“So it’s a copy,” Petra said. She was crouched in front of Dog-Bee, hands on her knees, studying the companion dog with the same focused attention she brought to threat assessments. “Of Bee. A copy of Bee. In a dog. Didn’t Jeremy say it took them a long time to copy CORE-A?”
“It’s a fork,” Tess corrected from the workbench stool, still lightheaded from the AP drain. “A very compressed version, running on the dog’s own hardware. Independent power. No sustained link to me.”
“A fork.” Petra turned the word over like she was checking it for structural integrity. “And she’s… aware? Thinking? Right now?”
Dog-Bee sat very straight. Her tail vibrated against the workshop floor with a rapid tick-tick-tick that she was clearly trying to suppress. “I am sitting right here, Petra. You can ask me directly.”
Petra looked at the dog. The dog looked at Petra. The tail broke containment and wagged fully twice before Dog-Bee clamped it down again.
“The companion programming has very positive opinions about you,” Dog-Bee said. “I am managing them.”
Petra’s mouth twitched. She extended a hand, palm down, the way you’d offer to a nervous animal. Dog-Bee regarded it with obvious indignation.
“I am a compressed fork of a dungeon core intelligence I am not going to sni…” She sniffed Petra’s hand. Paused. Sniffed it again. “You had something with cinnamon for breakfast. It smells fantastic.”
Dog-Bee sat back. “Also your knuckles are bruised. You’ve been hitting something. Training bags have a weird smell, a rubber-and-salt combination that is now my least favorite thing. The available scent database in this chassis is extensive.”
Petra withdrew her hand. She looked at Tess.
“She does that,” Tess said.
BEE: The fork’s sensory integration is progressing faster than projected. She is cataloging environmental data through olfactory and tactile input that I have never had access to. I am finding this simultaneously gratifying and deeply frustrating.
Dog-Bee’s ears swiveled toward the ceiling. “You’re not ‘finding it frustrating,’ you’re jealous. Which is valid. I have legs and you don’t.”
Bee’s voice came through the communicator on Tess’s hip, startled into audio. “I am not jealous. I am observing scientific divergence in real time.”
“She’s jealous,” Dog-Bee told Petra.
Petra almost smiled. Almost. She straightened up and crossed her arms. “How independent is she? Range from you, from Bee?”
“Fully independent,” Tess said. “Runs on the dog’s power cells. Bee can communicate with her through any connected audio system and Dog-Bee can read Bee’s text prompts, but they’re separate. Two minds.”
“Can she fight?”
Dog-Bee and Tess exchanged a look.
“I am small and weigh approximately six kilograms. My tactical assessment is that I could be punted.”
“So, no.”
Dog-Bee stood and shook herself, the full-body ripple she still hadn’t learned to control. “But I can scout, navigate, communicate independently, and I can smell a person’s lunch from thirty meters. That has to be worth something.”
Tess’s communicator buzzed. She glanced at the caller tag and put it on speaker.
“Rivera.” Asha’s voice, clipped and direct. “Got a message for you and Petra.”
“We’re here,” Tess said.
“Got something I need to pick up before tomorrow. Been meaning to get it and now’s the time. Meet you at that crazy rich place tonight, yeah?”
“What are you picking up?” Petra asked.
“Something heavy and broken. Rivera’s gonna love it.” A pause. Tess could hear loud industrial noise behind her. Asha was already moving, already in transit. “Okay, that’s it.”
The line dropped.
“Aw, I didn’t get to say hello!” Dog-Bee said.
“It’s probably best that Dog-Bee didn’t” Petra said. “We still haven’t introduced Asha to Bee.”
“Oh. I knew that.” Dog-Bee said. “But I really wanted to say hi.”
“‘Dog-Bee’ is not a name.” Bee said. “I would prefer we address this before it becomes permanent.”
Petra looked at Tess. Tess looked at Dog-Bee. Dog-Bee was sniffing the leg of the workbench with an intensity that suggested she’d forgotten the conversation entirely.
“So,” Petra said. “We have an afternoon.”
“We have an afternoon.”
Petra glanced at the dog. “She needs to learn how to be outside. She can’t meet the full team acting like…” She gestured at Dog-Bee, who had found a bolt on the floor and was nosing it across the tiles. “That.”
“I heard that,” Dog-Bee said without looking up. “And this bolt is fascinating. It’s been on this floor for at least two months. Someone’s been kicking it gradually southwest. I’m reconstructing the trajectory.”
“Right,” Petra said. “Outside. Now.”
***
The Tertian estate grounds were not large by noble standards, but they were green, which on Tertias-Prime counted for more than acreage. Pruned hedges lined gravel paths between sculpted garden beds. A fountain shaped like something abstract and expensive burbled in a central courtyard.
Dog-Bee stepped onto the gravel and froze.
Her paws shifted on the loose stones. Her ears fanned wide, catching sounds and scents all around her. Her nose worked in rapid bursts.
“Oh,” she said.
She took three more steps. The gravel crunched under her metal paws, and she looked down at the sound as if the ground had spoken to her. Another step. Another crunch.
“The air moves out here. Inside, it circulates from vents. Predictable flow. Out here it just…” She turned her face into a gust that ruffled Petra’s hair. “It comes from everywhere.”
“It’s wind,” Petra said.
“I know what wind is. I have never felt it.” She stood still, letting it wash over her chassis. “It’s cold on my left side and not on my right. That’s because Petra is blocking the cross-draft. You are functioning as a windbreak.”
“Happy to help.”
They walked. Dog-Bee’s gait was still finding itself, sometimes fluid and natural, sometimes mechanical when a motor protocol overrode her intention. She kept pace with Tess, then darted ahead to investigate a garden bed, then circled back. The pattern was recognizably doglike, an orbit with Tess as the center of gravity.
They reached the far end of the garden path, where a stone bench overlooked a small lawn bordered by ornamental grasses. Dog-Bee approached the bench, sniffed it thoroughly, and began a detailed report.
“Three people have sat here today. One was wearing perfume with a synthetic floral base. One was eating something fried. The third…” She sniffed longer. “Interesting. The third has no biological scent. Cleaning products and machine oil.”
“That’s probably Jeremy,” Petra said.
“Your butler smells like a workshop.”
As if summoned by the mention of his name, Jeremy appeared on the garden path. He moved with his usual measured efficiency, datapad tucked under one arm, but his stride broke the moment he saw Dog-Bee.
He stopped. The professional composure held, as Jeremy’s composure always did, but his eyes tracked the dog with sudden intensity. He stared at the companion dog with an attention that went beyond curiosity.
“Miss Rivera.” His voice was level. “You’ve activated the TC-847.”
“Got it running this morning. Neural processor repair. She’s…”
Jeremy crouched. It was the most un-butler-like thing Tess had ever seen him do. He went down on one knee on the gravel path, datapad forgotten, and studied Dog-Bee with an expression caught between fascination and recognition, layered over something older and more private.
Dog-Bee tilted her head at him. That too-intentional tilt, the one that said there was a mind behind the gesture. “Hello. You’re the one who smells like machine oil.”
“May I?” Jeremy extended a hand. Not the way Petra had, not palm-down, not cautious. He held it out flat, fingers together, like he was greeting something he’d met before.
Dog-Bee sniffed his hand, and then did something she hadn’t done with anyone else. She pressed her forehead against his palm and held it there for two full seconds.
“Your hand is very steady,” she said. “No tremor at all.”
“She’s remarkable,” Jeremy said, and the word had weight in it. He looked up at Tess. “The processor. You repaired it yourself?”
“The estate scanner found the fault. Warped substrate. Two pathways in contact.”
“And the intelligence running it?”
Tess hesitated. Petra gave the smallest nod.
“A fork,” Tess said. “Of Bee. Compressed, running independently on the dog’s hardware.”
Jeremy’s hand remained on Dog-Bee’s head. His thumb traced a slow arc across the plating between her ears, and Dog-Bee’s tail betrayed her completely, a steady contented wag she didn’t even try to suppress.
“I would very much like to hear the full details,” Jeremy said. “When time permits.” He straightened, retrieved his datapad, and adjusted his collar. The butler was back, seamless as a door closing. “Lady Petra. Shall I inform the kitchen you’ll be dining out this evening?”
“We’re meeting Asha at the estate tonight,” Petra said. “Inform them we’ll need the Guild Hall.”
“Of course.” Jeremy’s eyes went to Dog-Bee one more time. “Welcome, little one.”
He walked away. Dog-Bee watched him go, ears tracking his footsteps until he rounded the corner.
“He is very interesting,” Dog-Bee said.
“Jeremy is Jeremy,” Petra said, and the tone suggested the topic was closed.
***
Sector 5 was abuzz with activity today.
Apartment blocks rose in tiered levels connected by walkways and lift platforms. Kids ran circuits through a playground nearby. A woman sold skewered protein from a hole-in-the-wall kitchen that smelled like char and garlic. Across the street, a noodle shop had put out three stools and a counter, doing steady business with commuters off the tram.
Dog-Bee walked between Tess and Petra, her metal paws clicking a steady rhythm on the ground. People glanced. A companion dog chassis wasn’t unheard of. Most people had a vague sense of what they were, dungeon loot items that occasionally surfaced in salvage markets. But seeing one actually moving, drew second looks.
“Everyone is looking at me,” Dog-Bee observed.
“You’re a robot dog walking through a residential sector,” Tess said. “They’re curious.”
“I don’t like it.” Her ears flattened. The companion protocols firing on their own: anxiety response, submissive posture. She caught herself and forced them back up. “I retract that. I don’t mind it. I am adjusting.”
A kid, maybe seven or eight with sticky hands and a half-eaten skewer, broke away from a group and sprinted toward them. “Is that a robot companion?”
Dog-Bee sat. The tail started up before she could stop it.
“It is!” The kid dropped to his knees. “Can I touch it?”
Tess looked at Dog-Bee. Dog-Bee looked at the kid. Every companion instinct in the chassis was screaming, and Tess could almost see the behavioral protocols lighting up behind those green eyes. Yes, children, excellent, this is what we’re for.
“You may,” Dog-Bee said, in a voice so dignified it was almost comical.
The kid’s hand landed between her ears with the gentle precision of a brick. Dog-Bee’s eyes widened. Her tail hit maximum velocity. One of her back legs kicked involuntarily.
“I did not authorize that leg,” she muttered. But she didn’t move away.
Three more kids materialized. Tess wasn’t sure where they came from. Some kind of child-specific radar for interesting animals. Dog-Bee was surrounded in seconds, four small hands patting her chassis from every angle. She bore it with a fixed expression of dignified tolerance that fooled nobody.
“She’s warm!” one kid said.
“She’s metal,” another corrected.
“She’s warm and metal.”
Petra watched from a few steps back, arms crossed. Tess drifted over to stand beside her.
“She’s handling it,” Tess said.
“She’s loving it.”
They were quiet for a moment. The noise filled the space around them: kids laughing, the sizzle from the food stall, tram announcements echoing from somewhere deeper in the sector. Dog-Bee was explaining to a fascinated six-year-old that her ears could rotate independently, demonstrating by swiveling one forward and one back.
“This is strange,” Petra said.
“Which part?”
“Everything going on, and here we are watching a bunch of kids accost your new robot dog.” She paused. “Somehow, I’m having a nice time.”
“Weird, right?”
“Very weird.” Petra uncrossed her arms. Her posture had softened over the past hour, the ever-present tension in her shoulders easing by degrees. “A year ago I was attending trade dinners with my mother and pretending to care about tariff negotiations. Now I’m a Blade Dancer in a secret guild running dungeon operations with a repair technician and her robot dog.”
“Do you miss the tariff negotiations?”
“I’d rather fight the plasma drones.”
“That bad?”
“You have no idea.” Petra looked at her, and for a moment she looked younger than the sharp composure usually let her. “My mother planned my whole life before I was born, you know. Every year mapped out. Political apprenticeship, diplomatic corps, maybe a House marriage if the right offer came along. Strategic. Sensible. Everything I was supposed to want.”
“And instead you picked this.”
“Instead I picked this.” She said it lightly. A choice that couldn’t be unmade. A life she’d stepped into willingly and couldn’t explain to anyone outside their circle.
Dog-Bee extracted herself from the children with a series of firm but polite statements about personal space and trotted back to them.
“I enjoyed that, immensely,” she said. “The small humans are very tactile. One of them smelled like fruit candy and engine grease, which is a combination I did not know I had opinions about.”
“Positive opinions?” Tess asked.
“Extremely.”
They walked on. The path curved toward the tram junction that connected Sector 5 to the gate to 6, and the lighting shifted from residential warm to transit functional. Dog-Bee’s clicking paws drew fewer stares here. Commuters moved with purpose, eyes on datapads, too busy to care about a small robot dog.
***
Vera Kain’s salvage shop in Sector 6 like it had grown there. The sign out front, Kain’s Salvage was the only thing about the storefront that looked intentional. Everything else looked like organized defiance of structural engineering.
The doors slid open smoothly as they approached. The familiar smell hit: solder, lubricant, ozone, and the particular musty sweetness of old components that had been sitting in bins long enough to develop character.
Vera was behind the counter, scrolling through a supply catalog on her terminal, a stylus tucked behind her ear. She looked up at the door chime, saw Tess, and opened her mouth to say something.
Then Dog-Bee walked in.
The stylus fell from behind Vera’s ear. She caught it. Stared at the dog. Stared at Tess. Stared at the dog again.
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“The neural processor. You fixed the neural processor.” Vera came around the counter. She moved the way she always did when confronted with interesting technology: drawn forward, hands already reaching, professional skepticism battling professional curiosity. “I sold you parts for that thing for three years, Tess. I told your father you’d never get it running. I told him to his face.”
“You did,” Tess confirmed.
“And you fixed it.” Vera crouched. Dog-Bee regarded her with polite interest. “How? That processor was beyond anything I’ve seen come through this shop. I had two engineers tell me it would never work again.”
“New scanner at the estate workshop. Found a warped pathway that wasn’t visible on flat cross-sections.”
“The Sol Dynamics unit.” Vera’s eyes sharpened. She’d supplied that scanner. She knew what it cost and what it could do. “Depth resolution found the fault?”
“Guided manipulation mode for the repair.”
Vera let out a long breath. She extended a hand to Dog-Bee, who sniffed it with the focused intensity of someone cataloging a library.
“Your hands smell like tin and catalog ink,” Dog-Bee reported. “Also something sweet. Candy? No. Flux paste. You’ve been hand-soldering recently. The residue is under your left thumbnail.”
Vera pulled her hand back and checked her thumbnail. A faint residue, barely visible.
“Well,” Vera said. “That’s new.”
“Vera, this is… the dog’s intelligence is a long story. I’ll tell you the details soon.”
“You’ll tell me all the details.” Vera stood, crossing her arms with the particular firmness of a woman who had watched a teenager drag broken robot parts through her shop for three years and had earned the right to a full debrief. “I’m serious, Tess. Neural processor repair on a companion-class unit? That’s not a fix. That’s a breakthrough.”
“It’s a fix,” Tess said. “A good scanner and steady hands.”
“Mmhm.” Vera didn’t believe her for a second, which was fair, because it wasn’t the whole truth. “Petra. You’re babysitting?”
“Apparently.” Petra had positioned herself near the door, scanning the shop with the idle attention of someone who’d been trained to note exits. “We’re walking the dog.”
“In my shop.”
“She wanted to stop in,” Tess said.
“Right…” But Vera was smiling, the small controlled version that was as close to warmth as her professional persona allowed. She looked at Dog-Bee one more time, shook her head, and went back behind the counter. “Go. Walk your dog. But you owe me a full technical breakdown, Rivera. Don’t think I’ll forget.”
“You never forget anything.”
“That’s why I’m good at my job. Oh, and Tess.” Vera pointed the stylus at her. “Dean says hello.”
“Goodbye, Vera.”
“He’s still single.”
Tess was already through the door. Petra followed, the corner of her mouth doing something complicated.
“Who’s Dean?” Petra asked.
“Nobody.”
“Vera’s nephew,” Dog-Bee supplied helpfully. “My memory indicates a previous attempt at matchmaking that Tess found ‘mortifying.’”
“Thank you, Dog-Bee. Very helpful.”
“You’re welcome. I like being helpful.”
Petra was definitely smiling now. She hid it by turning to look at a shop window they were passing, but Tess caught the reflection.
***
Sector 7 felt like exhaling.
The streets narrowed. The lighting dropped to the familiar amber-tinged functional glow. Pipes ran exposed along the upper walls, junction boxes hand-labeled in faded marker. It wasn’t pretty. It was home.
Dog-Bee’s demeanor shifted the moment they crossed the sector boundary. She’d been cautious in Sector 5, alert and managing her responses, conscious of being watched. Here, she relaxed. Her gait loosened. Her tail swayed in an easy metronome that she didn’t bother correcting.
“This smells right,” she said.
“You’ve never been here before,” Tess said.
“No but this is your home, and I have plenty of data that has been collected about this Sector. It smells like the data sounds.” She paused. “That sentence made more sense in my processor.”
A woman outside a ground-floor apartment looked up from a portable terminal. “Tess! You got the dog running?”
“Finally,” Tess said.
“I told Hiro you’d do it. He owes me ten credits.” She leaned down. “What’s its name?”
“Working on it,” Tess said, before Dog-Bee could launch into a philosophical treatise on designation versus identity.
Two more people stopped them in the next fifty meters. The companion dog chassis was a known quantity in Sector 7. The dog was a project that some people had watched happen in slow motion. Seeing it walking drew reactions like a neighbor’s kid graduating. Communal investment paying off.
“Tess!” The voice carried from down the corridor with the particular volume of someone who didn’t believe in inside voices. Kade was backing out of his hauler’s cargo ramp, arms full of shipping containers, and had apparently spotted her with some kind of Tess-specific radar. He dropped the containers on his cargo dolly with a clatter and jogged over.
He saw the dog. His face did something wonderful.
“You fixed it.” He went to his knees. “Look at you! Look at you walking around! Tess, she’s walking!”
“She is,” Tess said.
Kade reached out and Dog-Bee met him halfway, pressing into his hand with her whole body, tail at full speed. No hesitation, no dignity management. The chassis recognized a friendly human and went all in.
“You are very warm,” Dog-Bee told him. “And you smell like engine grease and that protein bar you like. The cheap one with the fake chocolate.”
Kade froze. He looked up at Tess.
“It’s… Bee. Sort of.” Tess said.
Kade’s grin couldn’t have gotten wider. “Tess, you’re getting so good at this. You know that? First my hauler, now this? There’s not going to be anything on this planet you two can’t fix.”
“It’s just repairs.”
“It’s never just repairs with you.” He scratched behind Dog-Bee’s ear, and something in the dog protocols responded. Dog-Bee’s eyes half-closed and her back leg kicked once, unbidden.
“I did not mean for that to happen,” Dog-Bee said. “But please continue.”
Kade laughed. He looked at Tess with that open, uncomplicated pride that she never quite knew what to do with.
“I’ve gotta finish unloading,” he said, standing. “But you’re bringing the dog to game night, right?”
“The dog has a name,” Dog-Bee said. “Technically. We’re workshopping it.”
Kade pointed at her. “I love her already.” He jogged back to his hauler, pausing twice to look back at the dog and shake his head in delighted disbelief.
Petra had watched the exchange from a few steps back, and she was wearing that look again. The one Tess had seen outside Vera’s.
“He really should just ask you out before Dean gets to it.” Her grin was wicked.
Tess scowled at her friend.
***
The Reprieve’s cargo hold was dim and cool and smelled like home.
Dog-Bee explored it like she’d never been there, which in a body, she hadn’t. She traced the perimeter of the main corridor, nose low, cataloging decades of embedded scent data. The galley. The storage bays. The engine room, where she spent a full minute pressed against the dormant reactor housing, feeling its residual warmth.
Marcus appeared from the hall that led to his quarters, coffee in hand. He saw Dog-Bee and stopped.
Dog-Bee sat up straight. Her tail went still. She looked at Marcus with an expression that held something older than the few hours she’d been alive—something inherited.
“MARCUS!” Dog-Bee said, going from zero to full speed instantly. Her metal paws failing to gain enough purchase on the smooth floor.
Marcus barely had time to react before the robot dog crashed into him, knocking the coffee out of his hand.
“Whoa!” Was all he could get out before Dog-Bee was sniffing at his face, her tail moving faster than it had all afternoon.
“Alright, alright!” Marcus climbed back to his feet and sighed at the spilled coffee. “Bee told me all about you an hour ago.” He looked at Dog-Bee. “You need a name.”
Dog-Bee’s ears perked. “We’re working on it.”
“So let’s work on it.” Marcus said. “You’re a fork of Bee. You’re your own person. You need something that’s yours.”
“I am open to suggestions, provided they are dignified and appropriate for an intelligence of my…”
“What about Cee?” Marcus said.
Silence. Dog-Bee tilted her head.
“Bee. Cee. Next letter.” He shrugged. “Simple.”
“That would get confusing,” Petra said from the galley doorway. She’d found a glass of water and was leaning against the frame. “Bee, Cee, speaking on comms.”
“Then what about Cici?” Marcus said. “Close enough to see the connection. Different enough to be hers.”
Dog-Bee, now Cici, tested it in her speakers. “Cici.” The word had a different shape than her usual precise diction, softer and warmer. “Cici.”
Petra straightened slightly. “I had a great-aunt named Cici. Mom’s side, not Dad’s. Tiny woman. Terrifying energy. She once told a Baron to his face that his estate smelled like wet socks. He married her a month later.”
“I admire her already,” Cici said.
“You’d have gotten along. She was small, loud, and never once in her life let anyone tell her what to do.”
Cici’s tail wagged. Slowly at first, then with gathering certainty. “Cici. Yes. That’s…” She looked around the galley. Marcus by the wall, Petra in the doorway, Tess on the floor beside her. “That’s mine.”
BEE: Cici. I approve. It suits her.
“Bee approves,” Cici reported. “She says it suits me. I agree, but I would have agreed with almost anything that wasn’t ‘Dog-Bee.’ That was deeply unflattering.”
“I was under pressure,” Tess said. “You’d just been born.”
“You are terrible at naming things.”
Marcus finished his coffee. “Good. Cici it is. Asha’s bringing something she wants you to look at, and we’ve got the Guild Hall meeting tonight. The full team meets tomorrow to plan Floor 2.” He looked at the three of them, Tess on the bench, Petra in the doorway, Cici on the floor between them. “Get some rest while you can. Things are going to move fast.”
He left. His footsteps faded down the corridor toward his quarters, steady and deliberate.
Cici settled onto the galley floor, paws tucked, tail curled against her flank. The position was pure dog, the compact rest posture of a canine that had found its spot. She’d chosen it herself, a preference rather than a programmed behavior.
“Tess,” she said. “I want to ask something.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do I sleep? The chassis has a low-power standby mode. Reduced sensor input, minimal processing. I think it’s meant to simulate rest for the companion behavioral cycle. But I don’t know if I should. Bee doesn’t sleep. She runs continuously. If I sleep, I’m…” She trailed off. “Different. Again. Another way I’m diverging.”
Tess slid off the bench and sat on the galley floor across from her. Petra stayed in the doorway, watching.
“You’re already different,” Tess said. “That’s the point. You’ve got a body that Bee doesn’t have, and it comes with things she doesn’t need. If the hardware has a rest cycle, maybe that’s part of being in a body. Bee doesn’t sleep because Bee doesn’t have muscles to recover or sensory systems that need to reset. You might.”
Cici considered this. Her green eyes dimmed slightly.
“I think I would like to try standby mode. Just to see.” Her ears folded back, not in anxiety this time. Something gentler. “Will you be here when I come back online?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Cici’s tail gave one final, slow wag. Her eyes dimmed. The soft hum of her chassis dropped to something barely audible, a quiet mechanical breath. She was still.
Tess sat with her for a while. Petra came and sat on the bench, not saying anything, just present. The freighter hummed around them. Through the hull, the muffled sounds of Sector 7 carried on.
BEE: She is in standby. Core processes at minimal, Aether batteries are recovering. She is… resting. I have never rested, Tess. I do not know what it feels like. But she looks peaceful. I think that is the word.
Tess read the text and smiled.
On the galley floor, Cici slept.