“Oh, she just walked in,” Vera said into the comm unit behind her counter. “Yes, I’ll let her know. Mm-hmm. You’re welcome.”

  She tapped the unit off and looked up at Tess with an expression that was equal parts surprised and impressed. “That was fast.”

  Tess leaned on the counter. Kade hovered beside her, still grinning like an idiot from the meal they’d just had.

  “Fast?” Tess said.

  “Yuri Kellmar.” Vera’s eyebrow rose. “Said he’s so impressed he wants to request you next time his equipment breaks. Said he even gave you a bonus.”

  Tess shrugged. “It was just a loose skill crystal. I just had to pop it back in.”

  Vera blinked. Then she leaned forward, hands flat on the counter. “He’s using a dungeon skill crystal for his fridge? What is he, rich?” She paused. “Of course he is.”

  “Why doesn’t any tech here use them? I’ve never seen one in Sector 7.”

  Vera pulled the capacitor Tess had traded earlier, turning it over in her hands while she spoke. “Because they’re expensive as hell and rare in the city. Most people sold them off years ago when things got bad. Everything here that’s barely holding together, like this capacitor? Network tech. Runs on Aether, sure, but more as a power source—like we’re burning fuel that could be used for so much more.” She set the capacitor down with a metallic clink. “But that’s what the Network gave House Tertian when they cleared the dungeon, so that’s what we use. Fabricated parts.”

  Tess thought about the elegant architecture inside Yuri’s refrigerator—the way it seemed to breathe, to live.

  “Skill crystals are better?” she asked.

  “Better?” Vera laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Child, skill crystals are how everything used to work. Pre-Network. Back when the dungeons were actually running and producing loot. You’d get equipment that adapted, that learned and grew. Now we get static junk that breaks if you look at it wrong.” She gestured around her shop. “Half the stuff in here is garbage. The other pile is Network crap I sell because people can’t afford anything better.”

  Something in the way she said it suggested there was more to the story. But Vera didn’t elaborate, and Tess didn’t push.

  “This capacitor,” Vera said, changing the subject. “You fixed this before your Technician class?”

  Tess nodded.

  Vera studied her for a long moment, then slid the toolbox across the counter. “Well, you earned these. Your father’s going to be thrilled.”

  Tess opened the case again, looking at the plasteel tools nestled in their foam.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Don’t thank me. You did the work.” Vera pulled the repaired comm relay from under the counter and set it beside the tools. “Here’s this, too. I threw in an encryption repeater, should give you decent range across the lower sectors. Your dad said you needed it for something.”

  Tess picked up the relay. It was small, but for what she was going to use it for, it seemed far heavier.

  “I might have another job for you in a few days,” Vera said. “One of my other techs is struggling with a hauler system. Problem is, the hauler’s currently on the other side of the planet.”

  “Remote work?” Tess asked.

  “You’ve got a comm-relay now if you’re interested. Job’s tricky, though. Systems diagnosis over comms isn’t easy.” Vera’s expression shifted into something that might’ve been approval. “But if you can fix Yuri’s fridge in five minutes, maybe you can handle it.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You do that.” Vera gestured toward the door. “Now get out of my shop. You’re making the place look cluttered.”

  Tess smiled despite herself. “Thanks, Vera.”

  “You’re welcome, Tess.”

  Tess pulled the credit chit from her pocket as they walked back toward the freighter. One hundred credits. More than she’d made in the last two months combined.

  “I should give this to Dad,” she said.

  Kade glanced at the chit. “That’s from the Kellmar job?”

  “Yeah. Yuri gave me a bonus on top of the pay.”

  “Damn.” Kade whistled. “That’s not bad for five minutes of work.”

  Tess turned the chit over in her hand. The weight of it felt significant in a way that had nothing to do with the actual mass of the plasteel chip.

  The freighter’s lights were on when they arrived, every one of them: the emergency strips, the main corridors, even the cargo bay floods. The environmental systems hummed steadily, the sort of background noise that meant everything was working the way it should. The air smelled less like recycled metal and more like an actual living space.

  A small surge of pride warmed her chest. She’d done that. Her repairs in the dungeon had done that.

  “What do you even want a comms relay for, Tess?” Kade asked as they climbed the ramp. “I thought you said they’re cheap garbage.”

  A grin tugged at her lips. “Stick around, I’ll install it and you’ll see.”

  Kade gave her a confused look, but followed her inside.

  BEE: Tess. I am uncertain about involving others. Security concerns. Risk assessment: elevated. Do you trust this person?

  Tess murmured under her breath, barely audible. “I trust Kade as much as my dad. We’ve been friends since we were kids.”

  BEE: Understood. I defer to your judgment. But I am… nervous. I have not spoken to another person for twenty years.

  “You’ll be fine, Bee,” Tess whispered.

  They found Marcus in the workshop, bent over a disassembled power regulator on the workbench. He looked up when they entered, and his expression brightened.

  “Tess! Kade. How’d it go?”

  “Good,” Tess said, setting the toolbox and comm relay on the bench. She pulled the credit chit from her pocket and placed it beside them. “Vera gave me these. And this is from the job.”

  Marcus stared at the case. Then he picked up the chit, checking the amount. His eyebrows rose. “A hundred credits?”

  “Yuri Kellmar paid well.”

  Her father’s expression shifted. Something wary crept into his eyes. “Big Yuri, you mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  Marcus set the chit down slowly, like it might bite. “Tess. The Kellmars aren’t good people. I don’t care how charming Yuri seems, or how well he tips. That family’s been running protection rackets in the lower sectors since before you were born. They’re dangerous.”

  “I just fixed his refrigerator,” Tess said. “I’m not joining his crew.”

  “I know. But they notice talent, and they remember faces. If he requests you again…” Marcus pushed the chit back toward her. “You keep this. You earned it. Just watch yourself. If he calls for you again, you can say no. Vera will understand.”

  Tess picked up the chit. “I’ll be careful.”

  “Good.” Marcus’s expression softened slightly. He opened the toolbox slowly, as if he were afraid it might disappear. “These are…”

  “Yours,” Tess said. “Vera said you can have them back.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Her father didn’t speak for a moment. He just ran his fingers over the tools, touching each one like he was reacquainting himself with old friends.

  “I sold these eight years ago,” he said.

  “She kept them for you.”

  Marcus looked up at her, eyes bright. “You did good work today, Tess.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” She gestured to the comm relay. “We’re going to need your help with this, though. And Kade’s going to stick around.”

  Marcus raised an eyebrow. “Letting Kade in on the secret?”

  Kade looked between them. “What secret?”

  “You’ll see,” Tess said, setting the relay on the bench. She pulled out her scanner and deftly removed the screws holding the outer casing on.

  BEE: Tess, my resource allocation is currently 73% anxiety protocols.

  “Relax, Bee,” Tess muttered.

  Marcus leaned over the scanner, activating his own diagnostic tool. “Looks like a bunch of this is brand new. Where’d you get replacement parts?”

  “Repair subroutine,” Tess said. “Upgraded it, actually. Something about firmware.”

  Marcus’s eyes widened slightly. “The repair subroutine that…” he looked at Kade, clearly thinking twice about his words. “It repaired the scanner?”

  “Apparently. Not that it matters much with my [ANALYZE] skill.”

  “Still.” Marcus looked at the scanner, then at Tess. “Mind if I grab some of these parts? Brand new components are worth a lot. I could use them for my own scanner.”

  Tess nodded. “Go ahead. We’re gutting it anyway.”

  “Gutting it?” Kade asked. “Why?”

  “Because we’re turning it into a communicator,” Tess said.

  Over the next twenty minutes, they worked.

  Marcus pulled components from a storage bin: a small speaker, a microphone array, mounting brackets, and a handful of connectors. Tess used her multi-tool to disassemble the scanner, plucking out the diagnostic circuits and data logging modules while leaving the power system and interface intact.

  “This regulator’s burned out,” Marcus said, holding up a minor component from the scanner’s core. “Looks like an arc. What happened here?”

  Tess glanced at it. “Yeah, when I got my class something in it popped. Wasn’t sure what. Haven’t had a chance to look.”

  Marcus turned the component over, examining the scorch marks. “Makes sense, I guess. Especially if it was on and scanning when it happened. Classes are a ton of data. Lucky it didn’t fry the whole unit.” He set the damaged part aside. “We’ll bypass it for the communicator setup. Don’t need regulation for basic audio transmission.”

  Tess nodded and got to work.

  “Your [ANALYZE] skill,” Marcus said, returning to his soldering work. “Does it show you the internal structure? Like how skills are constructed?”

  “Yeah,” Tess said. “Why?”

  “Just curious.” He paused, adjusting his grip on the soldering iron. “I’ve got a skill called [DIAGNOSE]. It’s my advanced skill—took me until Level 10 to unlock it. It tells me what’s wrong with a specific component, but not where or any details. Like, it’ll say ‘thermal resistor failure,’ but I still need a scanner to find which resistor.”

  “That sounds… limited,” Tess said.

  Marcus laughed. “It is. But it’s also expensive. Costs me two AP every time I use it, and I’ve only got eleven total. Takes hours to regenerate.”

  Tess blinked. “Two AP? That’s a lot.”

  “Yep. My other two skills, [CIRCUIT STABILITY] and [POWER FLOW], are passive. They just run in the background, preventing overloads and letting me handle Aether backflow safely. Handy in a volatile environment like the dungeon. But [DIAGNOSE] is active. Useful, but I have to be selective about when I use it.”

  Tess filed that information away. Her [ANALYZE] didn’t seem to cost AP, or if it did, the cost was so low she hadn’t noticed. Maybe that was a quirk of her null class. Or maybe it was because [ANALYZE] was her first skill. She had no point of reference.

  “Two levels in one day,” Marcus said, changing the subject. He wasn’t looking at her, focused on the solder joint. “That’s not normal, Tess. That normally takes months.”

  “I know.”

  “If you keep leveling at this rate…” He set the soldering iron down. “What happens at Level 10? Most classes evolve. Get new skill trees, advanced abilities. Do you think yours will?”

  Tess hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t know. My class is messed up, so maybe it doesn’t follow normal rules.”

  “Or maybe it does, and we just don’t know what normal looks like for it.” Marcus handed her a connector. “Maybe the AI knows.”

  Tess didn’t respond. She fitted the connector into place, then used [ANALYZE] to check the wiring. The circuits were clean: power flowing correctly, interface protocols intact, audio pathways aligned.

  She didn’t need to use [ANALYZE] for this. She could’ve done it by feel. But it was reassuring to see the data, to know for certain that everything was correct.

  “Done,” she said.

  Marcus stepped back, wiping his hands on a rag. “Let’s test it.” He paused, looking at the relay. “Wait. Standard encryption won’t work for this. Network protocols assume both endpoints are authenticated. And I doubt your friend is on the registry.”

  “Can we spoof it?” Tess asked.

  “Maybe.” Marcus picked up the encryption repeater Vera had included. “This piggybacks on Network carrier waves and I don’t think we want them involved so…” He trailed off, thinking.

  Tess activated [ANALYZE], focusing on the repeater. The basic skill architecture bloomed in her vision: data pathways, encryption layers, handshake protocols. Nothing fancy.

  She traced the carrier wave configuration, following the logic thread.

  “The Aether flow,” she said. “It’s just using Network infrastructure as a medium. But Aether itself is neutral.”

  Marcus caught on immediately. “It’s also everywhere. So we tune the repeater to broadcast on raw Aether. No Network protocols. Just direct transmission.”

  “Can we do that? Wouldn’t anyone be able to listen in?”

  “If we keep the power draw low enough, it’ll look like background noise. Random fluctuation.” Marcus pulled out his toolkit, selecting a calibration probe. “The repeater’s firmware is solid-state, but the carrier frequency isn’t. We just need to shift it below Network threshold.”

  They worked in tandem. Marcus accessed the repeater’s interface while Tess traced the power regulation circuits. She found the frequency modulator, a small crystal array that controlled the carrier wave output. It wasn’t a skill-crystal but an actual piece of aether-sensitive quartz that most broadcasting equipment contained.

  “Here,” she said, pointing. “If we decrease the resonance buffer, the carrier frequency drops. Network systems won’t even scan that low.”

  “It’ll cut our range,” Marcus warned.

  “Dungeon’s not that far away. We don’t need city-wide coverage.”

  Marcus nodded and adjusted the buffer with steady precision, his [CIRCUIT STABILITY] skill preventing feedback as he manipulated the live system. Tess watched the flow shift through [ANALYZE], seeing the carrier wave frequency drop from Network standard into the lower Aether spectrum.

  “There,” Marcus said. “Try it now.”

  Tess picked up the modified scanner, now a communicator, and activated it. The device hummed to life with a slightly different pitch than before. She set it on the bench, then keyed the comm relay with a custom signature: RIVERA_01.

  She relayed the signature to Bee through her interface and turned the volume on the communicator up as high as it would go.

  For several seconds, nothing happened.

  Then her interface lit up like a circuit completing.

  BEE: Connection established. Carrier wave detected, signature decryption confirmed. The Aether-direct protocol is accepted. This is… elegant. Who designed this?

  Tess smiled. “Team effort. Can you hear me through this?”

  A pause. Then…“Yes.”

  The voice came from the communicator’s speaker. Distinctly female. Clear. Warm. Almost sultry.

  Tess froze.

  Kade’s eyes went wide. “Who’s that?”

  “You’re a girl?” Tess blurted.

  “I am?”

  The response was immediate, tinged with confusion. Though the voice wasn’t any less silky.

  Marcus leaned closer to the communicator. “You didn’t know?”

  “I… No? During dungeon operation, audio communication was done via scripts. I did not know what I sounded like. Is this… acceptable?”

  “It’s fine,” Tess said quickly. “More than fine. Bee, this is Kade. Kade, meet Bee. The dungeon AI under Tertius-Prime.”

  “Bee,” Kade repeated, still staring at the communicator, his face realizing what Tess had said. “Wait… WHAT?”

  “Yes,” Bee said. “I am CORE-B. More accurately: Central Operations and Resource Engine, Build Iteration B. Which now that I can speak verbally I understand why Tess calls me Bee. You are Kade Voss. Operator. Age twenty. Friend of Tess Rivera since early childhood. You pilot a salvage hauler with failing hydraulics and insufficient thrust capacity.”

  Kade blinked. “How do you…”

  “Tess and I have spoken quite a bit since we met, and I log everything she says since our situation is…” She paused. “Significant.”

  Marcus smiled, just slightly. “It’s good to finally meet you, Bee. Officially.”

  “Thank you, Marcus Rivera. Engineer. Retired delver. Father of Tess. You have been very kind in your communications through Tess. I am grateful for your trust.”

  Kade was still staring at the communicator, his expression shifting rapidly from confusion to realization.

  “Wait,” he said, then pointed at Tess. “The power increase. The lights coming on in Sector 6. That was you. You and Bee.”

  “Correct,” Bee said.

  “I knew it.” Kade turned to Tess, grinning. “I knew you’d done something. I always knew you’d do something awesome. Don’t I say it, Mr. Rivera? Didn’t I always say Tess was going to do something amazing?”

  Marcus chuckled. “Incessantly.”

  Kade’s grin faded slightly as something else seemed to click into place. “But wait. If you’re the dungeon AI… aren’t you supposed to be dead? Or offline, or whatever? The Network said the dungeon was cleared. Why isn’t the dungeon running if you’re still online?”

  The communicator went quiet for a long moment.

  BEE’s voice, when it came, was quieter. “I am not dead. I am sealed. The dungeon is not cleared. It is locked. Floors 26 and below remain inaccessible, containing active Aether wells and functional infrastructure. The Network declared the dungeon cleared twenty years ago and restricted access. I have been isolated since then, unable to communicate or perform my primary functions. Tess is the first person to reach me in two decades.”

  Kade’s gaze moved from Tess to Marcus to the communicator.

  “So the Network lied,” he said.

  “It would seem that way,” Bee said simply.

  “And Tess is helping you.”

  “Yes.”

  Kade sat down on one of the workshop stools, processing. His expression cycled through several emotions—shock, confusion, concern—before settling on something that looked like determination.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “Okay. What do we do?”

  She’d known Kade would react this way, but seeing it still mattered.

  “We keep fixing things,” Tess said. “One repair at a time, under the radar. We restore what’s broken without drawing attention.”

  “And if the Network notices?” Kade asked.

  “Then we deal with it,” Marcus said. “But for now, we’re just a repair shop doing jobs. Nothing suspicious. Nothing that can’t be explained.”

  BEE’s voice came through the speaker again, steadier now. “I will do everything in my capacity to protect Tess. And now, with this communication relay, I can monitor her environment. Provide warnings. Assist with repairs remotely. I am no longer deaf to her surroundings.”

  “Good,” Kade said. “No heroics, just repairs.”

  Tess smiled. “Deal.”

  She looked at the communicator on the bench, at the tools her father had gotten back, at Kade sitting on the stool with the same determined expression she’d seen a hundred times before.

  Bee could finally be heard. The city was coming back to life. And for the first time in a long while, Tess didn’t feel like she was doing this alone.

  It was a start.

  “Alright, Bee,” Tess said. “Welcome to the team.”

  “Thank you,” Bee said softly. “It was good to be heard.”

  Without warning, Tess’s interface lit up with a message.

  BEE: ALERT: ANXIETY LEVELS NORMALIZING. Ahem, apologies.