August 20, 2076
Kael learned, very quickly, that knowing something was wrong did not mean the world would slow down to accommodate it.
The shift siren rang at 07:00 local time like it always did—a flat mechanical tone that carried through Tanjung Null like a commandment. Assets rose from their iron cubes. Conversation dissolved instantly—not because Overseers demanded silence, but because silence was safer.
Kael stood with them.
Nothing about him looked different.
Same grey work-layer, patched at the elbows. Same regulation boots, soles thinned unevenly from years of walking corridors that never truly rested. Same blank expression, cultivated carefully over time—not apathy, but invisibility.
Inside, however, his breathing had changed.
Slow in.
Measured out.
Not calming.
Conserving.
Helios did not speak.
It didn't need to.
Kael felt the absence the way one felt pressure drop before a storm. Not alarming—just present. A background awareness, like knowing a machine was powered on somewhere nearby even if it wasn't running yet.
He stepped into Corridor C-17 with the rest of his line, the floor vibrating faintly beneath their feet as freight elevators descended in distant shafts. The air here was warmer than it should have been. Not enough to trigger alarms. Enough to sap endurance.
Kael adjusted his stride without thinking.
Shorter steps.
Less vertical bounce.
Arms closer to his sides.
Efficiency.
The change was subtle. Invisible.
But it registered.
The coolant processing wing was already active when they arrived. Filters hummed. Pumps throbbed in deep, rhythmic cycles. Bioluminescent residue pulsed faintly behind transparent casings, glowing a sickly green where engineered microbes fed on waste heat.
Kael knelt at his assigned unit—Filter Stack 12-B—and began his routine.
He did not rush.
He did not slow.
But his hands moved differently than they had two days ago.
Before, he had worked from habit.
Today, he worked from awareness.
Torque applied evenly. Pressure distributed across the palm instead of the fingers. He rotated the casing just enough to avoid scraping the seal, preserving its integrity for another cycle.
Helios spoke.
Not aloud.
Not intrusively.
"Micro-fracture probability: decreasing."
Kael did not react.
He continued working.
Across the bay, an Asset two stations down coughed wetly into her sleeve. She was young—newer than Kael, judging by the lack of scars—but her movements were sluggish, inefficient.
Digestion failure, Kael thought distantly.
Or just exhaustion.
Helios did not comment.
It didn't need to.
The system only cared about him.
The first incident happened forty-three minutes into the shift.
Kael was reseating a thermal conduit clamp when something shifted in the air.
Not sound.
Not heat.
Just a change—subtle, wrong.
"Pressure variance detected," Helios said.
"Risk vector forming."
Kael froze.
His hands were still inside the housing.
"Estimated failure window: three point two seconds."
Three seconds.
He withdrew his hands calmly, rolled his shoulders once as if stretching, and stepped half a pace to the left.
The conduit ruptured a heartbeat later.
Steam erupted in a violent plume, white and blinding, filling the space where Kael's torso had been. The blast slammed into the ceiling, condensation raining down in hot droplets that hissed against the floor.
A girl screamed.
Kael did not look back.
He knew—with cold clarity—that if he did, if his reaction appeared too fast, too precise, it would matter.
Overseer drones descended almost immediately, lenses flickering as they scanned the damage. One hovered in front of Kael, pausing just long enough to record his position, his posture, the timing of his movement.
Then it moved on.
The injured Asset girl was dragged away.
Kael returned to his station.
His hands were steady.
Inside, his pulse hammered—not with fear, but with calculation.
That wasn't luck.
Helios remained silent.
By mid-cycle of the shift, the numbers began to change.
Not visible numbers—Kael couldn't see those.
But patterns.
Machines stabilized faster around him. Minor faults corrected themselves under his hands. Stress indicators dipped without triggering alerts.
None of it was dramatic.
None of it would earn commendation.
But systems noticed what humans ignored.
In an elevated control booth overlooking the coolant wing, an Overseer—human, not drone—tilted his head slightly as data scrolled across his display. Efficiency metrics updated in real time, lines nudging upward where they should have remained flat.
He zoomed in.
Asset AR-1108.
The Overseer frowned.
The break cycle came later than scheduled.
A delay.
Nothing unusual.
Kael sat near the same vent as before, warmth seeping through the thin fabric of his uniform. He drank his slurry slowly, deliberately spacing each swallow.
Not hunger.
Timing.
Helios spoke.
"Behavioral pattern deviation accumulating."
Kael's jaw tightened.
Define accumulating.
"Observed efficiency variance exceeds baseline tolerance by zero point nine percent."
Less than one percent.
Enough.
Recommendation?
There was a pause.
Short.
Measured.
"Behavioral suppression advised."
Kael stilled.
Suppression how?
"Introduce inefficiencies."
The words landed heavier than any warning.
Then—
"Correction. You are to work normally."
Kael almost smiled.
Normal, in Tanjung Null, meant flawed. Exhausted. Slightly broken.
If I don't?
"Probability of review escalation: rising."
A quiet threat.
Not from Helios.
From the world.
Kael leaned back against the vent, eyes half-lidded. Around him, Assets murmured in low voices—complaints about heat, about rations, about assignments no one wanted.
He let his shoulders slump slightly.
Allowed fatigue to show.
Allowed inefficiency.
The act felt wrong in a way improvement never had.
You're protecting me, he realized.
Helios did not respond.
The second incident was smaller.
Intentional.
Kael misjudged the weight of a component by a fraction, letting it scrape his forearm as he lifted. The pain was real—sharp, immediate—but shallow.
Blood welled briefly before clotting.
An Overseer drone hovered, scanned the injury, logged it as acceptable wear.
Helios said nothing.
Approval, Kael learned, didn't always come with words.
Near the end of the shift, someone spoke to him.
That alone was unusual.
"Hey."
The voice came from his right—low, cautious. Kael turned to see a man leaning against a crate of discarded optic casings.
Older than Kael. Thinner. One eye clouded with cheap augmentation that flickered faintly, its casing scratched and mismatched.
Not corporate issue.
RX-7754.
Famous in the camp—not because he was strong, or obedient, but because he survived incidents others didn't. Because he'd been reassigned more times than most assets lasted years. Because he knew people. Because things moved when he decided they should.
"You move weird," RX-7754 said.
Not accusing.
Just observant.
Kael shrugged. "Everyone moves weird here."
RX snorted softly. "Not like that."
Kael said nothing.
Silence stretched.
RX-7754's augmented eye whirred almost imperceptibly as it adjusted focus. "You ever think about upgrades?"
Kael's pulse jumped.
"No," he said flatly.
RX smiled thinly. "Good answer."
He pushed off the crate and walked away without another word.
Helios spoke the moment RX-7754 was out of range.
"External observer identified."
Threat? Kael asked.
"Undetermined."
Which was Helios' way of saying potentially.
The shift ended without further incident.
Kael returned his tools, logged out at the terminal, and joined the slow procession back to the dormitories. The corridors felt narrower than before. The lights harsher.
Not because they had changed.
Because Kael had.
Inside his pod that night, he lay staring at the ceiling seam again.
Helios was quiet.
Waiting.
I crossed a line today, right?
"Affirmative."
Is there a way back?
A pause.
Long.
"Regression is inefficient."
Kael closed his eyes.
That was fine.
He hadn't survived this long by going backward.
Not anymore.
Somewhere above, cranes screamed. Somewhere below, water churned against concrete that refused to remember land.
And inside Kael's head, a system monitored thresholds—calculating, adjusting, waiting for the moment when hiding would no longer be optimal.
The moment when survival would require something else.
Something visible.