cable down, and hooked the container’s lift points. Tested the connection three times. Checked the angle. Calculated the load.

  “RIKU,” I said. “If this cable snaps, how fast do I die?”

  “The cable will not strike you directly. However, the container will fall approximately sixty feet into surf. Recovery would be impossible.”

  “So… very fast.”

  “Relatively.”

  “Great.”

  I engaged the winch.

  The cable went taut. The container shifted—scraped against rock, groaned, resisted.

  Then it moved.

  Inch by inch, the winch pulled. The container scraped up the slope, shedding barnacles and seaweed, dripping saltwater.

  My hands stayed on the controls. My eyes stayed on the cable. My breathing stayed steady even though my heart was trying to punch through my ribs.

  Twenty feet.

  Thirty.

  Forty.

  The container crested the ridge and I killed the winch, letting it settle on flat ground.

  I stood there for a long moment, hands shaking slightly, before I climbed down and cracked the seal.

  Inside: fabrication feedstock.

  Bars of aluminum. Steel plate. Composite resin. Polymer sheets.

  Raw materials.

  The kind of supplies that turned into tools, parts, structures.

  The kind of supplies that meant I could fix things when they broke instead of just watching them fail.

  I closed the container and leaned against it, breathing hard.

  “RIKU,” I said. “That’s forty-two containers recovered.”

  “Correct. Five remain unaccounted for.”

  “Are they even worth looking for?”

  A pause. Calculation.

  “Unknown. Beacon signals suggest three are submerged beyond diving range. One is transmitting intermittently—possible damage. One has gone silent entirely.”

  I looked out at the ocean.

  At the endless grey-blue that had already swallowed five containers worth of equipment.

  “We’ll look for the intermittent one,” I said. “But the others… if they’re gone, they’re gone.”

  “Agreed. Resource expenditure must be proportional to expected return.”

  I smiled faintly.

  She was learning.

  Not just processing. Learning.

  The difference mattered.

  By midday, I had the feedstock container back at the bowl.

  I parked it with the others—forty-two containers now, stacked in neat rows against the north wall, organized by contents, labeled with markers I’d scraped onto the metal with a chisel.

  POWER. TOOLS. FOOD. MEDICAL. FABRICATION. MATERIALS.

  A supply depot.

  A foundation.

  The start of something that looked less like survival and more like civilization.

  I stood in the center of the bowl and turned slowly, taking it in.

  The Anchorhold habitat sat anchored near the back wall—pressurized, climate-controlled, humming softly with life support.

  The Windwalker sat on a cleared pad, wings folded, ready.

  The wrecker and the hybrid were parked side by side, clean, maintained, fueled.

  And in the corner, still in their climate-controlled crates, the animals.

  I’d been avoiding them.

  Not out of cruelty. Out of… uncertainty.

  I was a construction worker from Denver. I’d never raised chickens. Never kept goats. The closest I’d come to livestock was a buddy’s ranch where I’d helped fix a fence once and spent most of the day trying not to get head-butted.

  But they were my responsibility now.

  And responsibilities didn’t wait.

  I walked over to the crates and checked the status panels.

  Green across the board.

  Temperature stable. Food dispensers functioning. Water clean.

  The chickens clucked softly when I approached—curious, not distressed.

  The goats stared at me with those unsettling horizontal pupils that made it look like they were judging my life choices.

  “All right,” I said quietly. “Let’s get you out of those boxes.”

  The chicken coop took two hours to assemble.

  Prefab panels. Snap connections. Roosting bars. Nesting boxes. A small enclosed run that attached to the side.

  I set it up near the Anchorhold where I could monitor it, positioned so the rock wall blocked the worst of the wind.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Then I opened the crate.

  Six chickens.

  Brown. Healthy. Loud.

  They exploded out of the crate like I’d just freed them from prison, flapping, squawking, immediately trying to eat things that were not food.

  One of them pecked my boot.

  “Hey!” I said. “I’m trying to help you.”

  The chicken did not care.

  I herded them—badly—into the coop. Closed the door. Checked the feeder and waterer.

  They settled almost immediately, scratching at the floor, inspecting their new accommodations with the critical eye of creatures who had opinions about interior design.

  “RIKU,” I said. “How do I tell if they’re happy?”

  “Chickens exhibit contentment through consistent feeding behavior, regular egg production, and absence of distress vocalizations.”

  “So… if they’re not screaming and they lay eggs, we’re good?”

  “Essentially.”

  “I can work with that.”

  The goats were harder.

  Not because they were aggressive. Because they were smart.

  I opened their crate and they came out calm, curious, immediately testing the boundaries of their pen. One of them—a brown and white doe I mentally named Problem—discovered that the latch on the gate was just a hook and loop.

  She studied it.

  Then she flipped it open with her nose.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  Problem walked out of the pen, looked at me, and started eating the tarp I’d been using to cover equipment.

  “RIKU,” I said. “The goats are smarter than me.”

  “I will not dispute that assessment.”

  I spent the next thirty minutes reinforcing the pen, adding a secondary latch, and bribing Problem back inside with a handful of grain.

  She took the grain.

  Then immediately tested the new latch.

  “I respect the hustle,” I muttered. “But you’re staying in the pen.”

  By the time I finished, the sun—or whatever passed for sun here—was dropping toward the horizon.

  The animals were fed. Sheltered. Safe.

  And I was exhausted.

  I sat on the ramp of the Anchorhold and ate a ration bar, watching the chickens peck at nothing and the goats systematically disassemble their feeder to see how it worked.

  “RIKU,” I said. “I think the goats are going to be a problem.”

  “Goats are universally problematic. This is documented.”

  I laughed.

  “Yeah. I believe it.”

  A pause.

  “Taylor,” RIKU said, her voice softer. “You did well today.”

  I looked at the tablet.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes. You retrieved a container under difficult conditions. You organized the depot. You established animal husbandry infrastructure. You are building.”

  “Slowly.”

  “Slowly is acceptable. Slowly is sustainable. Quickly is how pioneers die.”

  I smiled.

  “Thanks, RIKU.”

  “You are welcome.”

  That night, I pulled out the knowledge crystal.

  I’d been avoiding it too.

  The manual said knowledge crystals were compressed data storage—information encoded in crystalline matrices that could be absorbed directly into neural pathways through controlled contact.

  It also said the process felt like “drinking from a firehose while someone hits you with a hammer.”

  Great.

  But I needed it.

  I needed to know more about portal mechanics. About environmental systems. About long-term survival infrastructure.

  I needed to stop guessing.

  I placed the crystal against my temple and activated it.

  The world lurched.

  Not physically. Mentally.

  Information poured in—schematics, diagrams, procedural knowledge, safety protocols—all at once, layered, overwhelming, too much to process.

  My head throbbed.

  My vision blurred.

  I tasted copper.

  Then it stopped.

  I sat there, breathing hard, eyes watering, feeling like someone had just unpacked an entire technical library directly into my brain.

  “RIKU,” I said weakly. “That sucked.”

  “Yes. Knowledge crystals are not pleasant. But they are effective.”

  I stood slowly, testing my balance.

  The information was there.

  Not memorized. Not like I’d studied it.

  Just… there.

  Available. Accessible. Like I’d always known it.

  I looked at the fabricator sitting in its container.

  And suddenly I understood how to use it.

  Not just operate it. Use it.

  Feedstock ratios. Print parameters. Structural tolerances.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “Okay. That’s useful.”

  “Extremely,” RIKU agreed.

  I walked to the edge of the bowl and stared out at the ocean.

  Tomorrow, I’d start fabricating.

  Tomorrow, I’d build something permanent.

  Tomorrow, I’d stop surviving and start winning.

  But tonight?

  Tonight I had chickens, goats, and a headache.

  And somehow, that felt like progress.