I lift my hand. The panel doesn’t react. There is no glow or hum shift. It waits until my palm hovers just shy of contact. Then—recognition.
Not warmth or pressure—just a clean alignment, like tumblers sliding into place. The door withdraws soundlessly, splitting down the center and folding back into the walls with precise, restrained motion.
Beyond it is the control room. I step through, and they follow without hesitation.
It’s smaller than I expect. Not grand, but built for efficiency, not spectacle. Consoles curve inward in a shallow arc, each station clearly designed for hands, eyes, and bodies shaped like mine. Screens are dark but intact. Interfaces dormant, not decayed.
The moment I step inside, the ship reacts not by locking us in, but by sealing the corridor behind us with quiet finality. Rakkh’s muscles tighten. His wings draw in close, controlled.
“It is committing,” he says.
“Yes,” I whisper. “So am I.”
The nearest console flickers to life—not fully, just enough to cast pale light across the room. Data streams hover, layered and complex, but something in me understands their structure instinctively. It’s familiar in a way that makes my skin prickle.
Maddy’s architecture is Earth-based. Familiar in its logic—older, clunkier than what we salvaged and rebuilt in the Bunker, but close enough for my mind to follow.
I’m drawn to the central station. As I approach, the rest of the room comes online in sequence. Screens activate, systems align, power redistributes away from external discharge routes.
The hum shifts, and outside this room—beyond the hull, even—something changes.
Travnyk inhales sharply. “The output flow has decreased.”
Tomas blinks. “Like… a lot?”
“Yes,” Travnyk says. “She hasn’t given a command. But the system has reprioritized. Being in the core changes what it considers acceptable leakage.”
I swallow. “It knows where I am now.”
The central console brightens fully.
Navigation schematics bloom into view. Star charts layered over planetary models. Tajss rotates slowly at the center of the display, marked with warning indicators along its surface: contamination vectors, spread patterns.
Another overlay appears:
ORBITAL TRAJECTORY
The ship’s original position. Its intended holding pattern. The ghost of where it should have been all along. My knees weaken.
“It wants to go back into orbit,” I whisper.
Rakkh steps closer, close enough that I feel the heat of him at my back. One clawed hand settles lightly at my waist.
“It believes that resolves the harm,” he says.
“Yes,” I breathe. “And it’s right.”
Silence stretches, charged and fragile.
“But,” I add softly, “if we do that… there is no time to study. To learn all that it holds. Or figure out how to interface with it from up there to down here.”
“What do you mean, Lia?” Tomas asks. “This thing is literally killing the planet, which means us too.”
He’s right. I know he’s right—and still my mind snags on the archive. DNA. Seeds. Strain data. The difference between guessing and knowing.
Even epis—our rarest miracle—mapped cleanly instead of mythologized. But none of it matters if the desert dies.
“It cannot stay,” Travnyk says.
