AUTHORS NOTE: Whoops! Sorry folks, chapters didn't get scheduled this weekend. Issue 3 is finished, so I'll be working on getting it all scheduled on Monday.
Vex watched the fresh recording from his quarters aboard the Arbiter’s Certainty, the holographic display casting blue-white light across the room’s bare walls. Floor 2, Tertius-Prime Dungeon. Network surveillance cameras captured the engagement from three angles: corridor junction, east approach, and a partially obstructed overhead.
Three fighters in total, not even a complete party.
The Blade Dancer led. Petra Tertian, Level 8, registered under House Tertian sponsorship. She moved with the fluid economy of someone trained well, each step placing her inside the kill zone before her targets could adjust. Good instincts, but she overcommitted on every close. The second her blades made contact she pressed forward instead of resetting, leaving her flank open for half a second longer than it should have been. Against Floor 2’s coordinated drone formations, that half-second would cost her eventually.
The Knight covered her gaps. Mikhail Soto, also level 8. Solid shield work, textbook positioning, clean transitions between defensive and offensive stances. His patterns were rehearsed and exactly what any competent observer would predict from his training. Predictability was a luxury against adaptive spawns. The drones were already reading his timing by the second engagement.
The Ranger, though, was the dangerous one.
Yuki Tanaka, Level 9. She fired from positions that shouldn’t have offered angles, her rounds finding paths through crystal corridors that bent probability. Two shots cleared four targets in one engagement, the round fragmenting off a wall junction into burning shrapnel. She called contacts before the cameras registered movement, which meant a sensory skill. [TREMORSENSE] or something in the same family.
But it was what the footage didn’t show that held Vex’s attention.
“No Rivera,” Vex said.
PL-1: And no healer. Three fighters pushing Floor 2 without medical support. Probably just stupid.
The construct carried a faintly bored undertone that Vex’s Superior had insisted was a personality feature rather than a defect.
“Or she’s somewhere else entirely.”
PL-1: Same conclusion, different emphasis.
PL-1 ran a frame analysis on the combat footage.
PL-1: The floor itself is interesting though.
“Go ahead.”
PL-1: Crystal growth density is four to five times Network baseline predictions for a Floor 2 environment. But it’s the structure that’s unusual. Everything branches. Bifurcation geometry, recursive subdivision, no two sections identical. Whatever is driving the floor has an obsession with biological systems. It’s almost organic.
Vex filed the observation. PL-1 had opinions about architectural design that occasionally bordered on aesthetic appreciation, which was either a feature of third-generation development or an undisclosed quirk.
The navigation alert interrupted his review. A chime, followed by the subtle shift in the ship’s vibration as the drives adjusted heading.
PL-1: Tertian Station approach. Docking clearance received. They sent it before we finished asking.
Vex closed the combat footage and stood. Through the viewport, Tertian Station resolved from a point of light into geometry. Clearly, it was built for security rather than comfort. Running lights along the docking spars pulsed Network-standard yellow. The military escort peeled away in formation, taking holding positions at the prescribed distance while the Arbiter’s Certainty slid into its berth.
Tertian Station sat at the outer edge of Tertius-Prime’s sphere of influence. A waystation at the system’s border where vessels entering or leaving submitted to security screening, refueled, and declared their business. The Tertian nobility had built it three generations ago to project authority into the approaches to their world. Their family crest was still on the hull, faded against the gray.
But crests were easy to leave in place when everything underneath had already changed.
Vex noted it the moment they docked. The Tertian seal on the airlock surround had paint cracking at the edges, while the Network identification badges on the dock crew were crisp and new. The station manager who met him at the gangway—a compact woman named Hollis with close-cropped gray hair and a Network pin polished to a mirror shine—conducted herself with the precise deference of someone who had been preparing for this moment.
“System Manager Vex.” Her heartbeat was elevated, but in the register of excitement rather than anxiety. Genuine reverence. “We are honored. Truly. Your quarters are prepared, full communications suite, secure terminal access, anything you require.”
“A briefing room,” Vex said. “And access to your intelligence archive.”
“Of course. This way.”
She set a brisk pace, heels clicking on deck plates that still bore the Tertian family seal under a thin layer of Network-standard gray coating. Vex’s enhanced hearing picked up the conversations of crew they passed. Whispers. System Manager. The System Manager is here. The tone was consistent: awe, threaded with anxiety. A System Manager didn’t visit border stations for routine inspections.
“The station operates under the Tertian charter,” Hollis explained as they moved through a security corridor. “Formally. In practice, we’ve been running Network protocols for the better part of two years. Reporting structures, communications encryption, personnel vetting.” She glanced back. “The transition has been thorough. The Tertian family maintains a nominal oversight role, but operational authority rests with us.”
“And the Tertians?” Vex asked.
“They sign what we put in front of them. I don’t believe they’ve inspected the station in person for over a year.” A brief, efficient smile. “They have other concerns.”
The political mechanics were clean. The Tertians owned the station. The Network owned the staff. And ownership, in the end, was a question of loyalty rather than paperwork. By the time House Tertian realized the station no longer answered to them, there would be nothing left to reclaim.
PL-1: Loyalty index reads ninety-four percent Network-aligned. The remaining six percent are legacy maintenance staff who predate the transition. Kept on for institutional knowledge.
Vex filed it and followed Hollis deeper into the station.
***
The briefing room smelled of cleaning solution applied within the last two hours, hasty, the kind of effort that said they hadn’t expected him quite this soon.
Vex connected to the secure terminal and began pulling the intelligence package compiled for his arrival. Surveillance footage, interview transcripts, equipment purchase logs, dungeon registration data. Months of observation from Network personnel on the surface, compressed and transmitted to the station ahead of his approach.
PL-1 processed in parallel, flagging correlations, cross-referencing names, building the web.
Vex started with the cameras.
Street-level surveillance tracked a young woman across the city’s sectors. Blonde hair, work clothes, and a toolbelt. She moved with purpose—not fast, not evasive. Someone who always had somewhere to be. Equipment suppliers in Sector 6, the Tertian estate’s service entrance in Sector 5 multiple times per week. A grounded freighter in Sector 7 that served as both residence and workshop. A restaurant in Sector 6, surrounded by the same group of people who appeared in the dungeon footage.
Tess Rivera. Nineteen years old. Registered class: Technician. Occupation: independent repair work.
The interviews were more revealing. Recorded on the surface by Network personnel conducting routine check-ins with the Delver Guild, merchants, registered Delvers. People answering questions with the careful vagueness of those who wanted to be helpful without being noticed.
A guild administrator, middle-aged, reciting from memory: “The Rivera girl? Haven’t seen her in weeks since the Inspector told us not to let her in.”
A merchant in Sector 7, leaning against a counter stacked with circuit boards: “Rivera fixes half the equipment in this sector, most of it in the next. Good with her hands. She’s been buying higher-end gear lately, though. Industrial stuff. Paid through a Tertian account.”
A registered Delver, arms folded, not making eye contact with the interviewer: “The floor layout’s been weird. Stable. Used to shift every few days. Been sitting for days. Started around the time that the power came back.”
Another Delver, younger, visibly frustrated: “Yeah, she fixed my rifle a few weeks ago. What’s it to you? That’s what Tech’s do. Get out of my face.”
PL-1: Rivera. Rivera. Rivera. She’s in everything.
“Yes,” Vex said. “She is.”
But there was nothing to act on. No regulation violated. No law broken. A repair technician who fixed things, purchased equipment through a legitimate noble house, and stopped entering a dungeon when she was told not to enter it by Network staff. Every individual data point was innocuous. It was only in aggregate that the picture became improbable.
PL-1: Remove her from any single event and the probability models normalize. Keep her in and every anomaly on this planet clusters around a nineteen-year-old who junk stoves for a living.
“Continue processing,” Vex said. “Flag financial records connected to House Tertian equipment purchases. Pull all references to Floor 2 of this dungeon that you can find.”
He was reviewing Petra Tertian’s dungeon registration history when the door chimed.
Not Hollis. The man who stepped in was old, but wore it well. The kind of old that came from decades of physical work in variable gravity. His uniform was maintenance gray, not Network standard, and it fit him like a uniform he’d been wearing longer than most of the current staff had been alive. He held himself with the careful formality of someone who understood exactly where he fell in a hierarchy he hadn’t chosen.
“System Manager. My name is Drew Martinez.” He stopped at the threshold. “I apologize for the intrusion. Station Manager Hollis informed the staff of your investigation. A name came up that I recognized.”
“Which name?”
“Rivera.”
Vex gestured to the chair across from him.
Martinez sat. His hands rested flat on the table. PL-1 was already pulling his record: Drew Martinez, age sixty-eight. Forty-three years of service at Tertian Station. Security detail, promoted to security chief, retired to consulting role six years ago. No flags, no irregularities. One of the six percent legacy staff.
“Not the girl,” Martinez said. “Her father. Marcus Rivera.”
He said the name with the weight of someone who’d been turning it over for hours, deciding whether the walk down here was worth it.
“I knew Marcus Rivera thirty years ago. He was a teenager. Couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Came through this station on a supply run with a crew of Delvers.” He paused. “They called themselves Last Bid.”
“Last Bid.”
“The sort of name you’d put on a registration form because you needed something and nobody was going to argue about it.” Martinez’s eyes were steady. He’d spent forty years reading faces in security checkpoints, and he wasn’t intimidated by the black eyes looking back at him. “Small crew. Five, six people at any given time, the roster shifted. But Marcus and his partner, a woman named Jo—Joanna—they were always the core. Everyone else rotated around those two.”
“What made them notable?”
“They cleared floors nobody else could. Everywhere, not just Tertian-Prime.”
There it was. The ghost of admiration, decades old, surfacing briefly before professionalism smoothed it away.
“Started on Meridian Station. Maybe Kovacs before that. Then they moved out to Drayen-IV and cleared a floor that had killed three full parties the first week it was open. Nobody could explain it. The floor was supposed to be impossible, and Last Bid walked in, and the problem stopped being a problem.”
“Their levels?”
“Nothing special. Marcus wasn’t even an Engineer back then, I don’t think. Something else. And Jo—I couldn’t tell you her registered class. Something support-adjacent, maybe. They weren’t high-level, that’s the thing. But they’d walk into a dungeon that was grinding down Level 15 parties and come out with the floor cleared and a pile of loot.”
“They took the jobs nobody else wanted,” Vex said.
“They took the jobs nobody else survived. And they made it look easy.” Martinez leaned back. “The Veldi worked with them. Loved them. And the Veldi don’t run with people unless they respect the work. Marcus and Jo never played it up, never acted like they were anything special. They showed up, they cleared the floor, they moved on.”
PL-1: Historical registration located. Delver organization “Last Bid,” registered Meridian Station. Active across four systems. Status: Dissolved. Registered members: Marcus Rivera, Joanna Hale, three to five additional rotating. Seventeen verified floor clearances across Meridian, Kovacs, Drayen-IV, and Tertius-Prime systems. Anomalous success rate flagged by two separate dungeon administrations. No investigation initiated.
Seventeen floor clearances. Four systems. With members who were, by all accounts, unremarkable on paper.
Vex’s expression didn’t change.
“When did you last see them?” he asked.
“Twenty years ago, maybe a little more. They came through heading planetside. Marcus, Jo, and one other I didn’t recognize. They looked different. Settled. Jo was very pregnant.” He paused. “Marcus said they were done. Hanging it up, starting something quiet. A repair shop, if you can believe it. The crew who’d cleared seventeen floors no one else could touch wanted to retire early.”
He stood. He seemed lighter for having said it.
“I don’t know what the girl’s done to get your attention, System Manager. But when I heard the name Rivera and the word dungeon in the same sentence, I thought it was worth mentioning.” A shrug. “Can’t be that many Riveras doing impossible things.”
Vex thanked him. Martinez left. The door closed.
***
Back on the Arbiter’s Certainty, stars passed by the narrow viewport, and the distant point of light that was Tertius-Prime’s sun, still five days away.
PL-1 said nothing. It knew to wait.
Vex requisitioned a full dossier on Marcus Rivera that he had downloaded after meeting with the Martinez man, only to be greeted with the same issues his uplink had:
Medical history ……………………… CLASSIFIED [Clearance A+]Career history ………………………… CLASSIFIED [Clearance A+]Delver career (Last Bid) ………… CLASSIFIED [Clearance A+]Association records ………………. CLASSIFIED [Clearance A+]Financial history …………………….. CLASSIFIED [Clearance A+]
Every path led to the same wall. The same classification level, applied uniformly across thirty years of records by an authority that far exceeded Vex’s own.
PL-1: Who is this guy? Some sort of Special Ops? A+ is Central Intelligence Directorate. There’s like forty people in the entire Network with that access. None of them audit dungeons.
“No,” Vex agreed. “They don’t.”
He pulled Joanna Rivera’s file.
JOANNA RIVERA (née Hale)Status: DeceasedCause: Medical complicationsSurvived by: Marcus Rivera (spouse), Tess Rivera (daughter, age 2)
No class registration, no career history, no dungeon affiliation, no financial records. A woman who had existed, married, had a daughter, and died, leaving behind a name and a date and nothing else.
The file was unremarkable. He moved on.
Seventeen floor clearances in six years. A crew that did what specialist teams couldn’t, then dissolved overnight. A man whose entire history was locked behind the highest classification the Network maintained, lived in a grounded freighter on a backwater planet, and had a dead wife with a file so clean it could have been written yesterday.
And every anomaly on Tertius-Prime—the Aether spike, the missing Alphas, the frozen floor configurations, the camera feeds going dark on Floor 1—all of it orbiting a nineteen-year-old repair technician.
Martinez’s words: Can’t be that many Riveras doing impossible things.
“The daughter isn’t a Technician Class,” Vex said.
PL-1: No shit, Sherlock.
Five days to Tertius-Prime. Five days until Vex could [EVALUATE] Tess Rivera in person and answer the questions that footage and files could not. But Marcus Rivera’s records sat behind a wall that Vex couldn’t breach alone. Someone with directorate-level access had classified a retired Delver’s entire history and left his daughter unmonitored on a planet where the dungeon was doing things it shouldn’t be doing. There was no probable way this was an oversight.
“PL-1.”
PL-1: Tall-Dark-And-Broody.
Vex let out a small sigh. “Draft an intelligence dossier. Subject: Marcus Rivera, former Delver, crew designation Last Bid, current resident of Sector 7, Tertius-Prime. Attach the anomalous activity summary, the classification conflict report, and the Aether output analysis. Request full file access across all classification tiers and all associated records.” He paused. “Route it to Central Intelligence. Director-level review. Priority One.”
PL-1 was quiet for a beat. Then another.
PL-1: That’s a big-ask. Priority One’s gonna flag this for immediate processing. You should know that submitting it will also flag you to whoever placed the original classification. Someone powerful is going to know you’re asking around.
Vex barely considered it.
“Send it.”
The terminal compiled and transmitted. The confirmation light pulsed green, then went dark.
Somewhere in the Network’s own architecture, someone who had spent decades making sure nobody looked too closely at a man named Rivera was about to learn that someone had started asking questions.