The coffee was terrible, and the hour was worse.
Tess sat at her workbench in Rivera’s Reprieve, both hands wrapped around a mug that had gone lukewarm twenty minutes ago. The workshop’s overhead lights hummed at half power, an hour too early for anything to feel awake. Outside, Sector 7 was still waking up. In here, Marcus was already on his second cup and his third datapad.
Text scrolled across Tess’s vision:
BEE: Background search complete. Subject: Asha. No registered surname. Race: Veldi. Arrived on Tertius-Prime approximately sixteen days ago via freight transport from Kovacs Station. Healer class, specific variant unclear. Public records are incomplete. No local affiliations. Has approached multiple Floor 2 parties since arrival. Rejected some, was rejected by others. Reputation summary: difficult. I have three hypotheses about why, but insufficient data to rank them.
“Difficult,” Tess muttered.
Marcus looked up from his datapad. “Bee’s assessment?”
“Among other things.” Tess took a sip of cold coffee and regretted it immediately. “Veldi. That’s the…”
“Pointed ears, dark skin, don’t bullshit them or they’ll know.” Marcus set the datapad down. “I’ve worked with plenty Veldi before. Long time ago, before I met your mom. They’re good people if you know how to talk to them.”
“And you know how to talk to them.”
“Sure do.” He pushed himself up from the crate he’d been using as a chair. “That’s why I’m coming with you.”
The morning tram to Sector 9 was nearly empty, since practically no one had a reason to go that far. A few shift workers heading to the industrial plants, a maintenance crew with tool bags that looked older than Tess. Nobody talked. The car rattled through the transit tunnel with the telltale vibration of infrastructure running on minimal power reserves.
The sector markers ticked past the window—out of seven, then into eight—each one a little dimmer than the last; the lighting panels showing their age in ways that the Sector 5 tram never did.
Her communicator sat in her jacket pocket, channel open. Bee could hear everything, though she’d been quiet since they left the workshop.
“What do we actually know about what happened?” Tess asked.
“Pieced it together from the arrest report and some back-channels.” Marcus leaned against the tram’s support pole, arms crossed. “She was in the Sector 9 market yesterday. Some kind of accident at one of the mining equipment depots nearby. Plasma cutter malfunction. Worker got caught bad. Burns, internal damage, the kind of accident that kills fast.”
“And she healed him.”
“Right there in the market. Didn’t wait for authorization, didn’t file forms, just started working.” Marcus’s face was neutral, but Tess had known him long enough to read the approval underneath. “A Network compliance officer tried to stop her. Told her she couldn’t use an unregistered healing class on a Tertius-Prime citizen without proper documentation.”
“While the man was dying.”
“While the man was dying.” Marcus shook his head. “She broke the officer’s nose. Market stall got knocked over in the scuffle. Security showed up, cuffed her, hauled her in. The worker lived.”
The tram slowed. Sector 9’s platform was even dimmer than she’d expected, half the lighting panels dark, the rest cycling through irregular flickers that suggested failing capacitors. The attendant’s booth was empty. A maintenance sign had been posted on the access gate that said we’ll get to it eventually rather than work in progress.
They stepped off into air that tasted like metal and recycled atmosphere.
“This is what seven-point-four percent looks like out here?” Tess said.
Marcus didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
Sector 9 was industrial in the sense that it was necessary but not valued. Fabrication plants lined the main corridor, their facades showing decades of patch repairs and makeshift modifications. Conduit bundles ran along the walls in tangles that would have made any proper engineer wince. The foot traffic was sparse: workers in stained coveralls, a few merchants with carts that had seen better decades, and nobody moving fast because there was nowhere fast to go.
The holding facility sat at the far end of the commercial strip. A repurposed warehouse, from the look of it, converted into something official with minimal effort. Reinforced doors, a security desk behind scratched plasteel, holding cells visible through a partition at the back. The whole place had the feel of infrastructure that had been adequate once and hadn’t been updated since.
A guard in House Tertian colors sat behind the desk, feet up, scrolling through something on a personal display. He looked up as they approached, and his expression shifted from boredom to recognition.
“Marcus Rivera.” He dropped his feet to the floor. “Didn’t expect to see you down here.”
“Tomas.” Marcus stepped up to the desk with the easy familiarity of someone renewing an old acquaintance. “Still working the morning shift?”
“Someone has to.” Tomas was maybe fifty, his face weathered by years of shift work and not enough natural light. He glanced at Tess, then back to Marcus. “This about the Veldi?”
“Word travels fast.”
“Word travels when someone breaks a compliance officer’s nose in the middle of the market.” Tomas leaned back in his chair. “She’s been trouble since they brought her in. Won’t stop talking. Told Officer Hendricks exactly where he could put his incident report… she’s not wrong. She saved that guy’s life.”
“Sounds about right.” Marcus pulled out his credentials. “I want to take a crack at recruiting her.”
Tomas raised an eyebrow. “Recruiting. For what, exactly?”
“Delving work.” Marcus let that sit for a beat. “You know how it is.”
“I know how it is.” Tomas studied the credentials, then shrugged. “Fine by me. But you’ll have to pay the fine if you want her out. Destruction of property, public disturbance, assaulting an official. It adds up.”
“How much?”
“Twelve grand.”
Marcus didn’t flinch, which meant it was within the budget Sara had allocated, but his jaw tightened. Not cheap.
“We’ll talk to her first,” Marcus said. “Then we’ll see.”
The holding area was three cells behind the reinforced partition. Two were empty. The third held a woman sitting with her back against the wall, legs stretched out, arms crossed over her chest. She looked up as they approached, and there was Asha.
Veldi. The features were unmistakable once you knew what to look for. Angular face, sharp cheekbones, ears that tapered to subtle points half-hidden by close-cropped black hair. Her skin was deep brown, almost black in the harsh overhead lighting, and there was a bruise yellowing along her jaw that suggested the arrest hadn’t been entirely one-sided. Compact build, maybe a few centimeters shorter than Tess, with muscle definition earned through actual work rather than training.
Her eyes were pale amber, and they tracked Marcus and Tess with the lazy precision of someone who’d already assessed them and filed the results.
“Well.” Her voice was low, with a rhythm that clipped certain words shorter than others. “You be Tess Rivera. Heard the name plenty since I got to this rock. Always in quiet-speak. Heard you been asking about me.”
Tess paused; she wasn’t sure how to react to the news that people were talking about her. “Yeah, this is my father, Marcus.”
Asha’s gaze shifted to Marcus, and her posture changed, something closer to recalibration than relaxation. “You worked off-world plenty. Can tell by how you stand. Kovacs? Meridian station?”
“Was a kid on Meridian.” Marcus moved to the side of the cell, positioning himself at an angle that felt conversational rather than confrontational. “Plenty Veldi friends. Good people.”
“Good people, bad luck, same as anywhere.” Asha’s mouth curved. “So. You here to recruit me or lecture me? Had plenty lectures already. The one about proper authorization forms was real educational.”
“Heard you broke someone’s nose over those forms.”
“Hit him good, yeah.” She didn’t sound apologetic. If anything, there was satisfaction in it. “Man was gonna let some miner die over forms. Forms! While blood’s coming out places blood shouldn’t come out. Plasma cutter caught him across the chest and gut, burning through from the inside, and this Founders-fucked bastard wants me to stop and fill out documentation.” She made a sound that was half-laugh, half-snarl. “So I filled out his face instead.”
“The miner,” Tess said. “You know he made it?”
“Wouldn’t be sitting here if he didn’t. Would’ve kept working till he was stable or I dropped.” Asha shrugged. “Security showed up before I dropped. Lucky for them.”
Text appeared in Tess’s vision, Bee’s familiar formatting:
BEE: Sector 9 medical records confirm: one Doran Vasquez, mining equipment operator, admitted yesterday with severe plasma burns and internal hemorrhaging. Treated and stabilized. Prognosis: full recovery. The attending physician noted “exceptional field triage” as a contributing factor. She is extremely skilled. This is encouraging.
“Just got word,” Tess said. “The worker’s fine. Doran Vasquez. Full recovery. Apparently whoever worked on him in the field did exceptional triage.”
Asha’s face didn’t change, but her shoulders eased. “Good. Vasquez. Didn’t get his name. Was too busy keeping his organs on the inside.”
Marcus had been watching the exchange with the patience Tess recognized from years of watching him work. He waited for the right moment, then stepped in.
“The offer’s simple,” he said. “We pay the fine, you walk out of here, and we talk about a job.”
“What kind of job needs a healer bad enough you pay that fine?” Asha’s eyes narrowed. “And don’t give me the standard pitch. Had three parties try to recruit me since I landed. All of them wanted cheap support for Floor 2 runs. None of them wanted to split fair.”
“This isn’t a standard pitch.” Marcus glanced at Tess, then back to Asha. “We’re putting together something bigger. Floor 2 is part of it, but it’s not the whole picture. We’re talking about fixing this dungeon. Actually fixing it. Aether output, infrastructure, the works.”
“Fixing the dungeon.” Asha’s voice was flat. “The one everyone say is cleared out and worthless.”
“Everyone’s wrong.”
She studied him for a long moment. “You can keep talking.”
Marcus laid it out. The broad strokes, nothing classified, but enough to paint the picture. Aether output climbing, with room to climb more. A team that had already cleared Floor 1. House Tertian backing. Real loot, real progression, real impact.
“And you need a healer,” Asha said. “Because Floor 2’s been killing people proper.”
“Floor 2’s killed three parties last we checked. Coordinated spawns, tactical behavior, things that punish mistakes hard.” Marcus met her eyes. “We’ve got fighters. Good ones. What we don’t have is someone who can keep them standing when things go wrong.”
“Things always go wrong.”
“They do. That’s why we need someone good.”
Asha was quiet for a moment. Her amber eyes moved from Marcus to Tess, weighing them both.
“Loot split?”
“Standard splits. First pick on healer-relevant drops.”
“Level progression?”
“We’re pushing deeper as fast as we can manage. You’ll level faster with us than with any pickup group on this planet.”
“Politics?”
“There’s politics involved. House business, Network complications, things you’d need to know about eventually.” Marcus spread his hands. “But the work is the work. You heal, you get paid, you level. The rest is just context.”
Asha’s mouth curved into what might have been a smile. “Don’t like politics. Loot and levels, that’s the work. Rest is just noise.” She stood, moving with an easy physicality built from years of never being still. “Fine. I’m in. But I want to see what you’ve got before I commit full. Show me your operation, your team, your setup. If it’s real, I stay. If it’s bullshit, I walk. No drama.”
“No drama,” Marcus said.
“Good.” Asha cracked her neck. “Now get me out of this damn cell. Smells like someone died in here, and I don’t mean metaphorically.”
***
The fine was substantial. Marcus paid it without comment, signing the release forms with the mechanical efficiency of someone who’d dealt with bureaucracy before. Tomas processed the paperwork and handed over Asha’s confiscated belongings: a medical kit, a belt pouch of supplies, and a knife that probably should have been confiscated but apparently hadn’t been noticed. He waved them toward the exit.
They were almost at the door when Tomas called out.
“Oh, hey. Almost forgot.” He didn’t look up from his display. “The compliance officer she hit? He flagged her class registration before she got processed. She’s banned from the public dungeon entrance. One month, minimum. Could be longer if they decide to push it.”
Marcus stopped walking.
“A month.”
“Maybe more. However long they want to make a point.” Tomas shrugged. “Take it up with Network administration if you don’t like it.”
“Network administration can take it up with my…” Marcus bit off the rest of the sentence, but his face finished it for him. He turned and pushed through the door without another word.
Outside, Sector 9’s morning light was the same dim gray it had been when they arrived. Asha fell into step beside them, rolling her shoulders as if she was shaking off the cell.
“Ban’s gonna be a problem,” she said. “Can’t heal your team if I can’t get to the dungeon.”
“We noticed,” Marcus said. His jaw still hadn’t unclenched.
They walked in silence for half a block. The industrial corridor was waking up around them, more foot traffic now, the sounds of fabrication plants cycling through their morning startups. Tess’s mind was already working through the implications. The public entrance was out. Network administration would drag its feet on any appeal, especially with House Tertian involved. The compliance officer would push for maximum inconvenience.
But they didn’t need the public entrance.
“The ban’s for the main doors,” Tess said. “The ones the Network controls.”
Asha looked at her. Waiting.
“Yeah.” Tess kept her voice even, almost quiet. “That’s not going to be a problem.”
For a moment, Asha just stared at her. Then her mouth curved into a genuine smile, the first one Tess had seen that reached her eyes.
“You Riveras.” She laughed, short and genuine. “Thinking you might be the real thing.”
Behind them, Sector 9’s lights flickered and steadied. Ahead, the tram platform waited. And somewhere in Tess’s pocket, her communicator carried Bee’s attention, processing this new variable, calculating how it fit into the larger picture.
One more piece of the puzzle, one step closer to being ready. Three weeks until the audit, and now they had a healer.
Assuming, of course, that nothing else went wrong.