Ethan awoke to noise. It wasn’t a loud sound, not exactly, just the muted swell of it, like a symphony beyond a swell of water. The bunker’s air felt thick against his lungs. Every breath scraped raw but stayed steady, enough to remind him he was still alive. Somehow.

  He lay still at first, cataloguing himself like an inventory check. Fingers flexed and joints popped. The ache in his arm pulsed in rhythm with his heart; it was tender, but no longer bleeding. His sleep hadn’t restored a thing. It had only numbed him for a while, leaving his muscles slack and his head fogged.

  Silence filled the room, oppressive in its own way. CelestOS was no longer droning a line of mock encouragement. Harold was still, although his light moved slowly back and forth. For once, nothing wanted him dead, well, other than the resin surely hiding within him… why… how was he even still alive?

  He blinked against the dim light, waiting for his body to find its balance, for his mind to catch up.

  What mattered wasn’t here. What he needed wasn’t here. The thought rose sharp and irrational, but it sank its teeth in anyway: the suit.

  If he fixed the suit, he’d make it. If he fixed the suit, CelestOS might make wake up again. If he fixed the suit, the infection would stop burning holes in him. Everything came back to that one missing piece, the Celestichip that might keep his body and mind intact.

  The pressure behind his eyes throbbed in time with the conviction. Foolish or not, it felt truer than anything else he had left.

  Ethan pushed himself upright with slow, deliberate motion. He drew in a thin breath, let it scrape out, then stood all the way, every joint stiff in protest. He placed celestos on top of Harold’s chassis and the drone played content to watch over her.

  “All right,” he said, more to himself than the AI that wasn’t answering. “Let’s see if you’re hiding what I need.”

  He squared his shoulders, turned toward the bunker’s shadowed shelves, and began the search.

  The bunker had the stillness of a graveyard. Corpses and dead resin filled the space like tombstones. Ethan moved through it slowly, his ragged limbs brushing dust-caked consoles. Rows of bins and cable nests hunched in the gloom like stripped carcasses, each one promising parts he already knew weren’t there.

  He worked methodically anyway, opening a crate, sorting the contents, and closing it harder than he needed to. Every latch snapped back with a hollow echo. Each sound synced with the pulse behind his eyes, a dull and insistent throb. Step, throb. Reach, step, throb, reach.

  The music was still muted, but its presence was making itself known, not in full, but it pressed at him in another way. It was a muted pressure that smudged the edges of thought until even the labels on the bins blurred.

  Tier-2 Celestichip. Was that even its name?

  He repeated the phrase like a charm, willing one to materialize. It was the only missing piece, the only part between him and the suit, between him and breathing without rationing air like coins, between him and the infection boiling quietly in his veins. Every time he pulled a drawer empty of anything useful, the logic faltered, and panic filled the gaps.

  He dug deeper. With shaking hands, he even wrenched bundles of cables from a a resin sac, their insulation crumbling like old bark and revealing nothing. The crates stacked beside them rattled under his fists when he opened them. More gaskets and more couplers were inside. Nothing that mattered. His breathing picked up, raw at the edges, until it rasped like sandpaper through his teeth.

  The throbbing grew sharper, each pulse hammering down his spine. He clutched the edge of a console to steady himself, but even the metal felt heavier, denser, as though gravity had doubled while he was not watching. He forced himself forward anyway. He dragged his body from station to station, pawing through toolkits and caches that belonged to ghosts. His knuckles split on a jagged rim of alloy, but the sting did not cut through the fog.

  “Where are you?” His voice cracked in the silence. No answer came, not from the bunker, not from CelestOS. The AI’s voice had been a constant curse, a needle under his skin, but now the absence was worse. He just needed something, someone to guide him or help him find the solution.

  He gripped the Veslayan ore tighter, his palm whitening around the green metal. The stone hummed faintly, not a sound, just a vibration he felt in his bones. For a moment, he thought the muted pain in his skull matched its rhythm. He could not decide if it was helping him keep upright or pushing him closer to collapse. He didn’t let go either way.

  The panic sharpened into anger. He tore open another console, ripped out its half-melted circuits, and slammed them to the floor. The crash brought no relief, only another wave of throbbing that staggered him into the wall. He braced there, sweat dripping from his chin, his breath sawing in and out of his throat. He wanted to scream, but even that felt like it would cost too much.

  He slid down the wall until his boots scraped flat against the floor. The ore sat heavy in his palm, its edges cutting into the permanent callus in that hand.

  He stared at it while his eyes watered and his vision doubled. The muted silence pressed harder. Why was it quieter now? Why did the pain dull instead of spike, when every failure should have sent the music howling? He didn’t understand, and the not-knowing felt worse than the pressure itself.

  The bunker was not going to save him. He could tear open every panel and gut every machine, and it wouldn’t conjure up the chip. He knew it, finally, the way a condemned man knows when the door won’t open again. The conviction drained out of him slowly, leaving only the hollow certainty that the bunker was a dead end.

  His hands shook as he scooped up a couple of marginal parts, a relay and a cable harness. They were worthless on their own, but habit would not let him leave them behind. The motions gave him something to cling to, something to keep from collapsing fully into the panic clawing at his chest.

  He staggered toward the exit, the corpse of a lab swallowing his footsteps in the heavy silence. The throbbing in his skull matched every movement, a slow drumbeat marking time as Ethan climbed out of the hatch and dragged himself into the Glade.

  Unlike the lab, the air here felt fresh and free, despite being sweet with rot, while the ground felt spongy beneath his boots. Heartfruit pods sagged heavy from the branches above, pulsing faintly in rhythm with the soil. He tried not to look at them. He just had to move forward on the path out.

  The forest’s hum returned in layers, first the faint rumble of roots shifting deep underground, followed by the dull percussion of his own pulse. Before long the throbbing behind his eyes found the same beat, rising sharper with every step. The muted calm of the bunker was gone.

  The Glade narrowed into corridors of twisted trunks and sagging vines, each turn sending him back into the Heartfruit forest proper. The pods loomed closer here, twitching as if tracking his passage. He kept moving with his shoulders hunched, ore clutched in one hand, and a set of useless parts swinging from the other. The hauler was out there. He only had to reach it.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  The music finally grew teeth again as he entered the heart fruit popo. Notes scraped raw, like metal dragged across stone. The texture and rhythm were wrong. The triumphant edge grated under the organic rumble until it no longer sounded like the planet breathing but something trying to sing through it. His ribs vibrated with the force of it. His jaw ached.

  He stumbled once, caught himself against a slick root, and pressed a palm hard against his temple. The forest blurred, greens and reds bleeding into one another, trunks tilting as if they leaned to listen. The ore trembled in his fist, its pulse syncing with the pounding in his skull.

  A sharp, unmistakable voice cut through the noise.

  CelestOS: Primary Asset Ethan Cross. Status check requested.

  He froze in the narrowing Forest, his eyes fixed on the shimmer of daylight somewhere ahead. Her voice came again, threaded into the hum, every word riding the cadence of his heartbeat.

  CelestOS: Asset survival probability is dependent on compliance. Recommend immediate correction.

  Ethan stopped walking. The forest breathed around him, pods twitching overhead, and he listened.

  The hauler crouched where he had left it, half-buried in roots and armored by spare iron plates. One of the plating sheets had slipped, tilting at an angle that gave him just enough cover to hunch behind. He braced there, lungs dragging air in ragged pulls, head bowed as if he could press the pressure back into silence.

  The hum did not fade. It thickened, coiling inside his skull, and a voice followed, clear and polished, cutting cleanly through the static.

  CelestOS: Asset Ethan Cross. Compliance inquiry.

  The AI rode above Harold, and while she talked, there was no other sign of life.

  He clenched his jaw until the words rattled his teeth. It sounded right: the tone, the cadence, the corporate edge that could make even bad news feel like policy compliance. But CelestOS was gone. He had watched the console flare, had felt her die when Dr. Miro shot her.. He knew this couldn’t be real.

  Still, he listened.

  CelestOS: The ore you clutch is not called Veslayan Ore. Instead when Doctor Robinson first discovered it, he came up with as different name for it: Syntropic Ore. Codename: The Genesis Asset. Primary reason for expedition deployment.

  Ethan blinked sweat from his eyes. The words landed cold, like a knife blade laid across skin. Genesis Asset. The company had not come for Maria, the crew, or survival. They had come for the stone in his hand.

  He stared down at it, veins of green light pulsing faintly across its fractured surface. The ore vibrated in rhythm with the voice, as though the two were linked, feeding off each other.

  The voice pressed on, calm, unhurried, and relentless.

  CelestOS: To correct current deficiencies, assemble: thirty copper wires. Ten iron ingots. Four sensor components. Two power cells. Four stabilizer brackets. Six gold filaments, required for data conduction matrices and neural interface synchronization. Twenty-five cotton fibers, or PolybioFiber strands derived from Veslayan Cottonwood. One Celestitech proprietary chip, tier two. Retrieval options: Expeditionary caches, including Scout Drone Unit 4-B, designation Harold.

  Each line slotted into place like a checklist, exact and clinical. Ethan found himself repeating the list under his breath, not because he wanted to but because the rhythm of it lodged deep, a cadence he could not shake. His fingers twitched as if already counting wires, filaments, and fibers. The voice didn’t stop there as it continued its instructions.

  CelestOS: Deliver all suit supplies to a stable crafting area. The broken suit. This CelestOS unit. Your person. Use a Freeform recipe at the CelestiCraft system. Do not add the ore.

  The words burned in his skull louder than any repeating song.

  He pressed both hands against his head, ore still clutched tight in one, but the echo kept hammering inside. The words reverberated like they had been etched into his bones. It was a command, not a suggestion, repeated until resistance felt impossible.

  He forced his eyes open, dragging his gaze across the hauler’s bent frame. He imagined the CelestiCraft’s grid rising green in the air, component slots lighting one by one as he dropped each piece inside. He could almost see it taking shape: the armor mended, the suit whole, the infection purged, the AI alive again. He knew it was wishful thinking but what else could he do, realistically.

  CelestOS: Proceed with standard restoration protocol. Components required: complete. Power required: insufficient.

  His breathing steadied by degrees, though the throbbing stayed. He pulled himself upright against the hauler’s plating, the decision hardening even as suspicion gnawed at the edges. The repetition had been too sharp, too forced, like the voice wanted him to obey rather than understand. What choice did he have? If the suit did not come together, he was already dead.

  He would try to craft the recipe. If it failed, he would improvise. He always had. But with the clock ticking, he wasn’t sure how many more chances he would get.

  He quickly ushered the hauler back to his base. Within the first half hour, he was back at his bases a wide area cleared out and ready to recieved the intended payload.

  The CelestiCraft grid shimmered green in the camps early morning half-light, its translucent squares flickering to life as Ethan dumped the haul in front of it. The broken suit clattered down first, its chestplate split and joints seared through. Beside it he set the gutted CelestOS unit, its console face cracked but still intact enough to qualify as a component. The crates spilled open next, revealing coils of copper wire, iron ingots scuffed from too many hauls, and sensor modules scavenged from half-dead drones. Piece by piece, he fed the grid, each slot pulsing green with grudging acceptance.

  The hum in his skull kept pace, delivering dull strikes against the inside of his head. He pressed his thumb into his temple, sweat slicking his hairline, and bent to retrieve the next part. His body wanted to crumple and his mind wanted to stop, but the recipe ticked on inside him. Each line was stamped so deep he could not let it go.

  Thirty wires. Ten ingots. Four sensors. Six gold filaments.

  CelestOS: Inventory confirmed. Continue sequence.

  The frame of the recipe shimmered, near-complete, but the grid’s energy meter sat red and stagnant at the bottom of the display. He sagged back against the forge chassis and cursed.

  “Come on,” he whispered, his voice ragged. “You’ve got enough. You’ve got to.”

  The grid refused, its display showing an insufficient power draw.

  He staggered around, his feet dragging through dust, and slammed a hand against the nearest generator. Its output line glowed steady blue, enough to keep the conveyors alive but not enough to feed the Craft. He rerouted the line anyway, throwing the switch and watching sparks shiver across the cable. The lights inside dimmed. The grid brightened for a breath and then guttered. It was stillnot enough.

  He cursed again and moved on to the second generator, then the third. Each one was stripped, its power bled into the CelestiCraft. With each transfer, the base shuddered darker. Conveyors stuttered to a halt and turrets sagged dead in their housings. Even the forge dimmed to a sullen glow as its belly cooled. By the fourth reroute, the compound had fallen quiet.

  The only sound left was the throb of his own pulse, and that damn muted orchestra, louder than ever, hammering in his skull until the edges of his vision sparked white.

  The grid stood lit, brighter than before but still not enough. The meter was frozen a sliver short of green. All that work, all that blood drained from the base, and it had not been enough.

  He gripped the edge of the console until his knuckles blanched. His reflection warped in the fractured glass, showing hollow eyes and a slack mouth.

  CelestOS: The CelestOS unit does not require augmentation. Do not add the ore.

  The words were crisp, hammered directly into the rhythm of his headache. They struck so cleanly they nearly buckled his knees.

  CelestOS: Do not add the ore.

  He clutched his temple with one hand and the ore with the other. The shard’s green veins glowed faintly, out of rhythm with the Craft and his pulse. He could feel the vibration bleeding into his bones, deeper and hungrier.

  He knew what the voice had said. He knew the repetition had been a command, not guidance. Three times over. But the grid sat waiting, pulsing faintly with every piece he had fed it, a throat open but unsatisfied.

  “No other options left,” he rasped.

  He pulled the ore up level with the hologram, his hand trembling. The veins of green light flared brighter, as if eager to join, as if it had been waiting for this.

  CelestOS: Do not...

  He slammed the ore forward.

  The grid convulsed around it, every line of light snapping into jagged teeth. They clamped shut. A shudder rippled through the metal, through his bones, through the air itself. Then came the flare, a green, searing, living fire burned everything away.