“Yes.”
The containment column responds. It doesn’t flare or breach, but it shifts. The layered material within it ripples faintly, like tension moving beneath skin. I get the sense of enormous systems cycling—routing, throttling, compensating in ways that were never meant to be long-term solutions.
Rakkh’s presence at my side is a constant, grounding weight. I realize distantly that I’m leaning into him. I don’t think it’s enough for anyone to comment on, but enough that my shoulder rests against the hard plane of his chest. He lets me.
“Lia,” Tomas says softly. “Whatever you’re thinking… don’t do it alone.”
I almost laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because for the first time, that isn’t a choice I have to make.
“I’m not,” I say.
Rakkh’s hand settles at my lower back. Firm, steady, and unmistakably there, not in a claiming or a restraining, but a choosing. Travnyk watches the contact with open interest.
“Good,” Rakkh says flatly.
The column pulses once, brighter than before. I don’t think it’s a warning, more an invitation. I swallow.
“It wants me to help it authorize the change.”
Tomas groans. “Of course it does.”
“But it doesn’t know how to do that without causing a surge,” I continue. “And it doesn’t understand why that’s unacceptable.”
Rakkh’s thumb presses briefly into my spine, a silent reminder that I’m here. That I’m not about to vanish into this thing alone.
“Then we teach it,” he says.
I tilt my head back to look at him.
“You say that like it won’t fight us.”
His eyes meet mine, steady and unflinching.
“Everything fights when it believes it is right.”
In one simple sentence he sums up what must be the nature of all intelligent beings. The whole of human history explained in eight words.
The ship hums again, lower and slower, responding not to my thoughts this time, but to the configuration of us standing here together. I feel it, the way the pressure redistributes, easing slightly around my chest.
It’s learning. And so am I.
The column’s surface remains dark and motionless, but the faint pattern I noticed earlier, those subtle, interlocking lines, begin to brighten in slow sequence. Not all at once, but piece by piece.Like a system waking up sections of itself that haven’t been used in a very long time.
I feel it in my bones before I understand it. This isn’t about stopping the output. It’s about choosing where it goes.
My breath catches, and Rakkh feels it immediately. His hand firms at my lower back, not tightening, not pulling—just there. An anchor. A reminder that my body still exists outside my head.
“What is it?” he asks quietly.
“It’s… showing me options,” I whisper.
Tomas lets out a strained, weak laugh. “I don’t like how often you say that.”
Travnyk steps closer to the column, careful, analytical.
“Does it present them as alternatives, or inevitabilities?”
I swallow. “Both.”
