Tess woke to the sound of her father coughing.
Not the dry, occasional cough she’d gotten used to over the years. This was deeper. Wet. The kind that echoed through two closed doors even over the constant hum of the freighter’s environmental systems.
She lay on her narrow bed, listening. The coughing fit lasted maybe thirty seconds, then subsided into silence. But the silence felt worse somehow. Like Marcus was trying not to make noise, which meant he knew how bad it sounded.
Day three, she thought, staring at the ceiling. Three days since she’d gotten a class and the power had come back. Three days since her father had started trying to hide how sick he was.
She pushed herself upright, grabbed her clothes from the foot of the bed, and dressed quickly. The freighter’s improved power meant she didn’t have to worry about rationing hot water, but old habits died hard. She kept the shower to two minutes, dried off, and headed for the common area.
Marcus was at the small table, datapad in front of him, mug of tea cooling beside his elbow. He looked up when she entered, and for just a moment before he schooled his expression, Tess saw how exhausted he was.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning.” Tess moved to the tiny galley, pulling down a ration bar. “You were up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
She unwrapped the bar, took a bite, and studied his face. “The medical chamber.”
Marcus’s jaw tightened. “What about it?”
“I heard you try to use it. Three-thirty in the morning. Drew too much power, blew the air recycler.”
“I fixed it.”
“I know you fixed it.” Tess set the ration bar down. “That’s not the point.”
Marcus was quiet for a moment. Then he sighed, closing the datapad. “The chamber needs fifteen Arcwatts for a full diagnostic cycle. We’re only pulling twelve now, even with the improved Aether output. When I tried to boost the draw, it overloaded the recycler’s circuit.”
“So you fixed the recycler instead of getting treatment.”
“Clean air’s more important than my cough, Tess.”
She wanted to argue. Wanted to point out that his “cough” was getting worse, and he seemed adamant not to get help. The medical chamber was right there. They finally had enough power to make a difference if they could just… the proximity alarm chimed.
Both of them looked at the console. Someone approaching the freighter, signature code flagged as MARTELL_R.
Marcus stood. “That’s Renna. Probably here about her stove.”
“Her stove?”
“She commed me last night, said she blew it out. Wanted to know if I could take a look.” He moved toward the hatch. “I told her you’d handle it.”
Tess followed him. “Dad…”
“Tess.” He stopped, turned to face her. “I’m fine. The cough’s manageable. You’ve got jobs now, actual paying work. Focus on that.”
You’re not fine, she thought. But she could see the set of his jaw, the way he was avoiding her eyes, and she knew pushing would accomplish nothing.
“Alright,” she said.
Marcus nodded and opened the hatch.
The woman waiting at the base of the ladder was maybe mid-forties, built solid from years of physical work, wearing coveralls that had seen better decades. Her hair was pulled back in a practical bun, and her hands were stained with the chemical residue that came from processing salvage.
“Marcus,” she said. “Thanks for seeing me.”
“Renna.” Marcus gestured to Tess. “Tess’ll handle your stove. Just got her Technician class, already Level 3.”
Renna’s eyebrows rose. “Level 3? That was fast.”
“She’s good,” Marcus said simply.
Tess descended the ladder, the plasteel toolbox heavy in her hand. The communicator was clipped to her belt, not for talking to Bee, but so Bee could hear what was happening around her. “What happened to the stove?”
“Tried to boost the output,” Renna said, not sounding apologetic. “Power’s been better the last few days, figured I could increase the heat transfer rate. Worked great for about an hour, then the whole thing shut down. Won’t even turn on now.”
Marcus sighed. “Renna, I’ve told you a dozen times…”
“I know, I know. ‘Stop tinkering with things, Renna, you’re terrible at it.’” She shrugged. “Worth a shot though, right?”
“Not when it costs you credits to fix.” Marcus looked at Tess. “Take the tools. Should have everything you need. Renna’s place is in the recycling district, other side of Sector 7.”
Tess nodded. “I’ll take a look.” She paused, glancing back at the freighter. “Give me a minute. I need to grab something from inside.”
She climbed back up the ladder and headed straight for Marcus’s room.
The medical chamber sat against the far wall, taking up more space than it should in the cramped quarters. It was an older model, pre-Network from the look of it, with a curved plasteel shell and a control panel that had seen better years. The status lights were amber, indicating standby mode.
Tess approached it, already activating [ANALYZE].
The patterns that bloomed showed the problem immediately.
·········································
MEDICAL CHAMBER MC-7719
Designation: Medical Diagnostic and Treatment
Loot Seed: 0xC7719B4A
Status: Standby
Hardware: Operational
Power: 12.3 / 15.0 AW — Insufficient
Last Error: Insufficient Power
User Tech Skill: 3
·········································
Diagnostic Scan ………. Locked [Tech 5]
Cellular Regeneration …. Locked [Tech 7]
Toxin Filtration ……… Locked [Tech 6]
Aether Exposure Treatment Locked [Tech 8]
Neural Stabilization ….. Locked [Tech 6]
·········································
Everything was locked. Every single skill required TECH 5 or higher, way beyond her current TECH 3. But the real problem was right there at the bottom: 12.3 Arcwatts input. 15.0 required.
Her father hadn’t been exaggerating. They were almost three Arcwatts short.
She deactivated [ANALYZE] and stared at the chamber. It was right there. The thing that could help him, that could repair the damage in his lungs. It could buy him years, and they didn’t have enough power to even start a diagnostic cycle. Assuming the skills even worked.
“Tess?” Marcus called from outside. “Everything alright?”
“Yeah,” she called back. “Just grabbing a spare regulator.”
Her father had said it was from raw aether exposure before she was born and refused to elaborate. If the Aether Exposure Treatment skill was broken after all this time, she’d need at least five more levels to fix it.
Five more levels to reach TECH 8.
A message appeared in her vision.
BEE: Good morning, Tess. I am happy to be able to monitor your surroundings and offer assistance.
“Morning, Bee.”
Tess touched the communicator briefly in acknowledgment, then followed Renna away from the freighter.
BEE: Tess, I should clarify something. While I can hear conversations now, I intend to be selective about speaking. For obvious reasons, revealing myself to the wrong person would be… inadvisable. I will listen, but I will only communicate when it seems safe.
“Smart,” Tess murmured under her breath.
BEE: I thought so. Though I confess I am uncertain about my judgment of “safe.” I have been isolated for twenty years. My social calibration may be impaired.
She glanced back once and saw Marcus leaning against the ladder, one hand pressed to his chest. Then he straightened, saw her looking, and waved.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
She turned away before he could see her expression.
Kade was on his usual corner, exactly where Tess expected him to be.
He was bent over something small and mechanical, probably scavenged from the salvage yards, when Tess and Renna walked past. He looked up, grinned, and jogged over.
“Morning! Where are you headed?”
“Recycling district,” Tess said. “Stove repair.”
Kade’s grin faded slightly. “Recycling district? That place smells like…” He paused, clearly searching for a diplomatic description. “…like industrial waste had a baby with chemical runoff.”
“Don’t I know it!” Renna said.
“You want to come?” Tess asked.
Kade’s gaze flicked from Renna to the recycling district and back to Tess. “I’ll, uh… I’ll be here when you’re done. Good luck with the smell.”
“Thanks for the support,” Tess said dryly.
“Hey, I support you from a distance!” Kade called after them. “That’s still support!”
Renna laughed. “Your friend’s smart. The smell is terrible.”
She wasn’t wrong.
The recycling district occupied the eastern edge of Sector 7, wedged between the dock district and the sector’s main industrial corridor. It was where everything that couldn’t be repaired went to be broken down into component materials: metal, plastic, chemical compounds, organic waste. The air smelled like everything on the list and then some. Plus heat, machinery, and something vaguely acidic that made Tess’s eyes water. She deliberately avoided this area of the sector for a reason.
“You get used to it,” Renna said, noticing Tess’s expression.
“Do you?”
“No. But you tell yourself you do.”
BEE: I can hear the change in ambient noise. Industrial processing equipment. Chemical reactions. Have you reached the recycling district?
“Yeah,” Tess murmured.
Renna glanced at her. “What’s that?”
“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”
Renna’s place was a converted storage container, maybe ten meters long, with a small living space on one end and a processing area on the other. The stove sat in the middle, a compact unit designed for efficiency rather than aesthetics. It was Network tech, obvious from the blocky construction and right-angle design, but someone had been tinkering with it.
“Here’s the problem child,” Renna said, gesturing to the stove.
Tess set down the toolbox and approached. The stove’s control panel was dark, completely unresponsive. She pulled out her multi-tool and pried off the access panel.
BEE: Standard residential cooking unit from the sound of the access panel opening. Network manufacture, approximately eight years old based on hinge creak. The user attempted output modification without proper circuit protection?
Tess shook her head. “You could tell how old it is by the hinge? That’s… well actually kind of impressive.”
Tess activated [ANALYZE].
The skill engaged immediately, overlaying patterns across her vision. But something was different.
Unlike the intricate, nested structures she’d seen in dungeon tech, with their crystalline substrates and organic curves, this showed her something simpler: nodes. Basic connection points, logic gates, straightforward power regulation—functional and efficient, but flat.
No depth. No nested complexity. Just circuits doing exactly what they did and nothing more.
[POWER DISTRIBUTION—TECH 1]
[THERMAL CONTROL—TECH 1]
[SAFETY INTERLOCK—TECH 2]
Experimentally, Tess tried accessing the nodes since she had whatever TECH skill they required.
[POWER DISTRIBUTION—STATUS: OFFLINE]
LAST ERROR: (1) OVERLOAD
[THERMAL CONTROL—STATUS: OFFLINE]
LAST ERROR: (1) OVERLOAD
[SAFETY INTERLOCK—STATUS: ONLINE]
That was it. Two damaged nodes. Heat Regulation and Power Distribution. Both had been overloaded when Renna boosted the output, frying the regulators that kept everything from melting down. The safety interlock was still online, which meant Renna had bypassed it.
“Your heat regulator’s burnt out,” Tess said. “Same with the power distribution circuit. When you increased output, you overloaded both of them.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Yeah.” Tess opened the toolbox, pulling out a replacement regulator and a small circuit board. “Give me twenty minutes.”
The work was straightforward. Almost boring, compared to dungeon tech. She disconnected the damaged regulator, installed the new one, and then traced the power distribution circuit until she found the burnt section. A quick bypass using a salvaged board from her kit, some precise soldering, and the stove’s power flow was restored. Marcus’s plasteel tools were incredibly efficient. Tess wanted a set for herself but knew how expensive they were.
The whole time, [ANALYZE] showed her exactly what to do. But there was no discovery. No moment of understanding something deeper. Just broken components and standard replacements.
She tested the connections, double-checked her work, and powered the stove on.
It hummed to life immediately, the heating elements glowing steady orange.
“That’s it?” Renna asked. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Tess closed the access panel and stood. “Try not to modify it again without proper voltage regulation. You’ll just burn it out faster.”
“I’ll try.” Renna pulled out a datapad. “Marcus said thirty credits?”
“The parts are only worth ten.” Tess held up her hand before Renna could argue. “Didn’t take nearly as long as I thought. Ten’s fair.”
Renna studied her for a moment, then nodded and transferred the credits. “You’re like your father. Too honest for your own good.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It is one.” Renna pocketed the datapad. “Thanks, Tess.”
Tess packed up the tools and headed back toward the main corridor. The smell of the recycling district followed her for two blocks before finally fading.
BEE: Repair completed successfully. However, I note your biometric readings suggest… disappointment? Your heart rate remains elevated, but stress markers are low. Confusion?
“Not disappointed,” Tess said quietly, keeping her voice low enough that passing pedestrians wouldn’t notice. “Just thinking.”
BEE: About the stove repair?
“About how different it was from dungeon tech.”
BEE: Network manufacture follows standardized protocols. Components are interchangeable, predictable, and designed for mass production. Dungeon technology is adaptive, nested, built to evolve. I am curious whether your class distinguishes between the two.
Tess was about to respond when she pulled up her status screen:
CLASS: {NULL}
LEVEL: 3
TECH: 3
STR: 10
SPD: 10
PER: 10
AP: 3/3
LEVEL PROGRESS: 0%
Tess stopped walking. Stared at the message, then read it again.
“No,” she said aloud. “No, that’s not…”
A man walking past gave her an odd look. She forced herself to keep moving, turning down a side street.
BEE: Tess? What’s wrong? Your heart rate spiked.
“My status screen… Zero progress to level four. None.”
BEE: Zero? But you completed the repair successfully.
Silence for a moment. Or at least, no text appeared in her vision.
BEE: SEARCHING… ACCESSING CLASS MANIFEST. ACCESS DENIED. ACCESSING CLASS METADATA… SUCCESS. Oh. OH. You only gain progress with dungeon technology since that was the repair subroutine’s directive.
“What!?”
BEE: I should clarify the underlying mechanism. Classes are not simply abstract designations. They are Aether-based constructs that exist in a symbiotic relationship with dungeon cores. When a person receives a class, they are binding a fragment of dungeon essence to their biological systems. Experience progression requires interaction with compatible frameworks, also Aether-based. It seems Network technology, by design, does not have that framework. In fact, I hypothesize that most classes struggle to level outside of dungeons.
That tracked with what Tess knew about people in the city. Many entered the dungeon regularly for a chance at finding something that someone else missed, but also hoping for the rare dungeon respawn. “So classes are literally part of you? Part of the dungeon? And they need to… interact with it to level up?”
BEE: In a manner of speaking. All classes originate from dungeon cores. The tutorial system I managed facilitated these bonds. The class assignment matrix on Floor One is different, though. Thankfully, your {null} class was received in the tutorial which connected you to me. Though the underlying systems are the same. You must interact with dungeon-compatible technology to progress.
Tess thought about Yuri’s refrigerator, the layered skill crystal architecture, the way [ANALYZE] had shown her complex flow structures. “I can fix Network stuff all day. But I won’t gain any levels from it.”
BEE: And you need to get levels.
“Dad tried to use the medical chamber this morning. Blew the air recycler because we don’t have enough power.” She turned another corner, the familiar streets of her home district coming into view. “I need more Aether output. Which means more repairs in the dungeon. Which means going back.”
BEE: Senna warned you not to make unauthorized changes.
“I know.”
BEE: If you restore another junction, the Aether output will increase again. She will investigate more thoroughly.
“I know,” Tess said again.
BEE: I am sorry. I wish I could offer solutions rather than stating problems you already understand. I feel inadequate.
“You’re not inadequate, Bee.”
BEE: I feel inadequate. Is that the same thing?
Tess didn’t have an answer for that.
Kade was still on his corner when she arrived. He looked up, saw her expression, and his smile faded.
“That bad?”
“The repair was fine.” Tess sat down beside him on the bench. “The problem is everything else.”
She told him everything—the class limitations, the fact that Network tech didn’t count, and the impossible math of needing dungeon repairs while Senna watched for exactly that.
Kade listened without interrupting. When she finished, he didn’t respond for a moment.
“Well yeah,” he said finally. “You need to interact with dungeon stuff to level. I can fly my hauler all day, but unless it has dungeon tech in it, there’s nothing to level from. I’ve been stuck at level 3 for ages.”
“Nobody told me. This sucks.”
Kade leaned back against the bench. “Yep it sucks for all of us.”
Despite everything, Tess almost smiled. “Very helpful, Kade.”
“Hey, I’m supportive. From a distance.” He bumped her shoulder with his. “But seriously. What are you going to do?”
Tess looked down at the plasteel toolbox, at the tools her father had used for years before selling them to keep their freighter running. On the communicator on her belt, Bee was listening, waiting.
She thought about Marcus’s cough. The medical chamber could help him if it had more power. And there were twenty-five or more floors of broken infrastructure sitting beneath the city, full of systems that needed fixing. Full of that power.
But there was Inspector Senna Brennan, who’d made it very clear what happened when people drew too much attention.
Tess sighed. “I need to go into the dungeon.”
BEE: I will help however I can. Though I confess my options are limited. I cannot physically repair systems. I cannot shield you from Network monitoring. I cannot even see the world beyond what I hear through the comm relay.
“You help by being here, Bee.”
BEE: That does not feel like enough.
Kade glanced at Tess. “Is she okay?”
“She’s worried.” Tess stood, picking up the toolbox. “So am I.”
She looked back toward the freighter, just visible over the cluster of grounded ships. Marcus would be in his workshop now, probably working on something, definitely not resting like he should be.
Level 3 wasn’t enough. TECH 3 gave her access to skill extraction, which she hadn’t used yet, but that didn’t matter if she couldn’t level up to unlock the capabilities she’d need for deeper repairs. And she couldn’t level up without fixing dungeon tech, which meant going back into restricted areas, which meant risking Senna’s attention, which could mean losing everything.
There had to be another way. Some repairs she could make that wouldn’t trigger monitoring alerts. Some systems that were broken enough to need fixing but not connected to the main Aether distribution network.
Something small, subtle, and quiet—she just had to figure out what.
“Come on,” she told Kade. “Let’s get back. Maybe between all of us, we can come up with something.”
They headed back toward the freighter, through streets that were brighter than they’d been three days ago, powered by repairs Tess had made without fully understanding what she was getting into.
She understood now. And somehow, that made it worse.
