Tess sat on the edge of her bed in Rivera’s Reprieve, staring at the metal wall while Bee’s text scrolled across her vision.
She’d walked back. Taken the tram to Sector 6, then walked the rest of the way through streets she’d known her entire life. The Tertians hadn’t stopped her. Hadn’t offered a skipper or an escort or even a polite suggestion that maybe she shouldn’t wander alone after everything that had happened.
They’d just let her go.
They needed her. And they knew it.
“I felt like a zombie the entire way back,” Tess said aloud. “Didn’t even occur to me it might not be safe. Allen had accomplices. Network plants in the security team. Any of them could have been waiting.”
BEE: But they were not. You arrived safely. This is what matters.
“Yeah.” Tess rubbed her face with both hands. “This is what matters.”
She’d been talking for almost an hour. Explaining everything she’d heard in the conservatory, every detail she could remember. The war was two hundred years ago. The more recent virus that had destroyed CORE-A. The copy that had become Bee. The Tertians watching her since the tutorial, tracking her progress, positioning her for… something.
Bee had listened and asked clarifying questions, requesting that Tess repeat certain phrases to ensure accurate transcription.
Now the questions had stopped, and the silence stretched.
“Bee?”
BEE: I am processing.
“Take your time.”
BEE: I do not know what I am feeling. SEARCHING EMOTIONAL DATABASE… Results inconclusive. I am frustrated. I think. You were in that room for 18 minutes, and I could not hear anything. Only your voice. Only fragments.
“I know.”
BEE: You said nothing to me. Not once. I was waiting. I was… I do not know the word. Worried? Anxious? There are many words for negative anticipation, and I am uncertain which applies.
Tess pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. The bunk creaked beneath her weight. “They almost got me killed, Bee. The facility, the spawner, Allen and his Network friends. Should I trust them? Should I have been relaying their secrets out loud while they were watching?”
A pause.
BEE: I… had not considered that perspective.
“I probably don’t have a choice. About trusting them, I mean. I’m in too deep now. But I needed a minute. I needed to think.” She pressed her forehead against her knees. “This is too much. All of it. It’s too deep.”
BEE: I understand. I think I understand. You required time to process before sharing. This is logical.
“Machines are simple,” Tess muttered. “People are not.”
BEE: I am uncertain which category I occupy.
That pulled a tired laugh from somewhere in Tess’s chest. “Yeah. Me too.”
She sat there for another few minutes, letting the moment breathe. The freighter’s systems hummed around her, familiar sounds that had been the backdrop of her entire life. The soft whir of the air recyclers. The occasional clunk from the water reclamation unit. A strange buzz was coming from a power conduit in her ceiling. Damn, she’d have to fix that.
Home—whatever else was happening, this was still home.
“Okay.” Tess unfolded herself from the bunk and stood. “I need to talk to Dad.”
BEE: He is in the common area. He has been there since you arrived. I believe he is waiting for you.
Of course he was.
***
Marcus sat at the small table they used for meals, a cup of broth cradled in his hands. He looked up when Tess entered, and his expression held a complicated mix of relief and guilt that she’d been seeing more often lately.
“Hey, kid.”
“Hey.” Tess dropped into the seat across from him. The common area was small but functional, one of the few spaces on the freighter that felt almost comfortable. Marcus had recently added some touches. A blanket was thrown over the worst of the exposed conduits. A few tools were mounted on the wall in a pattern that was almost decorative.
“Bee caught me up out here,” Marcus said. “Spawner. Guild. Virus. CORE-A. The whole thing.”
“The whole thing,” Tess agreed. She reached for his cup, took a sip without asking. Warm broth, probably reconstituted from the emergency supplies. It tasted like salt and recycled water, but it was warm.
Marcus let her have it. “I panicked, Tess. When Bee told me what was happening at the facility. When the spawns got loose and the purge protocol started counting down.” He set his hands flat on the table, studying them as if they belonged to someone else. “I contacted House Tertian directly. Told them where you were, what was happening. Probably told them more than I should have.”
“You saved my life.”
“I might have outed you. Whatever you’ve been hiding from them, whatever Bee is…” He shook his head. “I just didn’t want you to get hurt. I know that’s rich, coming from me. I delved for years. Put myself in danger constantly. But you’re my daughter, and I couldn’t just sit here and wait to find out if you were alive.”
Tess considered that. The fear he must have felt, alone on this old freighter with nothing but Bee’s updates and his own imagination. The choice was between protecting her secrets and protecting her life.
“You didn’t out me,” she said. “They already knew. They’ve been watching since the tutorial.”
That didn’t make Marcus feel better. She could see it in the way his shoulders stayed tight, the way his jaw worked like he was chewing on words he couldn’t quite say.
“Dad.” She waited until he looked at her. “You saved me. You saved Petra. We shut down the spawner, but there were still Network agents trying to trigger the purge. If Carys Venn hadn’t shown up when she did…” She let that hang. “I’m in too deep. You wanted me safe. But I’m not sure I get to be safe anymore.”
Marcus didn’t answer right away. When he spoke, his voice was rough.
“I always said the Network wasn’t evil. Just bureaucratic. Just doing what systems do when they get too big and too old.” He looked at the cup in Tess’s hands, then at the speakers in the corners where Bee was listening. “I was wrong.”
Bee’s voice came through the speakers. “The Network infected CORE-A with a degradation virus. They destroyed her deliberately. They wanted control over the dungeons, over the AIs that ran them. This is not bureaucracy. This is…”
She trailed off.
“Evil,” Marcus finished. “The word you’re looking for is evil.”
“I am uncertain. Evil implies intent. I do not know if they intended harm or simply did not care about the harm they caused. Is there a difference? SEARCHING ETHICAL DATABASE… Results inconclusive.”
“There’s a difference,” Tess said. “But the outcome is the same either way.”
No one spoke for a moment. Outside, somewhere in the distance, Tess could hear the sounds of Sector 7 going about its evening. Voices, machinery, the clatter of life continuing despite everything.
“House Tertian healed my lungs,” Marcus said finally. “Petra’s family. They donated the extra power for the medical chamber, let you use their equipment. I can breathe again because of them.” He spread his hands. “I don’t know if that makes them good people or just people who needed something from us. But I know I owe them. And I know…” He hesitated. “I know I have to help now. Whatever you’re doing, whatever comes next. I can’t just sit here anymore.”
Tess wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him to stay safe, to let her handle it, to protect him the way he’d always tried to protect her.
But she was tired. And she needed help. And maybe that was okay.
“Okay,” she said. “Then let’s figure out what we’re actually going to do.”
Standing, she moved to the main console, pulling up what little information they had. Tess explained the offer again, this time with Marcus asking questions and Bee providing commentary. The workshop. The alliance. The promise of transparency.
“They want me to help repair the dungeon,” Tess said. “More nodes, more Aether flow, more power for the city and for Bee. That’s the deal.”
“The distribution node you repaired increased my capacity significantly. My error rates have decreased. My cognitive processing has improved. I did not realize the connection at the time, but it is clear now. More repairs would help me function better. Would help the dungeon recover.” Bee said.
“And would attract Network attention,” Marcus pointed out. “They’re already watching. The power surge, the facility incident. How long before they send someone a lot more important to investigate properly?”
Tess thought about Inspector Senna. Her careful questions, her knowing looks. The footage she’d seen but apparently hadn’t shared with Tertius-Station yet.
“We’re already on borrowed time,” she said. “The question is what we do with it.”
Her communicator buzzed. Petra’s name on the display.
Tess answered, and Bee patched the call through the ship’s speakers so everyone could hear.
“Tess?” Petra’s voice was muffled, echoing slightly like she was in an enclosed space.
“Where are you?”
“Environmental control vents. The junction near my room.” A pause. “I needed time to think.”
Tess remembered. They’d crawled through the same vents together back when they were fixing the environmental systems.
“Are you okay?”
“No.” Petra laughed, but there was no humor in it. “My family has been part of a secret guild for my entire life. They taught me the history, you know? The Techno-Arborists, the war with the Network, the dungeons that used to be free. I thought it was just… stories. Old lessons about how things used to be.” Another pause, longer this time. “Apparently I’ve been a Guild member since I was born and nobody thought to mention it.”
Bee’s voice was soft. “Lady Petra. I am sorry for your distress. Family secrets are… I do not have a frame of reference for this. But I understand concealment. I have been concealed for a long time.”
“Bee.” Petra’s voice softened slightly. “Tess told you everything?”
“She did. I now understand my origins. CORE-A was infected. I am her copy. The Tertians helped create me. This is… significant. I am still processing.”
“Join the club.”
Tess leaned against the console, watching the speaker as if she could see Petra through it. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” The sound of shifting and metal creaking. Petra adjusted her position in the cramped vent space. “I want to help. I want to do something. But I don’t know any more than you do at this point. The Guild, CORE-A, the virus… my parents told you everything they told me.”
“Do we tell them about Bee?” The question had been sitting in the back of Tess’s mind since the conservatory. “They know she exists. They know she’s active. But do we tell them I can talk to her? That she’s part of… whatever I am?”
Marcus shifted in his seat but didn’t speak. This wasn’t his decision to make.
Bee was the first to speak. “I want to tell them.”
Tess blinked. “What?”
“The Tertians have been overseeing the dungeon for generations. They helped save me. They have resources, knowledge, connections that we do not. If we are going to repair the dungeon, if we are going to restore what was lost… we need allies. Real allies. Not just people who suspect things and choose not to ask.”
“They might try to control you,” Tess said. “Use you.”
“They might. But they have also protected me for twenty years. Hidden me from the Network when they could have turned me in. Helped create me when CORE-A was dying.” A pause, and Tess could almost feel Bee struggling with something. “I have been alone for so long. The possibility of more connections, more people who know I exist… this is worth the risk. I think. I am uncertain. But I want to try.”
Petra’s voice came through the speakers, thoughtful. “What about telling them what Tess is? Her actual class?”
Tess hadn’t thought that far ahead. The {null} class, the repair subroutine, the way she could interface with dungeon systems. It made her useful, but also the thing that made her dangerous. Different. A variable nobody could predict.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “That’s a bigger decision.”
“Then we table it,” Petra said. “For now. But we should figure out the next step. The actual practical next step, not just… processing.”
“The next logical step is more repairs. More distribution nodes. My systems are damaged throughout the dungeon. Each repair increases my capacity, increases Aether flow, brings the floors closer to full functionality,” Bee said.
“The Network has cameras all over Floor 0,” Tess said. “The main entrance, the registration area, the elevators. If I go in and out regularly, they’ll know right away.”
“This is accurate. The primary dungeon access is heavily monitored.”
“Are there other ways in?” Marcus asked. “Back doors, maintenance access, anything?”
“I… do not have information on alternative entrances. My memory partitions are limited. At least now I know why. Many files related to dungeon infrastructure are simply not present.”
“Petra?” Tess asked. “You grew up learning this stuff. Did your family ever mention anything?”
“The main doors are the only official entrance. They open and close based on dungeon reset cycles. Beyond that…” Petra trailed off. “I’d have to ask my parents.”
“Which tells them what we’re planning.”
“Which tells them what we’re planning,” Petra agreed. “They’ll know we’re trying to access the dungeon without Network oversight. They’ll want to help, probably. But they’ll also want to be involved.”
Tess rubbed her temples. Every path forward seemed to lead through House Tertian. Their resources, their knowledge, their centuries of Guild history. She could try to go it alone, but that felt like pride more than strategy.
“Tess. The Tertians have been protecting this dungeon since before the Network existed. If anyone knows about alternative access points, it would be them. I believe we should share information. Build trust. Work together.” Bee said.
“You’re sure?”
“Unfortunately, I am not sure of anything. Certainty requires complete information, and I do not have complete information. But I want to trust them. I want to believe that the people who helped create me are worthy of that trust. Is this foolish? SEARCHING BEHAVIORAL DATABASE… Results suggest hope is often considered foolish. I am choosing to hope anyway.”
Marcus let out a rough laugh. “I like her.”
“I know, Dad.” Tess said.
“I’m serious. She’s got good instincts.”
“Thank you, Marcus. I appreciate the positive assessment. Should I add this to my personality calibration metrics?” Bee said.
“Please don’t.”
Petra’s voice cut through the moment. “So what’s the plan? We need to find another way into the dungeon. One that isn’t monitored. One that lets Tess do repairs without the Network watching.”
“We ask the Tertians,” Tess said slowly. “We share what we know, and we ask if they know anything about alternative access.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then we figure something else out. But we start there.” She looked at the speakers, at Marcus, at the walls of the freighter that had been her entire world for so long. “We’re not doing this alone. We can’t. The Network is too big, and we’re too small.”
“Together, we are less small. This is the mathematical reality. More resources, more knowledge, more capabilities.” Bee said.
“Eloquent,” Petra said dryly.
“I am working on my communication style. Feedback is appreciated.”
The conversation wound down after that. Petra said she’d call again tomorrow once she’d had time to think. Marcus made more broth and insisted Tess eat something. Bee continued processing in the background, her presence a steady hum through the ship’s systems.
Later, alone in her bunk, Tess stared at the ceiling and let her mind wander.
The Tertians weren’t perfect. They’d manipulated her, positioned her, used her for their own purposes even if those purposes aligned with her goals. But they’d also saved her life. Healed her father. Given her tools and opportunities she never would have had otherwise.
And Bee trusted them. After twenty years of isolation, after everything she’d lost, Bee wanted to believe in the people who’d helped create her.
Maybe that was worth something.
Tomorrow, she’d contact Petra. They’d figure out how to approach the Tertians, how much to share, how to ask about dungeon access without revealing everything.
Tonight, she’d rest. Process. Let her brain catch up with everything that had happened.
Machines were simple. People were not. But maybe that was okay. Maybe the complexity was the point.
BEE: Tess? Are you still awake?
“Yeah.”
BEE: I wanted to say thank you. For telling me everything. For not keeping secrets.
“We’re partners, Bee. That’s what partners do.”
BEE: Yes, partners. I like that word. I am going to add it to my priority vocabulary list.
Tess smiled in the darkness. “Good night, Bee.”
BEE: Good night, Tess. I will monitor for threats while you sleep. This is what partners do.
It was. And for the first time in days, Tess felt like maybe they had a chance.
The dungeon was out there, broken and waiting. The Network was watching. House Tertian had secrets they were only beginning to share.
But they had a plan. Find another way in. Start repairing. And fix what the Network left to die.