The chamber was too quiet. The silence pressed against his ears until he felt certain it would split his skull. He sat with his back to the wall, staring at the pale body in the cradle, its skin gleaming under the faint pulse of the assembler's light. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. It waited, inert and perfect, a vessel shaped by his suffering, yet empty.
Lya's words still lingered inside him:
Give them a name. Give them a place. Give them something to hold to. Then they will come.
His hands trembled in his lap. A name. A place. He tried to seize the idea, but it slipped through his fingers like dust. What kind of madness was this? He had carried stone and bone and broken his body for weeks, all for this—the promise that a corpse would awaken if only he invented a word?
"Tell me," he muttered, head falling forward. "Tell me what you mean. Stop speaking in riddles."
The hemisphere pulsed faintly, seams glowing in rhythm with his words.
They need more than flesh. They need meaning. Without it, they will not cross.
He slammed his fist against the floor. Pain shot through his knuckles, sharp enough to drag a grunt from his chest. "Meaning? Do you think I care about meaning? I need them alive. I need… I can't—" His voice broke, strangled into silence.
The softer tone returned, closer now, threading past the mechanical hum.
You will not survive alone. You know this. The dust will take you. Hunger will consume you. Even if you fill this chamber with hollow shells, it will not be enough. Continuity is not one. Continuity is many.
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, grinding until sparks flared in the darkness. Continuity. Always continuity. The word rang like a commandment, one he had never chosen.
"I don't know what to give them," he whispered.
You do.
He shook his head violently, as though the motion could scatter the thought before it rooted. "I don't. I don't know anything. I don't know what year it is. I don't know if the stars above me are the same stars I was born under. I don't even know my own place. And you expect me to invent theirs?"
Not invent. Choose.
He raised his head slowly. The assembler's glow painted his reflection across the hemisphere, warped and spectral. His hollow eyes stared back, rimmed in red, a man gaunt and breaking.
"What happens if I choose wrong?"
Silence stretched, long enough that he thought the voice had gone. Then:
Then continuity fails.
The words fell heavy, absolute.
He let his head fall back against the wall, eyes tracing the dim ceiling. His chest heaved with slow, ragged breaths. His lips moved soundlessly before the words found their way out. "So it's me. Just me. No one else left to carry this choice."
Not alone.
Lya said, softer now.
I am with you.
He closed his eyes. Her voice was a thread, quiet yet firm, weaving through the ache inside his chest. For the first time since he had awoken in the dust, he felt the weight of his solitude ease, if only slightly.
His eyes drifted back to the host. It lay still, a mirror of his exhaustion, waiting for something neither of them had. "A name," he whispered. The word tasted absurd in his mouth. "A name for what?"
For the bridge. For the place where they will gather before they cross. For the story that will hold them together until they breathe again.
He laughed then, short and cracked. "You're telling me I have to play god. That's what this is, isn't it? You want me to write their heaven into being?"
Not heaven. Structure. Minds cannot live in chaos. They cling to order, to symbols, to stories. Give them that, and they will believe. Belief is the bridge. Through belief, they can pass.
His hands clenched tight around his knees. His stomach twisted with hunger, his throat raw with thirst, his body one ache from head to toe. Yet beneath all of it burned something sharper: the faintest ember of hope. If she was right, if there really were minds waiting, then he was not as alone as the silence wanted him to believe.
"What if I don't?" he asked.
Then the host remains empty. The sets remain in silence. And you remain alone.
The words left no space to hide. He dragged in a breath, slow and unsteady. The choice had already been made, though his lips had not spoken it yet.
His eyes lingered on the host, then shifted back to the hemisphere. "Fine," he whispered. "Show me how."
The glow brightened, seams widening to release a faint shimmer of symbols. They rose into the air, drifting like smoke, curling into patterns that shifted faster than his eyes could follow. Glyphs rearranged themselves, folding, twisting, until they formed shapes almost familiar: circles, lines, the vague outline of structures.
This is the frame.
Lya said.
Here, you will choose.
He raised a trembling hand, fingers brushing through the light. The glyphs rippled, reacting to his touch. His heart hammered. It was nothing more than symbols and light, yet the air hummed with weight, as though the world itself leaned closer.
"What if I break it?"
Then I will help you mend it.
His throat tightened. He closed his eyes, steadying his breath, then opened them again. The symbols pulsed, waiting.
"Then let's begin."
The light that lifted from the hemisphere was not a beam or a screen, but a slow unspooling of symbols—thin strokes of radiance that rose like dust in reverse, drifting from the seams, taking the shape of lines that remembered geometry. They hovered between him and the host, a sheet without surface, an interface that breathed.
"Guide me," he said, because anything more elaborate would fall apart in his mouth.
Touch where it asks, Lya answered. Do not fear breaking it. This is meant to be handled.
He raised his hand. The tips of his fingers tingled before they touched anything; the glow knew he was there. When he pressed into it, the field dented like warm water and then stilled around his knuckles. A word formed under his touch, and it was a word he understood: Identifier.
"It's a name," he murmured.
Yes.
His throat tightened. He looked past the light to the cradle and the silent chest within it. A name. He could name anything: the bridge, the room, the promise, the lie. He tried a dozen words in his head and watched each of them crack at the edges. He thought of stone and of hunger, of the way his prints in the dust filled themselves when he turned away. He thought of the map on the wall, the lines branching out into black, the way the assembler had waited with eternal patience for him to agree.
"What am I naming?"
The frame that holds them as they step. A place, but not a place. A meaning. You will not see it as they do. But they will follow it.
He drew his palm back and flexed his fingers as if the choice had left grit in the joints. The hovering cell of light for Identifier waited, blinking in the slow pulse of the machine's breath.
His mouth shaped a few syllables he did not say. He swallowed, and something old—older than the base, older than the failures—rose up from the bottom of him: an image of weight borne on shoulders, of a map unfolded and a hand saying here, and here, and there. He touched the cell and let the word ride the heat of his skin into the interface.
Atlas.
Lya did not speak. The light did. New lines unfurled from the word, filaments connecting it to empty sockets in the sheet. The word sank a little deeper, as if the system made a seat for it in the structure.
He stared at it, aware of the absurdity of feeling relief at four letters and breath he could not spare. "It's just a name," he said, defiant to the air.
It is a beginning, Lya said.
A second cell bloomed to the right, narrower, almost shy.
Form.
"What does it want?"
Shape of entity. How minds will grasp it. Choices are many. Guild, order, fellowship, company, church, ministry, house, institute, corporation…
He flinched at the last word, because some corner of him recognized it: the cadence of contracts, of logistics, of steel moved and schedules met. A thing with ledgers and obligations. A thing that could hire and promise and make you sign.
"Corporation," he heard himself say. His finger pressed into the light and confirmed it. Atlas Corporation sank into place with a certainty that made his skin prickle.
The sheet reconfigured. A spine appeared—no, a timeline—threaded with nodes too faint to count. It extended left and right in a faded gradient: before and after presented like a gentle slope. The present—Foundation—was a bright knot where lines converged.
"Why a timeline?" he asked, dry-mouthed.
Because belief travels easier when it can remember a past and anticipate a future, Lya said. We will not fill the past with detail. We will imply enough to quiet panic. We will promise enough ahead to invite step two.
"And step two is…?"
Selection.
A new cell pulsed.
Mandate.
He moved his hand toward it. Words rose of their own accord: Continuity. Shelter. Passage. Repair. He chose the simplest first, because he was empty and didn't trust himself to be a poet. Inside the cell he wrote, crudely and with the shaking of a hand that had hauled too much stone: Ensure continuity through passage. Provide shelter during transfer. Repair what time broke.
The letters did not stay as letters. The interface drank them and distilled them into glyphs—three slim marks that looked nothing like words and yet, somehow, kept the tilt of what he meant. The sheet issued a low chime that he felt more in his teeth than he heard in his ears.
"Is that enough?" he asked.
Enough to stand up, Lya said. Not enough to run.
"Add more?"
One more holds better than ten. A new cell formed beneath
Mandate. Charter Values.
He thought of the frozen rib cages in the basins, of the silence in the cradles, of the way his own name felt like an edge he did not want to touch. He wrote four words:
Order. Stability. Together. Humanity.
"Too much?" he said, half to himself.
Perfect, Lya said, with a warmth that made him swallow.
The sheet bent a fraction. Far out in the network of pale points, a few dots brightened. He realized they were not dots but apertures, small places where something might press a face to the glass and look out.
A coil of symbols braided itself into being at the bottom left. Seal.
"An emblem," he said. "They'll need something to pin to a wall."
They will. Minds anchor more easily to a picture than a paragraph.
He drew a circle first, then a line, but it felt incomplete. His hand faltered, then traced an inverted triangle instead, its point downward, stable and heavy. Through its center he pulled a vertical stroke, clean and straight, turning the triangle into the suggestion of an A—or of a pillar bearing impossible weight.
The interface accepted the sketch at once, straightening the angles, sharpening the point, polishing the line into something more deliberate. What hung in the glow now was stark, simple, and unsettlingly strong: a triangle balanced on its tip, a bar down its heart. Atlas Corporation.
"Now what?" he asked.
The sheet answered with three columns that rippled like thin skin in a breeze.
Domains. Programs. Public Interface.
He hesitated over the new column that pulsed in the interface. Domains. Four empty cells blinked, waiting. To him they were only placeholders, abstractions with no weight, but the glow around them pressed like the expectation of law.
His hand trembled as he began to write. The first word came easily—he thought of stone and carbon dragged through dust, of the assembler's endless hunger.
Resource Extraction & Heavy Industry.
The cell swallowed the words, refined them into a glyph that looked like teeth grinding rock.
The second came with more reluctance, though he knew it had been written into his days since he awoke here. The host in the cradle was proof.
Biotechnology & Advanced Systems.
The glyph became a helix threaded with steel.
The third dragged itself from old instincts he had tried not to name, memories of strength enforced by weapon and discipline. He almost erased it, then left it, because denial was only another lie.
Defense & Armaments.
The glyph that bloomed was stark, sharp-edged, too much like a blade.
The last cell blinked longer, as if daring him. His thoughts turned not to weapons or stone, but to the quiet hum of circuits, the glow of glyphs, the way the machine shaped reality itself. He scrawled the words before doubt could stop him.
Information Systems & Control.
The interface accepted, knitting the four domains together until they formed a lattice, a corporate skeleton. He stared at it, lips dry. An empire, he thought, though he had only filled boxes. To him, they were lines. To them—whoever they were—they would look like the arms of a colossus.
The column accepted the set. Under Programs, empty slots waited.
The next column unfurled, its cells blank, waiting. Programs. He hesitated, because unlike the broad domains, these demanded precision—names that would become banners. To him they were placeholders, abstractions; but the glow pressed with the weight of promises already spoken.
He forced his hand forward, scrawling into the first cell. The letters came blunt, almost primitive.
Program Aegis — systems of defense, exoskeletons, defences that could hold.
The light swallowed the words, rendered them into a symbol: a shield fractured into facets.
The second cell pulsed. His hand ached as he wrote, yet the word came easily.
Program Forge — the engines of industry, factories that would never sleep, machines that could raise cities from stone.
The glyph sharpened into a hammer striking sparks.
The third cell resisted for a moment, blinking slower, but he pressed his fingers into it and left behind the only word that felt honest.
Program Helix — flesh rewritten, soldiers born from design, biotech unshackled.
The interface distilled it into a twisted spiral, a double curve edged with steel.
The last cell burned brightest. He stared at it, throat dry, before he dared touch. The word fell from him like a secret already known.
Program Continuity — the promise that none would end, that passage was possible, that the grave itself could be denied.
The symbol that appeared was not a weapon or a tool, but a circle closing on itself, no seam, no break.
He stepped back. The four programs blazed across the sheet, tied into the lattice of domains he had chosen. To him they were names scrawled out of desperation. To those who would one day see them, they would be pillars of faith.
"Public interface?" he said, wary now.
Minimal, Lya said. A tagline helps minds step toward your door without bleeding on it.
The cell pulsed, and the emptiness inside him filled with a brittle panic. He did not want to lie to ghosts; he did not want to coax anyone with promises he could not keep. But the host in the cradle would never breathe if he refused this.
He wrote, and hated the neatness of it as it appeared. Atlas – From dust, we rise. Through unity, we survive.
He let his hand fall. His breath sawed loud in the quiet. The host did not move.
Lines sprang from the words he had placed. They ran outward into the network like roots, branching delicately and then thickening where they found hold. The sheet dimmed around the edges, and the middle brightened, and he had the absurd sensation of watching something take oxygen it had not had a moment before.
A small square near the spine opened like an eyelid: Foundation Address.
"What is that?" he asked, tense.
Anchors prefer coordinates, Lya said. It will not be exact. A story rarely is. But it will be enough to hold.
He hesitated. Coordinates were not numbers to him anymore; they were directions given by someone else's certainty. But the cell waited. He touched it, and shapes offered themselves: District. City. World. Things he could not fill honestly.
"Can I name any city from Earth?" he asked.
You can name without thinking, she said. And trust me to set the room around the name so no one trips.
His mouth was dry. He entered: Sector Zero. He almost laughed; he didn't know why that felt right. The interface accepted it as if the world had always had a district called that, and he felt for a moment the dizziness of watching a lie become part of the ground.
Another window rolled open, this one deeper, its border marked with a color he had not seen in the interface yet, a tired gold. Consent Mechanism – Defaults.
He felt his jaw set. "This matters."
Yes.
The options were not inviting. Expedite. Override. Emergency. Voluntary. He chose Voluntary with a finger that would accept no tremor. The field blossomed with sub-choices. He marked them one by one, slow, like turning locks in a series:
Informed Briefing Required. Reversible Pre-Commit. Guardian Review Disabled. No Retroactive Consent.
"I don't want anyone tricked," he said, voice low.
Nor do I, Lya answered, and there was something in that I that made him look up, because it sounded like a memory that belonged to her and not the machine.
The interface breathed. It was the only word for it. Information moved through it like lungs taking air. A strange calm flowed through him: not peace, exactly, but a narrowing of panic into rails he could walk without looking down.
A tiny indicator pulsed to life at the far edge of the network map. It looked like a bruise of glow.
Seeding (0.01%).
He pointed. "What does that mean?"
The name has entered the shore water, Lya said. Drift will carry it to places where minds pass. Most will not see it. Some will. Fewer will slow. Fewer still will stop. That is enough.
"How long?" he asked, though he knew time was a fluid without surface here.
Long there. Short here. Their clocks do not match yours. Do not try to make them.
He nodded, though nodding to a fact did nothing to make it more grateful.
A shadow moved inside the interface—no, not a shadow, a suggestion, the outline of an organ behind thin skin. Memetic Ramps – Draft. He felt revulsion and had to master it so his fingers would not pull back.
"Explain," he said.
Anxieties we will meet and answer before they form, Lya said. Three only. "Is this safe?" – show them care. "Am I being coerced?" – show them choice. "Will I lose myself?" – show them return.
He stared at the words show them, and said, "Show them what we do not yet have?"
Show the promise true by the time they reach the threshold, she said. If we fail, the bridge collapses. They go back. The cost is yours.
He almost laughed at the simplicity. The cost had always been his.
A prompt slid into place at the bottom of the column: Administrator of Record. He stared at it until the light itself seemed to flinch.
"No," he said.
It can be pseudonymous, Lya offered. The frame wants a hand to sign the corner. It will not publish the name as law. Only as a comfort—"someone is responsible."
He considered No one and saw how that would land in a mind that needed a door. He considered Lya and thought of hiding behind her. He considered a hundred fragments of names, then wrote two words that were not even a name, but which steadied his spine in the writing: Caretaker, Interim.
The system took it without complaint.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tasted salt and metal. Sweat stung the crack in his lip. The host did not move. The chamber hummed.
"Is there anything else?" he asked, and was surprised to hear no anger in it. Fatigue had worn the edges off; he was too tired to be outraged.
Two more fields, Lya said. Then we can let it breathe.
Two more grew like buds. Resource Accounting (External) and Transfer Window Policy.
The first unfolded into a grid that stabbed him with the precision of its numbers. For each host: water, carbon, silicate/metal composites, organics, plus the memetic cost of a passage—a concept that expressed itself in tiny, oblique marks that looked like notches on a bone.
"Put the real numbers," he said. "Don't hide them. If anyone looks, they should know what it costs."
They will read in their own language, Lya said. But I will keep your demand. The numbers will exist where their numbers go.
"And the window policy?"
How often you will open the door, and for how long minds may stand on the sill before choosing.
He thought of scarcity and of his body collapsing in dust with pouches piled around him. He thought of being overwhelmed. He thought of being unable to say no to anyone who pressed their face to the glass. He typed, slow and shaking: Single-file. One at a time. Window opens only when a vessel is ready. Window closes if consent is withdrawn. No queue published. No promises beyond the next step.
The sheet held still as if tasting those rules. Then it bent again, and the bend went outward this time, traveling along the network. In its wake, faint points woke, one by one, like lamps in distant rooms.
"You're moving," he said.
We are present now, Lya said. Quietly. Without trumpet. The world will argue with itself. Some will dismiss. Some will forget. Some will remember the name without knowing why. That is the shape belief takes when it is new.
"I won't see any of that," he said.
You will see a different part, she answered, and her voice softened as if she could see his face. You will see when the door is knocked.
The Seeding indicator climbed to 0.03% and then stalled, as if shy. He let his hand drift out of the light. The interface held without him now, stabilizing around the choices he had made, polishing them into something a world could touch without cutting itself.
He looked at the emblem—the circle and the line, weight borne—and tried not to put faith in ink. He looked at the name—ATLAS CORPORATION—and tried not to imagine a skyline attached to it. He looked at the host and failed to keep from imagining a breath.
"Will it take long?" he asked, knowing the question would be a stone in his mouth.
Long there, Lya said again, patient. Short here. You will not starve waiting for a heartbeat you cannot hear. You will have work. You must prepare the vessel. There are tissues to keep warm. There is fluid to change. There is care to learn.
He nodded before he realized to whom, and then the embarrassment of that did not come. He wanted to work. Work was a way to keep from watching the chest that did not rise.
Another field flickered at the margin: Contingency: Rejection.
His hand hovered but did not touch. "If they cross, and then…"
If they ask to go back, we will let them, Lya said. If they break, we will not keep their pieces like trophies. If we fail them, we will not lie about it.
He closed his eyes and let out a breath that shook. "Say the last part again."
If we fail them, we will not lie about it.
He pressed the heel of his palm against the light as if he could seal the promise with skin. "Keep that."
I will.
Silence returned, but it was different. It was the quiet that comes after instructions, not the quiet that comes after collapse. He collected the helmet from the floor and set it beside the cradle. He rested the bar against the wall and pushed sleeves to his elbows. The work that followed was not glorious. It was tubing and clamps, measurements of temperature, the careful turn of a valve to keep perfusion from pooling where it should circulate. Lya narrated when he needed words, fell silent when he only needed hands. Twice he fumbled—once from clumsiness, once from shaking—and both times the monitor lights threw warning glyphs that flared and then softened when he corrected.
"Caretaker, Interim," he muttered once, and felt foolish, but the foolishness steadied him.
When at last he straightened, the host's skin gleamed less harshly. Its color had changed by a degree the eye would miss if it were not the only thing the eye watched. He dragged the back of his wrist across his mouth and tasted iron.
The interface hung in the air still, but most of its movement had slowed to a crawl. Seeding 0.07%. Ramps Drafted (3/3). Public Surface: Muted. Admin of Record: Caretaker, Interim.
"I feel like I signed a contract," he said, and was surprised that the bitterness in it was small.
You signed a promise, Lya said. You did not promise success. You promised to try where others walked away.
He thought of the broken doors in the corridors, the rooms that had died so cleanly it felt like malice. "Others were here."
Yes.
"Did they try?"
A pause, long enough to count breath.
Some did. Some lied. Some were not given the chance.
He stared at the emblem again until the lines doubled. "We'll do it differently," he said, and did not know who he meant by we until Lya answered quietly:
Yes.
The lights in the far corners of the interface blinked once, slow as a sleeping thing turning in bed. He rubbed the ache out of his wrists and felt, for the first time since he had crawled from whatever crypt had named him, that the air he drew might go somewhere that was not only him.
"Tell me when they knock," he said.
You will hear it, Lya said. And if you do not, I will.
He looked once more at the host. The lips did not part. The eyelids did not tremble. But the warmth under his palm, when he laid it there, was steadier, freed of a tremor he hadn't noticed until it was gone.
He turned off the chamber lights by a degree to mimic the idea of night. The emblem still hovered in the dark, thin lines holding a circle. The name sat beneath it, quiet and immodest at once.
He slept in a chair beside the cradle, and in his sleep a sound threaded the stale air—not a knock, not yet, but the smallest suggestion of weight on a bridge being tested, far away in a place he would never see.
The chamber dimmed. The interface, once a storm of cells and columns, slowed until its symbols pulsed with the steady rhythm of a heart. Each choice he had made—name, seal, values, programs—had sunk into the lattice and found its place. What floated before him now was no longer a chaos of glowing fragments but a structure: lines bound into order, arcs joined into spines, pillars rising from the base.
Atlas Corporation.
He whispered it aloud, and the word sounded foreign even to his ears. A title, not a name. A banner hung above something greater than him, though it had been his trembling hand that wrote it into existence.
The glyphs spread further, lines crawling away into the dark like roots searching for water. Tiny nodes lit, faint at first, then brighter, scattering outward until the chamber walls seemed studded with stars. His breath caught. He thought of the sky outside, endless and cold, and of this imitation sky within, woven not of fire but of belief.
"What is it doing?" His voice cracked.
Seeding, Lya said. Her tone was patient, almost tender. The name travels now. The framework extends into the space where the minds wait. They will brush against it, lightly at first, like hands on a curtain. Some will ignore. Some will remember. A few will reach. That is enough.
He gripped the bar tighter. "And if none of them believe it?"
Then it ends here, she said. But belief is hunger. There is always someone hungry enough to touch what is new.
The words pressed into him, heavier than the silence. He wanted to argue, to demand guarantees, but he had none to give himself. His eyes drifted back to the host in the cradle, its chest unmoving, its skin pale under the assembler's light. The thought that it could one day open its eyes because of the words he had written into the void was both absurd and terrifying.
The interface pulsed again. One of the distant nodes brightened. Then another. He counted them—three, then five, then nine—until he lost the numbers in the scatter. They were not steady. They flared and dimmed, as though minds were brushing against the frame and sliding away.
"Do they know?" he asked.
Not as you do, Lya said. To them, it is a company with an address, a seal, and a promise. They will not think of it as invention. They will think of it as emergence, as history unfolding as it always does. Atlas will appear to them as if it had always been waiting for its moment.
He laughed, hoarse and bitter. "So I just forged a lie."
All frames are lies, Lya answered softly. But lies become truth when enough minds step onto them. That is the nature of bridges.
The words lodged sharp in his chest. He turned away from the glow, staggered to the wall, and pressed his forehead against cold metal. His lips moved around a whisper: Order. Stability. Together. Humanity. The values he had written. He didn't know if he believed them, but they were the only stones he had to lay.
Behind him, the lattice brightened. Symbols locked into place, new columns unspooling without his hand guiding them. Schedules, policies, layers of bureaucracy woven into code and myth. He felt the chamber vibrating faintly, as if the very air carried the weight of an engine he could not see.
He spun back. "What are you doing?"
Expanding, Lya said. You chose the bones. I shape the flesh around them. Minds require more detail than you can carry. I fill the spaces between.
He stared, throat dry. "With what?"
With what they expect. With what they fear. With what they will believe.
His knees weakened. He braced himself against the bar, teeth gritted. "And I'll have no control over this?"
You hold the charter, Lya replied. You hold the seal, the values, the promise. That is enough to shape the flow. The rest is drift. Drift is necessary. Too rigid, and belief cracks.
He wanted to protest, to demand control, but the truth pressed deeper: he barely controlled himself, let alone an empire built from symbols. The host in the cradle was proof enough of that.
The nodes in the lattice flared again. Some dimmed. Some stayed. A handful grew brighter, steady. He felt his pulse quicken as he watched them.
"They're believing," he said before he could stop himself.
They are considering, Lya corrected gently. Belief takes longer. But yes. Some have slowed their steps. Some have turned their heads. The frame is visible now. Atlas exists to them.
His chest rose fast. He stepped closer to the host, his hand hovering above its still chest. "So this means—"
Not yet.
The word froze him.
The bridge has only been laid. No one has stepped across. But they will. And when they do, you will hear it.
He swallowed hard. The silence between his heartbeats thundered. "And if no one does?"
Then Atlas collapses, and we try again. Continuity does not end with one failure. But you will not fail. They will come.
The certainty in her voice was sharper than steel. For a moment, it steadied him.
He sank into the chair by the cradle, bar across his knees, eyes locked on the pale face that waited. The emblem still glowed above the lattice: an inverted triangle, a pillar through its heart. Atlas Corporation. The words beneath it were too clean, too certain, and yet he could not look away.
A tremor ran through the chamber. Small. Barely more than a ripple in the air. He jolted upright.
"What was that?"
Drift, Lya said. But there was something in her tone that made his skin prickle.
He turned back to the host. Its lips had not moved. Its chest had not risen. But for an instant, so brief he could not swear it was real, he thought he saw the faintest twitch at the corner of its eye.
His breath caught. His pulse hammered.
He waited, straining for another sign. None came. The body lay still once more, as silent as stone.
The assembler's hum returned, steady, endless. Lya's voice followed, quiet and patient.
Soon.