The lights in Aya's sim archive didn't hum—they pulsed.
Not rhythmically. Not cleanly. They pulsed like something half-alive, trying to fake a heartbeat.
White-blue. Faint. Almost too faint to see if you weren't already looking for systems that shouldn't be active. Aya wasn't just looking for them. She'd built the space to catch them. This room, this lab, wasn't on any schematic. Not on the internal Academy grid. Not on external contractor manifests. It didn't exist, except in the shadow of her authorization strings, cobbled together from decades of dead projects.
She liked it that way.
But tonight, the shadows felt less like protection and more like company.
Aya stood alone at the center console. Dim light soaked the front of her uniform. The rest of her—her spine, her breathing, her thoughts—remained hidden in the dark.
