The lab they'd informally claimed as their meeting space was in its usual state of functional entropy—chaos masquerading as progress. Holographic interfaces hung midair in idle flicker, abandoned partway through whatever idea or argument had last claimed the room. The edge of the bolted metal table was stained with dark, dried smudges—coffee, ink, maybe blood, maybe solvent. The uneven plating beneath their feet gave off the occasional groan, and scattered across the room were notepads with barely-legible scrawls, half-finished diagrams, ink-stained corners curling at the edges. Styluses—some active, some long-dead—rolled around with the weightless apathy of space debris.
The air carried that faint, ever-present scent of burnt plastic—not sharp enough to signal an emergency, just a quiet, persistent reminder that the station was not entirely alive.
Ricken took his usual place in the far corner, pulling the magnetized chair out with a soft drag and wedging himself into it. The metal back pressed too tight, the seat too narrow, but it was his now. Routine offered its own kind of sanctuary.
Above, the vent rattled again—offbeat, rhythmic, like a loose cog stuck in a circular argument. Ricken glanced up briefly before letting his focus drift back to the table.
'Serenity, punctuality, and openness… three pillars to repentance.'
The scripture echoed in his head, soft and familiar. He folded it around himself like a prayer shawl.
He scanned the room.
Siscly had folded in on herself, head down on the table, her breath a slow, even rise and fall. Asleep, most likely—grabbing what little rest she could between endless compound breakdowns and cryo-damage reports. Her notes fanned out around her like fallen feathers.
Miriam stood a few paces away, deep in hushed conversation with Iblis. Their tones were tight, clipped—not hostile, just private. Something outside the bounds of the project, which only made it more rare. When Ricken's gaze met theirs, Miriam offered him a small smile—soft, brief, but genuine. Iblis followed it with a nod: silent, mechanical, but not dismissive.
Something moved in Ricken's chest.
Warmth.
A flicker of belief, tentative but real—that he might belong here. Among them. That he wasn't just a slot filled on a spreadsheet to meet diversity optics or PR quotas. That his hands, his mind, meant something. That he could sit at this table and not feel like he was trespassing in someone else's life.
And then—
The door slid open with a low hiss and Douglas stepped in.
The light in the hallway behind him made a silhouette of his frame—tall, angular, hair slicked back. His coverall zipped up, framed by the pristine white lab-coat, collar loose, drone perched on his shoulder like a raven made of circuitry and threat. The red optic flared briefly, scanning the room with its usual surgical calm.
The temperature in Ricken's body spiked instantly. Warmth turned to fire. Belonging curdled into tension. Ricken sat a little straighter. Tried to control his breathing. He knew the heat would rise in his cheeks. He knew he couldn't stop it.
Unaware—or more likely, uncaring—Douglas crossed the room with his usual unhurried stride, all mechanical ease and implicit gravity. He reached for the chair beside Ricken without hesitation, fingers curling around the backrest as if he'd already claimed it.
Ricken's breath caught in his throat. His heart skipped. His mouth opened—but nothing made it out. He didn't even know what he meant to say.
He was spared from the decision.
"That seat's taken!"
Lian's voice cut through the room like a clean blade. She swept in behind Douglas, all warmth and purposeful cheer, Fiorence trailing after her with the languid grace of someone who never rushed unless it was to cause trouble.
"Big announcement from the Rebirth Lab and all," Lian continued, tone bright as sun through stained glass. "Need to be close to my partner," she added, smiling sweetly as she reached out and grasped Douglas's wrist—deliberate, firm, guiding it away from the chair like a mother correcting a wayward child. The contact lingered, her fingers pressing just a shade too long. Unyielding.
Douglas stared at her.
His jaw flexed. The muscles beneath his skin twitched with the start of a word that never formed. His lips parted slightly—almost. The drone on his shoulder chittered, mandibles twitching with discontent.
But he said nothing.
Slowly, he released the chair and drew his arm back.
"Thanks~!" Lian beamed, too sweet, too wide. She let go of his wrist only after a beat too long—long enough to make it known that she was choosing to.
Across the table, Fiorence watched the entire exchange with amusement. She draped herself against the table like it was her stage, one hand patting the chair beside her with slow, deliberate rhythm.
"You can come sit here, Dougie~," she purred.
Ricken's skin prickled. There was something in her tone that didn't match the smile on her face. A chill ran through Ricken's spine.
The drone clicked again—a quieter, lower clack—as if echoing Ricken's unease.
But Douglas, unreadable as ever, simply turned and walked over. No argument. No glance back. He slid into the chair beside Fiorence with the same quiet weight he always carried, limbs folding with practiced control.
Ricken exhaled slowly.
The meeting dragged forward with the illusion of smoothness. Controlled momentum. Lian took point, voice pitched with energy, hands dancing through the interface as she shifted through datasets and visualizations with practiced ease.
"So," she began, "the breakthrough: successful fabrication of a complete genomic replica—not just structural DNA, but full epigenetic continuity." The projection flared in the center of the room, rotating helix surrounded by ribbons of annotated metadata. "This means," she continued, gesturing as the strands realigned, "that the clones aren't just inheriting the genetic base of the donor. They're inheriting the identity. Facial recognition, bone structure, neural bias—traits, temperament, epigenetic fingerprinting. Instead of looking like their sister or daughter, she'll look like herself."
There was a brief, reverent silence.
"Of course," she added quickly, tone pragmatic, "this is still speculative until we move from model to growth. We'll need to grow and confirm physical fidelity. Can't discount anomalies post-nodule withdrawal." With that, she flicked the projection again—changing the display to highlight replicate stability, nodal interference decay curves, and probabilistic failure zones. The projection glowed in muted greens and golds, stable data laid out like scripture.
Ricken didn't need to watch the numbers. He already knew them. Helped build them. So instead, he watched the people.
Everyone watched the floating figures. Miriam leaned forward slightly. Siscly even lifted her head off the table. Fiorence's lazy smirk gave way to something near-serious. Iblis tapped her pad in silent calculation. Their faces, their posture, the slow dawning flickers of respect.
Ricken's heart stirred, and this time, it was clean. A different kind of flutter—not the dangerous, unholy heat that crept up from the base of his spine in the dark, but something quieter. Warmer. The kind that filled the chest like breath after prayer. For a moment, he allowed himself to belong.
Then his gaze passed over Douglas.
And froze.
Douglas wasn't watching the data.
He wasn't even glancing at the projection.
He was staring—directly at Ricken.
Expression unreadable. Still. Eyes dark and fixed, intense not with anger or dismissal—but something deeper. Something intentional.
Ricken fidgeted with his stylus, rolling it between his fingers, trying—desperately—not to look across the table again. His skin itched with awareness, his chest still tight from that stare. He flicked the stylus once too hard and it slipped from his grip, arcing off the edge of the table with a clatter.
"Ah—sorry," he mumbled, already grateful for the excuse. He ducked beneath the table to retrieve it, blinking against the dim light under the bolted platform. Wires, forgotten notepads, a smear of something unidentifiable.
He found the stylus quickly enough, his fingers brushing cold metal. But just before he stood, something caught at the edge of his vision. A twitch, a shape—a wrongness.
He turned his head slightly to confirm.
He should not have.
Directly across from him, under the table, were Douglas and Fiorence. Both seemingly still, composed, engaged with the presentation above. But beneath—her hand was on his thigh. Sliding. Fingers curled inward, stroking slowly. Intimately. Possessively. The fabric of his pants shifted beneath her touch as she traced deliberate lines along the inside of his leg. Higher. Higher.
The movement was slow. Possessive. Like a signal only they were privy to. Douglas's leg twitched sharply when her hand moved too high. A controlled reaction—barely.
Ricken hit his head on the underside of the table with a thud.
Hard.
The sound was loud enough to kill the room's momentum. Heads turned. Someone asked if he was alright.
"Y-yes," Ricken said quickly, breathless, trying to sit up straight with what little grace remained. "Just… miscalculated trajectory." A weak laugh followed. He smiled, thin and strained.
Inside, he was spiraling.
Heat and cold warred in his skin, as his mind tried to unsee what had already branded itself behind his eyes. Fiorence's hand. Douglas's body. The twitch. It wasn't outrage. It wasn't disgust. It was restraint.
When the presentation resumed and eyes returned to the data, Ricken dared a glance across the table.
Douglas was no longer looking at him. Instead, he was staring down at the table. More specifically, at the drone.
It sat twitching, mechanical limbs spasming erratically. Its red optic pulsed. It wanted to move. Wanted to speak. But Douglas had his hand over it—wrapped tight, fingers closed around its chassis. Holding it in place.
Silencing it.
The drone's mandibles clacked against the man's palm. Its sharp incisors bit into his skin, carving thin, precise lines of red across pale flesh. Douglas didn't flinch. He just held it tighter.
Contained it.
Across the table, Fiorence was watching Ricken now. Her hands were steepled under her chin like a mockery of prayer, her smile wide and slow and knowing.
She knew.
Ricken couldn't remember much of what came after. The presentation blurred into background static—phrases like "promising thresholds,""repeatable folds," and "excellent trajectory" drifted past him like comms from another room. Applause, or something like it, had followed.
Then the shift to the Neura Lab update. He caught Miriam's voice, calm but stretched thin, reaching for cohesion.
"Two possible ways to approach," she said, tone measured, almost cautious. "Siscly suggested a chemical solvent—break down the barriers enough to clearly define synaptic structure, then capture it with laser-based mapping. One pass, high resolution. Clean." She paused. The room leaned forward with her. "Iblis has another path," Miriam continued. "Micro-scale robotics. Possibly nano-tier. Something to physically map the brain, from the inside out. Recursive data from movement and contact. An internal path."
Douglas stirred.
His head turned slowly, gaze snapping to Miriam like a beam weapon locking target. Eyes sharpened, the sort of focus that didn't flicker or blink. Ricken saw the tension coil in his frame before he moved—his body leaning slightly forward, engaged.
Miriam hesitated before finishing.
"Problem is, both solutions are destructive. To the brain. Once we start—there's no fallback. No redo. One chance per donor. If it fails, we lose that candidate permanently."
That finally pierced the rest of the room.
A low ripple of disquiet murmured through the gathered minds, quiet voices echoing concern and theory in equal measure.
But not Ricken. He sat, silent and still. His mind was a slow-motion spiral, stuck in a memory only minutes old but already etched deep and raw.
Fiorence's hand.Douglas's thigh.The twitch.
And then the look—that unblinking, intentional gaze.
It looped behind his eyes like a curse, like scripture spoken backward.
He barely registered Douglas moving again—his blood-smeared hand reaching across the table, finger sketching invisibly on the surface, as if seeing something no one else could.
Douglas spoke—concise, low, mechanical—about the viability of the nano-swarm method. Navigation patterns. Pressure algorithms. Adaptive self-replication on a controlled grid.
The drone lay still beside him, no longer chittering. Curled in on itself. Dormant. Watching. Its red optic tracked Douglas' finger like a loyal animal waiting for a command.
Ricken stared.
And something moved in him. Ugly. Warm. Twisting. It pressed upward into his throat, just beneath his voice, just shy of confession.
He swallowed it down.
Growth acceleration.
Nodal time dilation.
A technology still more myth than method, teased out from the Archivist's encrypted research files—barely understood, wholly unstable, and yet the lynchpin to Project Golden's viability. A way to collapse subjective gestation time, to pull years into weeks, days, hours. Like tricking reality into forgetting how long life should take to grow.
Important.Sacred.Scientific.
He repeated it in his mind like scripture.
Douglas could let anyone touch him, he told himself. It was his body. His sin to wear. His choices to make. If Fiorence wanted to touch him, whisper in his ear, laugh that venomous laugh while dragging her nails up the inside of his thigh—that was between them. If Douglas wanted it, then that just meant Ricken was spared.
Spared from temptation.
From damnation.
From the burning ache under his skin every time Douglas so much as walked near him.
That should be a relief.
That was a relief.
That meant Ricken could stop thinking about him entirely.
He certainly wasn't thinking about how Douglas had stared at him like he was something important—something breakable.
He wasn't thinking about the twitch of that thigh muscle. The involuntary tension. The way it must feel to cause that. To earn it. To have that reaction burned into his touch, not hers.
He definitely wasn't wondering how it would feel to kneel beneath the table and drag his palm slowly up that same leg.
No. No. No.
He wasn't thinking about any of that.
He was here to do work. To serve science. To serve Livia.
"Ricky?"
Ricken snapped to attention when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and realized the meeting had ended and the room was being emptied. Lian's face hovered near him, brows creased with concern.
"Is everything alright?" she asked.
"Uh…yes, I-I just zoned out for a moment there," he answered and quickly collected his belongings. He glanced over across the table and found them empty. "I-I should get back to the Rebirth Labs, I'll get the vat ready, maybe even try a few preliminary sequence for that attempt." He stumbled slightly as he collected his smeared notepads and the half-twisted stylus.
"Ricky, it's twenty-three chron," Lian reminded him and grabbed him by the wrist, her hand warm yet firm. "Are you sure you're alright, you've been spacing out. Maybe you hit your head too hard, maybe you should get your head checked."
"N-no, I'm fine, really, Lian." Ricken smiled and tried to gently pull his wrist away but found it unmovable. "…really." He insisted.
"It's Dougie, isn't it?" she refused to let go. Her round eyes narrowing to near slits.
"What? No, no, not at all. We're very close!" Ricken answered a beat too fast.
She continued to stare. "Is he…insisting things? Tempting you against Livian's light? I can put in HR violation for you if you want."
"What? No!" Ricken exclaimed, horrified. He then paused, brows creasing in consideration. It would certainly mean he would get his peace back and he wouldn't need to sleep with the sheets wrapped so tightly around his entire body every night for fear of the man hearing his heart beat lightyears a minute. After all, wasn't what they were doing under the table sinful and indecent even in corporate policies?
But he shook his head. "No, thank you for your concern, Lian, but it's not that. I'm just…very excited to get this project going. And uhm—. Douglas is very…intense, but he hasn't done anything to me." Yet, he thought.
Lian's hand squeezed slightly before finally, reluctantly, letting go. "Alright, if you insist. But don't be afraid to talk to me if he so much as twitch his finger toward you, alright?"
Ricken nodded, his smile pasted and hollow. He muttered something—some weak excuse, lost immediately in the static of his heartbeat—and fled the room, intending to turn his steps toward the labs. He wasn't ready to return to the dorm. Not while there was still a chance Douglas might be there, waiting. Worse, the possibility that he wouldn't—gone instead, perhaps, somewhere quiet and dark with Fiorence.
But his intend to avoid that reality was unfounded.
Right outside the door, only steps away, stood Douglas. Leaning back casually against the corridor wall—eyes shadowed, chin tilting just slightly, sharp jaw set in unreadable lines. Fiorence hovered over him, pinning him there, one hand draped along the length of his arm. Whispering something too low to catch—her lips nearly brushing the line of his ear.
Her movements were slow, and deliberate, tracing the curve of muscle beneath Douglas's coveralls. She'd probably intended the gesture to be enticing. But the effect was marred by the drone on Douglas's shoulder clicking with irritation, mechanical limbs flexing and mandibles clacking warningly whenever her fingers drifted too close.
Douglas didn't move. He just watched—eyes cast straight ahead, over Fiorence's shoulder.
Directly at Ricken.
Ricken froze mid-step, the air scraping in his lungs. "Uh—" he stammered, caught between embarrassment and confusion. "H-hello." Before he could manage another syllable, Lian appeared cheerily at his side. She peered over Ricken's side, oblivious or willfully blind to the tension in the hallway.
"Fio!" she exclaimed warmly, eyes bright. "Awww, did you wait for me?"
Fiorence turned slowly, a languid pivot, her mouth curling in exaggerated sweetness. "Suuuure," she drawled, stretching the word like honeyed poison. "Let's go with that~." She flicked a glance back at Douglas, expression briefly souring as her gaze landed on the drone. "Dougie's little pet won't let him play ride with me," she said, lips twitching in exaggerated disappointment. Her eyes traveled from Lian's smiling face to Ricken's flushed one, amusement glittering beneath her performance. "Doesn't look like you had any luck either."
Lian laughed, scandalized, cheeks pinking slightly. "Fio! No, no, it's nothing like that! Ricky's a good boy. I was just making sure he was alright, after bumping his head."
Fiorence hummed skeptically, her grin widening. "Sure, sure." She linked her arm around Lian's, leaning her head against her shoulder, feigning melodrama. "Then let's go celebrate your brilliant breakthrough, and you can comfort me through my heartbreak~."
They moved away, Fiorence pulling Lian down the hall, laughter and whispered gossip fading with each step.
Ricken was left standing before Douglas.
"…Uhm…" Ricken began, the sound barely audible past the dryness in his throat. He cleared it with a weak cough, forcing a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "G-going to the room now?"
Douglas didn't answer. Not immediately.
He simply stared.
That same carved-from-stone expression, dark eyes unreadable beneath the low, industrial glow of the corridor. On his shoulder, the spider-drone gave a faint mechanical click and twisted its plated body in place, rotating like it was performing some slow, insectile ballet. Its red optic pulsed once, then again—watching. Waiting.
Instead of replying, Douglas asked, flatly: "You?"
Ricken blinked, caught off guard by the question, or maybe by the sudden shift in attention. "Uh—I thought I was going to go back to the Rebirth Labs—"
Click-clack. The drone's mandibles snapped sharply against its lens.
"—but I suppose it is late," Ricken amended quickly, voice catching, shoulders drawing tight. "So… yes. Yes, I'm heading in. Turning in. The, uh… night thing."
Douglas gave a slow nod. That tiny, controlled movement that said nothing and confirmed everything. Then, without another word, he pushed off the wall and started walking straight toward Ricken. He meant to accompany him.
Ricken stiffened at the realization. "...Right," he murmured, almost to himself, and turned on his heel to lead the way.
The corridor stretched before them, dim and narrow, punctuated by the quiet hum of life support systems and the occasional flicker of an aging overhead panel. Ricken kept his eyes straight ahead, rigid, doing everything in his power not to notice how close Douglas walked. Close enough that Ricken could feel the warmth of him at his side, the subtle shift of breath, the gentle sway of his coveralls brushing fabric. Every footstep echoed like a drumbeat in his ears.
He thought of scripture. He thought of silence. He thought of anything other than the quiet heat threading through the air between them.
It didn't help. So, instead, Ricken talked.
"So, uhm… good meeting," he stammered, voice small and thin, words chosen desperately, cautiously—careful not to stray near any dangerous territory. "The, uh—the nano-machines. For mapping the donor brains. Really… fascinating stuff."
He cleared his throat, eyes fixed dead ahead, feeling like each step was carrying him closer to some unseen, inevitable collision. "Do you… build them yourself?"
It was idle chatter, noise to fill silence, nothing more. Just sound to smother the quiet, rhythmic whisper of Douglas's breath beside him, to blot out the gentle rustle of fabric against skin—
He wasn't prepared for an answer. Certainly not for the sudden spark of enthusiasm.
"Yes," Douglas replied immediately—his voice low, precise, but undeniably animated. Words tumbled out in clipped fragments, clinical and terse, but threaded with an intensity Ricken had never heard before. "Adjusters—nano-interface machines. Translate macro-movement down to nanoscopic increments. Specific interface. Requires sterile containment, calibrated environment…"
On he went, sentence after fragmented sentence, weaving layers of incomprehensible techno-babble into a stream of controlled excitement. It flooded out from Douglas like a slow, rolling tide—contained yet expansive, methodical yet strangely impassioned.
Ricken blinked, feeling his eyes glaze slightly as the words blurred together into something both soothing and indecipherable. But beneath that measured voice was something else. Something unexpected—something alive.
Slowly, he turned his head, glancing sideways at Douglas.
He nearly stopped dead in his tracks.
Douglas's hand was raised, tracing invisible lines in the air again—unseen diagrams, equations and structural patterns only he could perceive. But it wasn't that gesture that arrested Ricken's attention.
It was Douglas's expression.
A small, barely-there smile curled at the corner of his lips. Almost shy in its subtlety. A faint dimple carved itself in the smooth skin of his left cheek—half-hidden, tentative, like it never saw the light of day.
He looked… Almost human.
This wasn't the impassive, sinful thing he had grown accustomed to—the predatory man with eyes like obsidian and gestures of calculated indifference.
Ricken's heart skipped, caught in a sharp jerk of something hot and cold all at once. A flush burned up his neck, raw and uninvited—an emotion he couldn't name, couldn't justify. Fear, maybe. Dread.
"Wh—what were you doing with Fiorence?" he blurted.
The question hit the air like a stone through glass.
Douglas stopped mid-sentence—mid-thought, even—and the space between them turned brittle. His hand, still halfway through its motion, dropped back to his side with mechanical finality. The drone made a clicking noise—sharp, disapproving, metallic—as if it, too, sensed the shift.
Douglas's face shuttered.
Expression gone. Smile erased. Dimple vanished like it had never existed. Whatever light had flickered in him was snuffed out in a blink.
He said nothing.
Just kept walking, each footfall slower, heavier, deliberate in the way silence becomes an answer.
Ricken turned his gaze forward again, throat tight. His own voice felt like poison now, echoing back at him in memory. He didn't know why he'd asked. Why he'd pulled that expression off Douglas's face like flicking debris off sterile lab bench.
"…She…" Douglas began, his voice low, hesitant—but then stopped. The drone hissed sharply, its red optic flicking toward Ricken like an accusation.
Then nothing.
Douglas said nothing more for the rest of the walk.
No more chatter about micro-increments or interface lag or sterile conditions. No more sketching lines in the air. No glances. Not even breath loud enough to read. He retreated behind the fortress of his silence, leaving only the sound of their boots echoing down the corridor.
Back in the room, the silence thickened like a fog. They moved about one another like machines—removing coats, checking databands, pulling down the thin military-issue sheets. Every motion habitual, stripped of warmth.
Ricken muttered under his breath, words familiar and sharp.
"Blessed are the sons who deny the call of the abyss." He said it again. "Blessed are the hearts unturned by temptation."
He climbed into bed and lay stiff beneath the blanket, eyes wide open in the dark. Across the room, Douglas sat on his cot, bare back to Ricken, illuminated by the drone's red light, spine lined with the raised androxidic tracts like a roadmap to damnation, still and silent.
Ricken closed his eyes.
Virtue, he reminded himself. Virtue is choosing silence when the flesh begs to speak.
***
Ricken sat ramrod straight, spine rigid as a steel rod, every vertebra locked with strain. He could feel the ache threading through his back, inch by inch, like the tension alone might splinter his bones if he dared to move.
The room didn't help. It was large—absurdly so by any logical standard—but size meant nothing when chaos had colonized every available inch. The place had the manic energy of an abandoned shrine where obsession had replaced devotion.
Diagrams were pinned in overlapping layers across the walls, so many that some had curled or fallen, only to be taped back up with whatever adhesive was at hand. Instruments—both familiar and violently arcane—littered every horizontal surface. Some looked broken. Others hummed quietly to themselves, blinking lights in rhythms that made Ricken's teeth itch. A section of the far wall had been sealed behind thick glass, like a lab within a lab, its contents obscured by condensation and overgrowth—shriveling, twisted plant life long since dead but still moving, ever so faintly, in response to unseen stimuli.
And then there was the jar.
It sat squat and innocent on the table between them. A mess hall condiment jar, by all appearances—cheap, mass-fabricated plastic, probably once used to store pickled kelp or nutrient jelly. Now filled with black, glistening sludge. Miasma.
It shimmered when the light struck it wrong. Or when there was no light at all.
Ricken's eyes refused to linger on it too long.
He swallowed, throat dry. "Livia, ward off the Mire and bend its evil to your might," he murmured under his breath, clutching his stylus in white-knuckled fingers like it might double as a holy talisman.
The Archivist moved with uncanny grace, turning away from a massive display wall—an improvised thought map held together by magnets, string, and madness. Scrawled notes, delicate sketches, and old corporate printouts formed a complex lattice of thought spiraling out from a central idea: time dilation via voidlane mimicry.
"A temporal rift," she intoned, hands raised like a conductor at the peak of her crescendo, "an exquisite tapestry woven from the delicate threads of the cosmos…"
Ricken tried to follow. He really did.
But she kept going—voice breathless, eyes glowing, every word a marriage of science and mysticism.
"…As the voidlane fixation rends the fabric of the time-space continuum, enabling passage from one starlit point to another, so too does the nodal fluctuation orchestrate a dance of time dilation, unfolding moments in place of spatial folds…"
Her arms fell dramatically to her sides as she turned to face him, expression bright, expectant, as though she'd just recited holy scripture or composed a psalm on the spot.
Ricken blinked. He tried to find words. Failed.
Then forced a smile—a stiff, diplomatic twitch of lips.
"Right," he said, voice high and thin. "That… makes perfect sense."
It didn't. Not in any universe bound by sanity.
But Ricken had already decided not long ago: when the Archivist started speaking in riddles and metaphor, survival was a matter of nodding, smiling, and not asking questions. The scent of scorched insulation and aged polymers hung in the Archivist's office like a cloying incense. It made Ricken's throat tight. Or maybe that was the nerves.
He stood still as the dense metaphors washed over him—twisting, poetic, oddly reverent. The Archivist resumed pacing with restless precision, gesturing toward wall-mounted schematics as if she were reading from divine revelation rather than engineering specs.
Clone growth was supposed to be his job. His job.
Lian had a strong understanding of the gene manipulation aspect, sure. Her work with epigenetic traits was invaluable. But she didn't have the vat tech certification. She didn't have the hours logged, the hands-on. He did. Which meant, by all institutional definitions and technicalities, he was leading this part of the project.
Ricken's palms were soaked.
Lead. Lead.
The word tasted wrong in his mouth. He could already hear the sermons.
A good man does not command. A good man supports. A good man follows. Anger is pride. Pride is sin. Leadership is sin for those not made to carry it.
That was the chant of his upbringing. Repeated to him every morning by mothers, aunts, older sisters. Each time he showed initiative, each time he reached toward something more. And he'd been so good at obeying.
He'd built a self from obedience. Built it carefully. Quietly. The obedient son, the diligent student, the passive researcher. Never pushing. Never loud. Never angry. Never—never in control.
And now?
Now, the Archivist had looked at him and assigned this. Had said, without ceremony, that this portion of the work was his.
He told himself it didn't count. That this wasn't ambition. That Lian had agreed. That it was just… structure. Delegation. That he hadn't reached out for it.
Ricken took a slow breath, feeling the starch in his collar tighten against his throat. He adjusted the databand on his wrist, fidgeting to try and mask the tremor in his fingers. "Will… will the shift plate hold correct sync between the entirety of the vat?" he finally managed to ask, voice barely above the soft mechanical whirr of nearby instruments.
"I noticed potential phase discrepancies between the upper and lower growth planes. If the synchronization fails, we could end up with asymmetrical temporal acceleration…" He trailed off. He knew what that meant. Everyone in this line of work did. Tissue grown at uneven speeds. Limbs misaligned. Neural cavities developing before skeletal structures. Skin forming over a torso that hadn't yet grown.
Catastrophic failure. Biological madness.
He had written the message—sent it via proper channels. But the Archivist didn't respond to messages. Especially not ones from someone like him. She was a monument, not a colleague.
So he had come here. In person. And now he was trapped, held hostage by her swirling, lyrical exegesis of nodal harmonics.
No answer. Not yet.
Just more metaphor. More brilliance. More chaos masquerading as genius.
Ricken stood frozen in place, the air around him thick with unspoken expectations. He tried to keep his breathing even. Tried not to feel the pressure of every eye that wasn't in the room, watching through memory and doctrine and fear.
He was a good man.
And a good man does not break.
A sharp ping cut through the air.
The Archivist's hand didn't pause in its gesturing, just twitched slightly as her databand lit up with a soft flicker. Her brow pulled tight with irritation. Without so much as a word to Ricken, she flicked the alert into the open air—projecting it straight to the ceiling unit in a seamless movement. The feed bloomed midair, flooding the dim room with blue light.
She hadn't stopped her monologue. Hadn't acknowledged him. It was as if he wasn't even there.
The hovering image snapped into focus: a uniformed security officer, jaw tight, lips thinner than wire. Her gaze flicked to Ricken—lingered a second too long with veiled distaste—then shifted back to the Archivist.
"We've got a situation," the woman said flatly. "Possible miasmic breach in Neura Labs. We're following protocol but may require direct intervention."
The Archivist exhaled sharply, a sneer twisting her mouth. "By the Living Mother, must I solve everything on this station? Any casualties?" she questioned, already moving to shut off the feed.
"None confirmed. Two core researchers and four auxiliary staff are unaccounted for. No visual confirmation."
The Archivist hissed low, her disgust bleeding into every syllable. "Keep personnel clear. I don't need more fools snorting madness fumes."
With a flick, the feed vanished.
She spun on her heel and swept toward the exit, coat flaring, hair pinned but just loose enough to flutter behind her like trailing flame.
Ricken shot up from his chair, startled. His heart skittered beneath his ribs. The conversation—if one could call it that—was clearly over. But something was gnawing at his gut now. Neura Labs. Two researchers. That meant Miriam. And Fiorence. Before he could take a step after her, or away, unsure whether to follow or flee, the Archivist turned mid-stride and snapped a command over her shoulder:
"You. Go get Chen. Send him to Neura."
And then she was gone. Just like that. Her boots echoing like gunshots down the corridor.
Ricken opened his mouth, breath half-formed to protest. Why couldn't she just ping Douglas herself? That's what databands were for.
But then he looked down the far hall. Toward the direction of Neura Labs.
The lights were… wrong. Too dim. The shadows ran too far, crawled too slowly. The air felt thicker.
He shut his mouth.
And ran the other way. Toward the Engineering Section.
Fumbling with his databand, he jabbed out a message while moving, the rhythm of his steps stumbling into each line.
--------------------------------
kently:
14:34 — Douglas, there's a problem. Archivist said you should come?
14:24 — Or I think that was the implication. She said I should get you?
14:22 — I'm not sure I know what that means.
--------------------------------
The hall blurred past as he half-jogged, half-stumbled forward, eyes darting between the flickering overhead lights and the glowing text on his screen. His pulse matched the ping of each footfall.
No reply.
Ricken's brow furrowed.
--------------------------------
kently:
14:01 — Douglas? In Neura Lab.
14:01 — I think this is very serious. It's with miasma leak
14:20 — Please respond.
--------------------------------
Still nothing.
He'd made it into Engineering. The air here carried a different weight—thicker, denser. The tang of old oil clung to the recycled oxygen, undercut by the sharp dryness of dust. Machine scent. Sterile metal. Sweat. Faintly, unmistakably… Douglas.
Fabrication Bay was the last door down.
He hesitated at the threshold. Then, with trembling fingers, tapped out one last message:
--------------------------------
kently:
14:30 — I pray to Livia that you're in the bay.
23:19 — And that you're just busy with work. I'm coming over. Stay put, please.
--------------------------------
The door slid open without warning or fanfare.
Inside: low light. Stillness. No sound but the soft hum of standby power. Machinery stood like dormant sentries along the walls, shapes half-obscured in the gloom—racks, consoles, long-arm manipulators. Blue arc conduits glowed faintly across the tubing overhead, like veins under a skin.
At the back: reinforced glass, surgical arms suspended from the ceiling like sleeping limbs. A central counter-table dominated the room. Upon it, a wreck.
A drone.
No—the drone. Douglas' spider unit.
Its legs were torn free, optic lens shattered in. Not dismantled—destroyed. Smashed. A ruin of twisted parts and sparking wires. Violent.
Ricken's breath caught. He stepped closer.
There was a smell in the air now. Something faintly sweet. Synthetic. Cloying. It made his stomach twist.
And then—
A sound.
Soft. Wet. A breathy gasp. A muffled whimper. And beneath it, a voice—silken, purring, unmistakable:
"…There we go…"
He stepped around the edge of the table.
Douglas.
Seated, legs stretched, back half-leaned against the counter-table. Hands gripping the arms draped around him.
Fiorence.
Straddled over him, thighs tight at his hips. Her coat bunched around her waist, her head tucked into his neck. Their lips had just parted—only an inch of space between them. A strand of saliva still hung, glistening, suspended between their mouths.