“You want me to fix it.” It wasn’t a question. Her gaze moved back to the system, already assessing. “What have they tried?”
Korin bristled slightly at being bypassed, but repeated the troubleshooting steps for her benefit. Cleo listened, nodding occasionally, her eyes never leaving the system.
Then she moved closer, her hands already reaching for the access panels.
“May I?” she asked, glancing back at me.
I nodded and gestured to the machine, sending a warning glance to the others. They would not interfere unless they wanted a strong challenge.
She worked with startling speed. Her hands were capable and confident as they moved over components. She pulled tools from the engineers’ kit without asking, testing connections, checking…whatever she was doing, all while muttering to herself in her own language.
Vax stood next to me, arms crossed, eyes tracking Cleo’s every movement with obvious suspicion.
“There,” Cleo said after several minutes. She’d removed an outer casing and was peering into the crystalline core of the system. “The problem isn’t mechanical. It’s a feedback loop in the power distribution network. See how this crystal is clouded?” She pointed to a component that looked identical to all the others, at least to my eyes. “It’s not channeling energy properly, which is causing the system to shut down as a safety precaution.”
“Can you fix it?” I asked.
“Maybe. If I can isolate the crystal and reroute the power flow through the backup channels.” She glanced at Korin. “You have backup channels, right? Most systems this sophisticated would have redundancy built in.”
“We…think so,” Korin admitted. “But we’ve never been able to access them.”
“Because you probably need to access the core programming first.” Cleo was already moving, pulling more components free with careful precision. “Which requires understanding the command language. Which I’m guessing is not D’tran.”
“It’s not any language we recognize,” Korin confirmed.
“Okay.” Cleo’s hands stilled for a moment, and she looked back at me. “This system is a relic, but it’s based on a process Ihaveseen before. There’s something I can try that might fix it, but if I’m wrong, it could potentially damage the system further.”
“Do it,” I said, before Vax could object.
She nodded and returned to her work. I moved closer, ostensibly to observe, but really because that pull toward herwas too strong to resist. My marks burned hotter as the distance between us decreased.
Cleo’s hands moved with absolute focus, adjusting components, testing connections, making minute changes to the crystal array. She wasn’t trying to sabotage anything. That much was obvious from her careful movements, her muttered calculations, the way she triple-checked everything before committing to each adjustment.
She was genuinely trying to fix our problem.
“There,” she said finally, and pressed something deep in the system’s core.
The purifier made a sound that built from a low vibration to the steady thrum we were all accustomed to hearing. Water began flowing through the pipes again, clear and pure, the filtration system engaging properly.
The engineers stared in shock. Vax’s eyes had gone from suspicious black to uncertain amber. And I felt something warm that had nothing to do with my marks settle in my chest.
“How did you do that?” Korin asked, moving closer to examine what Cleo had changed.
“So, the core programming uses a standard binary code that made it easy enough to understand the command structure. Then, it was just a matter of rerouting the power flow and resetting the safety protocols.” She wiped her hands on her tunic, leaving smudges of dust and crystalline residue. “You should check the other two systems. If they’re the same age, they might have similar issues developing.”
“An excellent suggestion,” came Zelana’s voice from the entryway. The seer had appeared without announcement, asshe tended to do, her eyes bright gold with satisfaction. “Another sign. The outsider has a gift for our ancient ways.”
Cleo rolled her eyes in a gesture that needed no translation. “I spent a decade in school for engineering. Nothing mystical about that, unless you count how I managed to pass linear algebra.”
“Perhaps.” Zelana smiled. “Or perhaps your educational choices are exactly what the prophecy predicted. Technology saved from the old world, knowledge returned with the sky people. Balance restored through the union of what was lost and what remained.”
“Or maybe I just fixed a water purifier,” Cleo said dryly. She looked at me, her expression somewhere between amused and exasperated. “Is she always like this?”
“Always,” I confirmed. Then, to Zelana, “Thank you for your interpretation. But right now, I’m more concerned with making sure our water supply remains stable.”
“Of course.” Zelana inclined her head, still smiling. “I’ll leave you to your practical concerns. But the signs are clear, Lord Rezor. Whether you choose to see them or not.”
She left, her words hanging in the air like smoke.
