I step closer to the basin, careful not to touch it. The surface remains smooth, dark, deceptively calm. A regulator, Travnyk had said. A throttle. That word gnaws at my thoughts.
“You stabilized this,” I say, keeping my voice low. “But what did it destabilize to do it?”
Lia doesn’t answer right away. Her eyes have gone distant again—not unfocused, but inward, like she’s listening to something I can’t hear.
“I didn’t tell it how,” she says finally. “I only told it why.”
That does not reassure me.
The vibration increases a fraction. Not enough for Tomas to notice, even though he’s seated against the wall, his breathing sounds easier—but the vibration is enough that my scalesprickle. I press a hand to the wall, and heat bleeds through the metal under my palm.
“This structure is not infinite,” I say. “Every correction costs.”
“I know,” she says, swallowing. “I’m… trying to figure it out.”
I look at her. The tension in her jaw. The way her fingers flex like she’s resisting the urge to do something reckless or brilliant or both. The ship hums faintly—not in response to me, but to her heartbeat. It is listening to her. Which makes her powerful, but it also makes her dangerous—to herself.
“Say it,” I growl softly.
“It can’t keep doing this,” she says, meeting my eyes.
“And?”
“And if I keep compensating without understanding the whole system, I’ll break something worse.”
Good. I nod in agreement. She is smart. She sees it.
Travnyk steps closer, placing one hand against the wall, then another against the floor. He exhales slowly.
“The strain is propagating,” he confirms. “The ship is maintaining function by increasing internal pressure elsewhere.”
Tomas frowns. “Elsewhere like… where?”
“I do not know. Everywhere perhaps,” Travnyk says, not looking at him.
Silence settles, thick and heavy.
Outside this hull, the desert is already paying the price. Inside, Tomas was the warning. Now the ship itself is beginning to feel it—an ancient machine forced into compromises it was never designed to make.
I step in front of Lia without thinking, blocking her view of the basin, of the walls, of the glowing seams that seem too eager to accommodate her.
“This is not a puzzle,” I say. “It is a ledger.”
“Yeah, I… think you’re right,” she says.
“Every adjustment you make will take from something else.”
Her voice is steady when she answers. “Then I have to decide where.”
The ship hums again—subtle, attentive. I really hate the way it listens to us. To her. I place one clawed hand against the wall, feeling the heat bleed through my palm, feeling the strain beneath it like a bone about to crack.
“Then understand this,” I say quietly, so only she can hear. “There will be a cost you do not see coming. And when it arrives, it will not ask your permission.”
Her breath catches, but she doesn’t look away. Instead, a look of grim determination comes over her face. My hearts speed up at the sight of it. Seeing her strength and the way she is stepping into this, not away.
The ship vibrates, settling again, not calm, not hostile—working. And as the pressure redistributes once more, deeper into places we cannot reach yet, I know with absolute certainty that whatever solution Lia finds will not be clean. And whatever theship demands in return, it will collect. Time does not announce itself. It accumulates.
I feel it in the way Tomas breathes—steady, but shallow at the edges. In the faint tremor that returns to his hands when he thinks no one is watching. In the way the air presses just a little harder against my chest than it did moments ago.
