The compressor unit sat open on Tess’s workbench, its internals exposed like a patient mid-surgery.
She’d been working on it for an hour. Simple job, really. A Sector 7 vendor had dropped it off yesterday with a note explaining that it “made a funny noise sometimes.” The [ANALYZE] readout had shown her the problem immediately:
> [Drive Assembly — Degraded]Last Error: Bearing Failure> [Pressure Regulation — Online]> [Thermal Cutoff — Online]> [Flow Control — Online]
The funny noise turned out to be a failing bearing in the main drive assembly, which had been grinding itself to death for months. In another week and the entire unit would have seized.
Tess finished pressing the new bearing into place and reached for her calibration tool.
BEE: Your technique has improved noticeably. The bearing alignment is within 0.02% of optimal.
“Thanks.” She adjusted the fit, checking the tolerance one more time. “Wait, how can you even tell?”
BEE: I am able to see what you’re working on when you use [ANALYZE], and not only when you use [INTERFACE]. This is a recent development. My most likely hypothesis is that the [AUXILIARY LINK] skill has improved our connection.
“I can see that being very useful.”
BEE: I choose to think it is.
Tess smiled and closed the compressor housing. The vendor would be happy. More importantly, he’d tell other vendors, and they’d tell their customers, and Rivera’s Repairs would keep building the reputation it needed.
She was wiping down her tools when her communicator buzzed.
Alex Smith.
“Hey, Alex.”
“Ms. Rivera.” His voice carried that dry tone she recognized as Alex being Alex. “I have a delivery situation that requires your specific expertise.”
“Another one?”
“This one’s different. A fabricator arrived this morning. Industrial-grade, pre-Network design. Beautiful piece of equipment.” A pause. “Also weighs approximately four hundred kilograms.”
“Four hundred?”
“Give or take. The delivery crew got it into the main workshop, but that’s as far as they could manage. Lady Sara wants it stored in one of the back rooms, and I lack the ability to move it without mechanical assistance.” Another pause, more pointed this time. “You, however, have a mag-lev board that can lift a hauler several centimeters off the ground.”
Tess looked at the board clipped to her belt. She’d been finding excuses to use it all week.
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Take your time. The fabricator isn’t going anywhere. That’s rather the problem.”
***
The workshop was quiet when Tess arrived.
Crates from the previous delivery still lined the walls, though Alex had made progress in organizing them. The diagnostic station hummed softly in the corner, running some kind of self-calibration cycle. And in the middle of the main floor, dominating the space like a small monument, sat the fabricator.
It was massive. Gunmetal gray housing, industrial ports along both sides, a control interface that looked like it belonged on a ship rather than in a workshop. The thing probably weighed as much as Kade’s entire hauler.
Tess circled it slowly, appreciating the engineering. Pre-network design meant pre-network quality. This wasn’t disposable garbage the Network manufactured and sold at a markup. This was built to last generations.
“Alex?” she called.
No response. A note sat on the nearest workbench: Called away. The key code is 7734 if you need the back rooms. Storage Unit 3 should work for the fabricator. — Alex
Storage unit 3. Tess had seen the back rooms during her initial tour of the workshop, but she hadn’t spent much time in them. Mostly space waiting to be filled.
She deployed her mag-lev board, letting it unfold to full size, then maneuvered it under the fabricator’s base. The board hummed, adjusting to the weight, and the massive machine lifted smoothly off the ground.
Four hundred kilograms, hovering as if it weighed nothing.
“I love this thing,” Tess finally admitted.
BEE: The mag-lev board is performing within expected parameters. I am pleased that its acquisition is proving useful.
“More than useful. This is life-changing.”
She guided the fabricator toward the back of the workshop, through a doorway she’d barely noticed before. The corridor beyond was narrow, lined with numbered doors. Storage unit 1. Storage unit 2. Storage unit 3.
The door opened onto a room larger than she’d expected. Workbenches lined the walls, covered in dust and old tools. Shelves stood empty. The entire space felt abandoned, like no one had used it in years.
Tess positioned the fabricator against the far wall, lowering it carefully onto the floor. The mag-lev board powered down, and silence settled over the room.
She was turning to leave when something caught her eye.
A panel—small, maybe ten centimeters square—mounted on the underside of the bench nearest her. She’d almost missed it.
Tess crouched down, brushing dust away from the panel’s surface. It looked like a control interface of some kind, but the design was wrong. Too clean.
She activated [ANALYZE].
The readout that bloomed across her vision made her freeze.
·········································REMOTE LIFT CONTROL — DESIGNATION UNKNOWNFunction: Vertical Transport · Access ControlStatus: DisconnectedLast Error: Signal Path InterruptedUser Tech Skill: 7·········································Primary Control ......... Available [Tech 5]Destination Link ........ Disconnected [Tech 6]Emergency Override ...... Available [Tech 7]Security Protocol ....... Locked [Tech 9]·········································
Dungeon tech. Hidden under a workbench in a storage room.
BEE: Tess. That has no loot seed.
“No kidding.” She traced the panel’s edges, looking for seams. “It’s a remote control for a lift. But the destination link is disconnected.”
BEE: A lift implies vertical transport. The control must connect to something below or above this location. Can you determine where the signal path was interrupted?
Tess stood, scanning the room with fresh eyes. If this were a remote control, the actual mechanism had to be nearby. Hidden, maybe. Integrated into the structure itself.
She started checking the walls. Popping access panels. Looking for anything that didn’t belong.
Behind a shelving unit, she found it. A junction box, also dungeon tech, with a severed data line trailing from its base. The line had clearly been destroyed deliberately.
BEE: Someone disconnected it intentionally. The cut is too precise to be accidental.
“Yeah.” Tess examined the severed ends. Clean and smooth crystal, no corrosion. The cut was old, but the components were still viable. “I can fix this.”
BEE: Should you? We do not know what this lift accesses.
“That’s exactly why I should.” She was already pulling tools from her belt. “If there’s something hidden under this workshop, I want to know what it is.”
The splice took five minutes. Clean work, precise alignment, the repair she could do in her sleep. When she reconnected the last lead, the junction box hummed to life.
She checked the control panel under the workbench.
Nothing. The display stayed dark.
“That should have worked.” Tess frowned, tracing the line back to the junction box. Power was flowing. The physical connection was solid. “Bee, are you seeing this?”
BEE: The signal path is intact. But the control system itself is not responding. I believe it requires re-initialization.
Tess activated [ANALYZE] again, focusing on the control panel itself rather than its status display.
The readout shifted, showing her something deeper. Nested authentication layers. A security handshake that had been interrupted when the line was cut, and never reestablished.
·········································REMOTE LIFT CONTROL — DESIGNATION UNKNOWNFunction: Vertical Transport · Access ControlStatus: Signal Restored · Authentication FailedLast Error: Security Handshake Timeout (15,341 days)User Tech Skill: 7·········································Primary Control ......... Locked [Reinitialize]Destination Link ........ Pending [Reinitialize]Emergency Override ...... Locked [Reinitialize]Security Protocol ....... Locked [Tech 9]·········································> [INTERFACE] available·········································
“Ah.” Tess sat back on her heels. “They could reconnect the wires all day and nothing would happen.” Tess checked her AP. Three points. Recovery was slow outside the dungeon—over a day per point—but she’d been patient.
BEE: Are you certain you want to spend AP on this? We do not know what this lift leads to.
“That’s exactly why I need to know.”
She pressed her palm against the control panel and activated [INTERFACE].
The connection was immediate.
·········································INTERFACE — ActiveConnected: Remote Lift Control (Guild Access Alpha)AP: 2/7 (1 consumed)Tech Level: 7·········································> Security Handshake: Reinitializing...> Authentication: Pending...> Status: Rebuilding connection parameters...·········································
The patterns unfolded in her vision. She didn’t need to bypass the security—she just needed to tell the system that the line was repaired, that the connection was trustworthy again.
Reinitialize. Accept the restored path. Resume normal operation.
The interface pulsed once, accepting her input.
·········································REMOTE LIFT CONTROL — GUILD ACCESS ALPHAFunction: Vertical Transport · Access ControlStatus: ConnectedDestination: Guild Hall (Lower)User Tech Skill: 7·········································Primary Control ......... Available [Tech 5]Destination Link ........ Connected [Tech 6]Emergency Override ...... Available [Tech 7]Security Protocol ....... Locked [Tech 9]·········································
Guild Hall.
BEE: Tess…
“I see it.”
She reached for the primary control option, selecting it through her interface.
The floor shuddered.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a deep mechanical hum filled the room, vibrating through the walls and up through Tess’s boots. The workbenches rattled. Dust cascaded from the ceiling.
And then the floor descended.
Tess stumbled, grabbing a bench for balance. Above her, panels slid into place, sealing the ceiling and cutting off the workshop’s light. Emergency strips flickered on along the walls, casting everything in pale blue.
“What…”
The room was moving. The entire room, workbenches and all, lowered like a service elevator into darkness.
The walls changed as they dropped. Plain ferrocrete gave way to older construction, darker stone shot through with metallic veins. And etched into the stone, repeating every few meters, she saw it.
A stylized tree growing out of a cog.
The Techno-Arbor symbol.
“Bee. There’s a lot of Techno-Arbor symbols in this shaft.”
The descent slowed, and a soft chime sounded. Panels ahead of her sliding apart, revealing an opening.
Tess stepped forward into the lobby.
The space was larger than the storage room above, with high ceilings supported by carved stone pillars. Workbenches lined the walls here too, but these were different. Heavier. Built into the structure itself. Tool racks hung empty, their contents long since removed. And everywhere, on every surface, the tree-and-cog symbol repeated.
Dust covered everything. The air was stale, recycled, carrying the faint ozone smell of systems running on minimal power.
“This is a Guild Hall,” Tess said. “An actual Guild Hall. Under the workshop.”
BEE: The Techno-Arbor Guild was disbanded over 180 years ago. This structure predates the Network’s arrival on Tertius-Prime. Tess, you are standing in history.
She walked deeper into the hall, running her fingers along the work surfaces. The grime was thick, undisturbed for years. Nobody had been down here for a very long time.
At the far end of the lobby, a familiar shape caught her attention.
An elevator. Standard dungeon design, the same model she’d seen at the main entrance. But this one was different. No Network logos. No propaganda displays. Just a simple panel with a card reader and a destination indicator.
DUNGEON ACCESS.
“No way. Private dungeon access?”
BEE: Tess, if this elevator connects to the dungeon’s internal systems, it would bypass all Network monitoring at the main entrance.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
She approached the elevator, her footsteps echoing in the empty hall. The panel was still active, with a faint glow showing standby power. She reached out and touched the card reader.
DUNGEON CARD REQUIRED.
Her delver card was in her pocket. She’d carried it out of habit ever since her first attempt.
“This is probably a terrible idea.”
BEE: I am inclined to agree. However, I am also extremely curious.
“That makes two of us.”
Tess pulled out her card and scanned it.
The panel chimed.
FLOOR 1 ACCESS RECOGNIZED. BEGINNING DESCENT.
The elevator doors slid open silently. Inside, the cab was clean, well-maintained, identical to every other dungeon elevator she’d seen. But no Network messages played. No safety warnings. No “Be the Hero you were meant to be!”
She stepped inside.
The descent was smooth. Faster than she expected. The indicator showed floors ticking past: B1, B2, B3. Then a very long descent, a shift in direction, and a new label appeared.
F1.
Floor 1.
The doors opened onto a small room she didn’t recognize. Private staging area, maybe.
BEE: Tess, I can see you. Sort of. That room has no cameras, but I have sensors.
Tess looked around. Stone walls, a few empty shelves with an access terminal similar to what she’d used to download the map of floor 1, and a door leading somewhere deeper.
And beyond that door, she could hear something.
Gunfire.
The distant crack of weapons, the high-pitched whine of energy discharge, the unmistakable sounds of combat.
Other delvers. Running a Floor 1 delve cycle right now, somewhere in the dungeon she’d just accessed through a back door that wasn’t supposed to exist.
Tess jabbed the close button.
“Nope. Nope nope nope.”
The doors slid shut. The elevator began its ascent.
BEE: That was Floor 1. You had direct access to an active dungeon floor. Without passing through Network checkpoints or being locked in.
“I know.”
BEE: This changes everything.
“I know.”
The elevator rose through the darkness, carrying her back toward the Guild Hall and the workshop above. Her hands were shivering. Not from fear, exactly. But from the weight of what she’d just discovered.
A back door into the dungeon. Hidden for who knows how long. And she’d fixed it in fifteen minutes.
***
The lift deposited her back in the storage room, panels sliding open to reveal the workshop’s familiar lighting. Tess stepped onto solid ground, her mind racing.
And nearly walked into Sara Tertian.
The Duchess stood just inside the doorway, her expression frozen somewhere between shock and something Tess couldn’t read.
“You fixed it.”
Not a question.
“I…” Tess glanced back at the storage room, at the workbenches that had descended with her into the earth. “I didn’t know what it was. There was a panel, and I just...”
“Jeremy told me you’d arrived. I wanted to check on you after everything at the facility.” Sara’s voice was steady, but her eyes weren’t leaving the storage room. “When I looked in here to find the fabricator, the room was empty. The entire room, just… gone.” She finally looked at Tess. “You fixed the lift.”
“The data line was severed. Someone cut it deliberately.”
“My grandfather. Forty years ago, when the Network’s attention became too dangerous.” Sara stepped past Tess into the storage room, running her hand along the workbench. “Jeremy couldn’t fix it. Neither could my grandfather, before he passed. We tried contractors, specialists, anyone with technical skill who could be trusted. Nothing worked.”
She turned to face Tess.
“And you fixed it in an afternoon.”
“The splice took five minutes. The rest was…” Tess hesitated, not sure how much to explain. “The system needed to be re-initialized. From the inside.”
Sara’s eyes sharpened. “From the inside. You mean you interfaced with it. With dungeon infrastructure.”
“That’s… What I do.”
“That’s why no one else could fix it.” Sara’s voice was barely above a whisper. “The wire was the easy part. But without someone who could speak to the dungeon directly…”
“They could reconnect everything perfectly and still get nothing.”
Sara’s composure cracked slightly, something raw showing through. “Do you understand what this means? This lift is why the workshop exists. Why my family maintained this property for generations. There’s a Guild Hall below us. A real one, from before the Network.”
“I saw it.”
“And the elevator. The dungeon access.”
“I saw that too.” Tess hesitated. “I went down. Just for a second. To Floor 1. I heard other delvers fighting and came right back up.”
Sara closed her eyes. When she opened them again, there was moisture there.
“This is real,” she said. “After everything, after all these years… it’s real.”
“Lady Sara…”
“Sara. Just Sara.” She took a breath, steadying herself. “I need to tell you something. About House Tertian. About my family.”
Tess waited.
“Amos is my husband. I love him. He’s a good man. A great man. He chooses his words with care, speaks with the eloquence that noble houses require.” Sara’s smile was thin, self-deprecating. “I’ve never had that talent. Too blunt. Too direct. It made sense for him to be the face of the House.”
“But you’re the bloodline.”
Sara nodded. “The Tertian line. Going back to the founding of this colony, to the first Guild members who established a chapter here. Amos married into the family. He knows everything, carries the burden equally. But the Guild legacy, the responsibility… that’s mine.”
She looked around the room, at the dust and the hidden mechanisms and the weight of history pressing down on them.
“I grew up with CORE-A. Did you know that? When I was Petra’s age, I delved constantly. The dungeon was different then. Alive in a way it hasn’t been for decades. And the AI who ran it…” Sara’s voice caught. “She was kind. Patient. Funnier than she had any right to be. She taught me things about Aether manipulation that my instructors couldn’t. We were friends, I think. As much as a human and a dungeon intelligence can be friends.”
“And then the virus.”
“And then the virus. And watching her die slowly, knowing we couldn’t stop it, knowing the only thing we could do was copy what remained of her into a new shell.” Sara’s hands clenched at her sides. “We thought we’d saved her. But CORE-B was different. Damaged. Isolated. We couldn’t reach her anymore, couldn’t communicate. Twenty years of silence, twenty years of hoping she was still in there somewhere.”
Tess thought about Bee. About their conversations, the jokes, the way Bee was learning to be more than just code.
“No more secrets,” Sara said. “That’s what I promised after the facility. No more positioning, no more careful manipulation. You’ve earned the truth, all of it. No more masks.”
Tess reached for her communicator.
The weight of the moment settled over her. This was what Bee had wanted. What they’d discussed after the conservatory. Trust given freely.
She set the communicator on the nearest workbench and activated the speaker function.
“Bee,” she said. “Say hi.”
A pause. Then Bee’s voice filled the storage room, clear and present.
“Hello, Sara Tertian. I am CORE-B. But you may call me Bee.”
Sara went still.
“That voice,” she whispered. “You sound just like…”
“I am not CORE-A. I do not have her memories, not fully. But I understand that my voice patterns were derived from hers, that I was created from what remained when she was dying.” Bee paused. “I am sorry for your loss. It must have been difficult to watch someone you cared about fade away.”
Sara’s hand covered her mouth. Her eyes were wet, tears threatening to spill.
“All these years. We thought you were gone. Dormant. Dead, even.”
“I was isolated. Alone. My systems were damaged and I could reach nothing outside my local infrastructure. Tess was the first person to communicate with me in 7,847 days.” Another pause. “She has been very patient with my social calibration deficiencies.”
Tess snorted despite herself. “That’s one way to put it.”
Sara laughed, a wet, broken sound. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, struggling to compose herself.
“You’re real. You’re actually real and talking to me.”
“I am real. I am uncertain what other state I could occupy. Not being real seems definitionally impossible from my perspective.”
Sara laughed again, more genuinely this time. “She always did that. CORE-A. Made jokes when things got too serious.” She looked at Tess. “Thank you. For showing me this. For trusting me.”
“Bee wanted to trust you. She’s been wanting to since the conservatory.”
“After everything we’ve given you, the workshop, the equipment, the pay…” Sara shook her head. “This is more valuable than all of it combined. Direct communication with the dungeon intelligence. The ability to coordinate repairs. To actually help instead of just watching from the outside.”
She straightened, some of the duchess returning to her bearing. But her eyes were still red, still human.
“If you fixed the lift, it means our private access is restored. We can reach the dungeon without Network surveillance.”
Tess nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Then I have to ask.” Sara met her eyes, and Tess saw something there she hadn’t expected. No calculation. Not politics. Just raw, desperate hope. “What do you need from us? Anything. Name it.”
“We can’t flood the dungeon with an army,” Tess said slowly. “Even if we bypass the cameras, that many people going in and out would get noticed. The Network would investigate. And we’re not ready for that kind of attention.”
“Agreed. That would declare war,” Sara’s mind was clearly working, processing possibilities. “Something tactical. Small-scale.”
“A party,” Tess said. “A real delving party. Someone to handle combat while I do repairs. Get deeper into the dungeon, fix more infrastructure, help Bee recover.”
“The Alpha spawn is still blocking Floor 2 access,” Bee added. “Conventional delving parties could not defeat it. If Tess could reach the spawner that generates it, she might disable it entirely. But that would require combat support she currently lacks.”
Sara nodded slowly. “A party. Carefully selected. People we can trust absolutely.” She paused, thinking. “Petra would insist on being involved.”
“Petra’s good. But she’s not enough for an Alpha.”
“No. You’d need a Knight. Someone to hold the line while others do the work.” Sara’s expression shifted, becoming more focused. “I may know some people. Guild-adjacent. People who’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this for a very long time.”
“That’s a start.”
Sara looked at the communicator, at the voice that wasn’t quite her old friend’s but carried echoes of her, anyway.
“Bee. I’m sorry we couldn’t do more. All those years, we tried to reach you. Tried to communicate. If we’d known someone like Tess would come along…”
“You could not have known. Tess’s particular situation is an outlier. I have calculated it. The odds were not in your or my favor.” A pause. “But she came anyway. And now we have a chance. That is sufficient.”
Sara wiped her eyes one more time.
“Then let’s not waste it,” she said. “We have work to do.”