The walk to Bistro Y took twenty minutes through Sector 6’s evening streets, and Tess spent most of it being visible.
That was the point. Be seen. Be normal. Five people and a mechanical dog are going to dinner; nothing worth remembering. The Network’s Floor 2 cameras were dark now, every feed routed through Bee, but nobody on the surface knew that yet. When questions came, tonight needed to look like what it was: tired Delvers getting food after a long day.
Sector 6 looked different at 7.4% Aether. Street lamps that had flickered for months held steady. The fabrication plants along the main road ran quieter without the power fluctuations, and the evening air carried the smell of food from open kitchen vents instead of ozone from failing transformers. The city wasn’t thriving, but it had stopped dying, and people walked a little easier because of it.
Yuki led them down a side street that cut between two machine shops. She knew Sector 6 the way Tess knew the freighter’s cable runs.
“Kitchen entrance is faster,” Yuki said.
“Front door,” Petra said. “We’re supposed to be seen.”
Yuki shrugged and led them around.
Cici trotted beside Tess, nose working the evening air. Every planter, every doorway, every crack in the sidewalk earned investigation. A woman on the corner spotted Cici and stopped. Hazel, Tess thought, or something close.
“You finally got it working!”
“I did,” Tess said.
“She’s beautiful.” Hazel crouched and offered her hand. Cici accepted with composure that lasted only a few seconds before her tail went crazy.
“My hardware is expressing approval,” Cici said. “I have no control over this.”
Petra made a sound that might have been a laugh if you caught it fast enough.
Bistro Y’s front entrance was busy for a weeknight. Yuri was behind the bar, sleeves rolled, working a bottle in a way that suggested he’d been tending it himself tonight. When he spotted Yuki, the tension left his shoulders.
“There she is.” He set the bottle down. “Heard you’ve been busy.”
“Floor 2,” Yuki said. “Getting it done.”
“Yeah you are!” His gaze moved across the group. A polite nod to Petra. His eyes lingered on the new shield emitter clipped to Mikhail’s belt, then moved to Asha with a raised eyebrow. And Tess got the look she was recognizing from him. Respect.
Then he spotted Cici.
He came around the bar, moving with the deliberate economy of a big man who’d learned not to crowd a room. He didn’t crouch, but he leaned forward enough to study the chassis.
“You got it running.” A pause while he took in the details. “Haven’t seen one of these outside an auction house in fifteen years. Maybe longer.”
“Her name is Cici,” Tess said.
“Hello,” Cici said.
Yuri straightened. His eyes went from Tess to Cici and back.
“It talks.”
“She,” Yuki corrected.
“She talks.” Yuri’s eyebrows did most of the work his face wouldn’t. “Right, okay. Yuki called ahead, private room’s yours. Menus are on the table.”
He turned, then stopped.
“Little Rivera. Tell your old man to come eat. I owe him a meal.”
“You owe him twelve,” Yuki said, heading for the back.
“Fine, I owe him twelve,” Yuri agreed, and returned to his bar.
The private room’s door clicked shut, and the busy restaurant wasn’t even a murmur in the room. Good soundproofing.
“We did it, yeah?” Asha said.
“We did it,” Tess confirmed.
Asha slapped the table. “I am done sitting in staging eating jerky.”
“Your jerky is classified as hazardous material on four stations,” Cici said from under the table.
“Those classifications are prejudiced.”
“Should we just be speaking like this in the open?” Petra asked.
Yuki shrugged, produced a pistol from somewhere in her jacket, cocked it, and set it on the table. “Well, if Yuri bugged the room, he’s going to have a very rough night.”
A knock came at the door, and a server entered. “If you’ll excuse me, there’s been a mix-up with your room. If you wouldn’t mind stepping into the one across the hall?”
Everyone looked at Yuki. She smiled, picked up her weapon, and stood. They all followed.
They had barely sat down when Yuri appeared with a tray of drinks.
“Hey, you can’t fault a guy for trying,” he said as the drinks were passed around. “Yuki, you wouldn’t…”
Yuki levelled an unhappy stare at him just before he left.
The drinks were straight liquor. Asha sniffed hers, approved, and drank half in one pull. Mikhail nursed his, and Petra held hers skeptically.
“To cameras,” Yuki said, raising her glass.
The table echoed it.
“To me finally getting into a proper dungeon,” Asha added.
“To Asha,” Petra said.
They drank. Food arrived in waves. Yuki had also ordered ahead. Grilled meat, roasted tubers, bread that was still warm. Nothing elaborate, but nothing that required a hazmat rating like the last time they’d gone out together.
“I am enjoying the sound of you eating,” Bee said through their earpieces.
“That’s slightly unsettling,” Asha said.
“I find it comforting. The sounds of people eating together are consistently associated with safety in many cultures.” A beat. “I have very little data on safety, so I use what I can.”
The table went quiet for a moment. Not uncomfortable. The sort of quiet that settles when something true lands without warning.
“Eat up, everyone,” Asha said. “For Bee.”
“For Bee,” Yuki agreed, and shoved a tuber into her mouth.
The food was good, and the conversation was easy, and Tess let herself enjoy both. The team sounded different here than they did in the Guild Hall or over comms—lighter, like people instead of operators.
Petra set her glass down and turned to Mikhail.
“I need to say something about what you did.”
Mikhail raised an eyebrow, suddenly frozen. “What did I do?”
“Your shield saved me twice today.” She said it flat, the way she said things that mattered. “Both times I got flanked, and both times would have taken a shot to the ribs.”
“That’s what it does.”
“It was your father’s.”
Mikhail stopped eating. “And he’d want it used. The MK-IX handles energy fire better than anything, that’s what I needed. It took dozens of shots today. You were hit twice. It’s a better fit.”
“She needs to stop leaving gaps,” Yuki said, pointing at Petra with her bread. “The shield is reinforcing bad habits.”
Petra’s jaw set. “Excuse me?”
“We’ve been over this. You know you over-commit. The shield means you don’t have to fix it because it catches what gets through.” Yuki took a bite. “I’m not complaining. We’re in way better shape with you carrying it. Just saying.”
“She’s not wrong,” Mikhail said.
Petra looked between them. The Tertian composure cracked just enough for acknowledgment to show through. She knew.
“After Floor 2 is handled,” she said. “I’ll work on it.”
“I’ll run drills with you.”
“After. Floor. Two.”
“Sure.” Yuki grinned. “After Floor 2.”
“Speaking of Floor 2.” Tess pushed her plate back. “Something fought in those tunnels.”
“The walls near FCN-2A had weapon scoring,” she continued. “Directed energy burns and physical impacts. Deep ones. The crystal ribs were shattered in sections.”
“How big?” Yuki asked.
“Bee’s analysis said the drones were firing from elevated positions at a ground-level target. But some of the energy burns were bigger than anything the maintenance drones carry.”
“Whatever it was shot back,” Petra said.
“And tore through those corridors doing it.” Tess turned her glass. “The scoring was older, though. The crystal had already started growing over the worst of it.”
Mikhail sat with that for a moment. Then:
“Could be an Alpha.”
The word killed the conversation.
“Floor 1’s Alphas weren’t in the maintenance tunnels,” Petra said. “Just the corridors, and the spawning chamber.”
“Floor 2 plays by different rules,” Tess said.
“If Floor 2 has an Alpha roaming its tunnel network…” Yuki’s bread stopped halfway to her mouth.
“We don’t know that,” Tess said. “We know something big was down there at some point. Bee’s still analyzing the damage.”
“The scoring predates our involvement,” Bee said. “Whatever caused it may not still be present in that section.”
“But it could be somewhere else,” Mikhail said.
Nobody argued with that.
“There’s more,” Tess said. She let Bee take it.
“Floor 2 is over four times the area of Floor 1,” Bee said. “That is a conservative estimate based on active sensors. The dead zones at the outer edges are beyond my reach.”
Asha whistled low. “That’s not normal.”
“The floor’s been growing unchecked instead of resetting,” Tess said. “The outer sections can’t sustain themselves. Aether bleeds inward, concentrating in the core where the power systems still hold. And the tunnels…” She paused. “They looked almost organic with crystal ribs and branching, redundant networks.”
“Growing out of control,” Petra said.
“Something is wrong with it,” Bee confirmed. “The structural degradation in the outer sections is progressing. I do not know what happens when a section fails, and I would prefer not to find out.”
“We need that second FCN,” Mikhail said.
“We do. Bee’s scanning with the new sensor grid.”
“I am processing,” Bee said. “With degraded coverage, it is slow work.”
The second round arrived. Petra waited until the door closed.
“So, we leveled,” she said.
“Both of you?” Tess looked between her and Mikhail.
“Nine,” Mikhail confirmed. “Tipped over during today’s run.”
“Me too,” Petra said.
Yuki raised her glass. “Welcome to nine.”
“Nine to ten is a slog,” Asha said, leaning back. “Requirements jump. But ten? That’s where it gets interesting.”
“Class evolution,” Yuki said. “At 10, your class evolves. Stronger stats, a new skill, sometimes a complete rework of how your abilities function.”
“You’ve seen it?” Petra asked.
“Seen it happen to others.” Yuki’s mouth twisted. “Still stuck at nine myself. Working for Yuri didn’t help with level progress.”
“Evolved at ten,” Asha said. “Medic to Field Apothecary. Everything got weird. [RAPID MEND] went from general tissue repair to targeted cellular work. [PURGE] got faster. Picked up [EMERGENCY HEAL] too, wasn’t available to the base Medic.” She spread her hands. “Get you both to ten on Floor 2, you’ll evolve. Blade Dancer, Knight, whatever comes next. Makes us a lot harder to kill.”
“How many runs?” Petra asked.
“Floor 2 gives good progress,” Yuki said. “But nine to ten is a grind. Eight to ten solid runs, maybe more.”
Tess pulled up her stats while the others talked.
·········································LEVEL: 9CLASS: {null}Progress to Level 10: 91.3%·········································
“Hmm, I’m almost at 10,” Tess said. “Progress climbed a ton after 2A. 2B is definitely going to do it.”
Petra raised an eyebrow. She was the only person at the table who knew Tess wasn’t a Technician.
“Damn,” Yuki said. “Dungeon repairs are lucrative!”
Tess smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. What happens next?
Asha said evolution changed everything. Medic became Field Apothecary. Knight and Blade Dancer would become something new. But {null} wasn’t a class. It was a pointer that aimed at nothing—a designation the system had given her because it didn’t know what else to call what she was.
What did nothing evolve into?
She caught Petra’s eye across the table. Petra held it for half a second. The concern was brief and controlled, gone before anyone noticed.
“Good to know what’s coming,” Tess said, keeping her voice light.
“Wait until it happens,” Asha said. “Feels like your whole body rearranges itself from the inside. Took me three days to get used to the new skill interactions.”
“Encouraging,” Mikhail said.
“I can’t wait,” Asha said, and she wasn’t talking about evolution.
“Tomorrow,” Tess said. “You’re in.”
“Damn right.” Asha leaned forward. “Crazy couple weeks on this rock. Tomorrow I do my actual job.”
“She is vibrating,” Cici observed from floor level. “I can feel it through the floor.”
“I am composed.”
“You are vibrating at a frequency of approximately…”
“Standard run,” Petra cut in. “We go in the public entrance, Asha meets up with us through the private entrance. We still need plausible deniability.”
“Don’t need an orientation,” Asha said. “Need to know where you bleed so I can be there first.”
“You’ll want to see the drone tactics,” Mikhail said. “They coordinate. Formation flying, flanking maneuvers, ground constructs as rally points.”
“Don’t need to know how they fight, only how they hurt you.” Asha laughed. “Positioning is my problem. Killing is yours.”
The plates cleared. They ordered dessert. Pastry and fruit filling, nothing hazardous. Everyone was clearly feeling the drinks by the time it was done.
“Okay, so Yuri story time.” Yuki said, looking around the room conspiratorially. “A year ago, some regular’s pet lizard-thing gets loose in the restaurant. Tiny thing, super fast. Gets into the wine cellar through a vent nobody knew existed.”
“Oh no,” Tess said.
“Yuri’s down there in his pajamas at three in the morning with a broom. I’m on the other side trying to herd it back with a serving tray.” She mimed the angle. “Thing runs straight between his legs, knocks over an entire case of the off-world stuff. Yuri just watches it pour out across the floor, sits down in the puddle, and says:” Her face scrunched up in her best Yuri impression. “Yuki, I am going to need you to shoot that damn animal.”
Mikhail’s laugh caught everyone off guard, himself included. Yuki grinned, pleased with herself.
“Obviously I finally caught it in a bucket,” she finished. “Yuri banned the owner for a month. The lizard-thing, though? Yuri feeds the damn thing whenever it wants. The man respects anything that costs him that much money and walked away from it.”
The drinks kept coming; Asha and Petra argued about healing priorities in corridor combat, the sort of argument that was really collaboration wearing a disguise.
Cici shifted into standby mode on the seat next to Tess, and she sat back and let the day settle.
They’d done something impossible today, and nobody knew. Tomorrow they’d start on the next one. But right now her team was alive and together, and the evening was warm and the food was good. That was enough.
“You’re doing the quiet thinking thing,” Yuki said.
“She does that,” Petra said.
“I know.”
Tess smiled. “Just taking it in.”
“Take it in faster. I want to argue about the bill.”
“Tertian account,” Petra said. “There’s nothing to argue about.”
“Then I’m ordering another round.”
“You’ve had three.”
“We’re celebrating, Petra!”
Bee’s voice came through the earpieces, and the shift in tone stopped the table before she finished the first word.
“Tess.”
Glasses and forks paused mid-motion.
“I’ve found FCN-2B.”
Tess lowered her glass. Cici perked up from standby, her ears rotated forward.
“You don’t sound happy about it,” Yuki said.
“You’re not going to like this.,”
The celebration wasn’t over. But it had just gained a deadline.
“Tomorrow,” Tess said. “We deal with it tomorrow.”
Bee didn’t argue.
They paid. They walked back through Sector 6 in the cool evening air. Five Delvers and a mechanical dog heading home after dinner. Exactly what it looked like. Nobody watching would see anything worth reporting. Definitely not.
Tess wasn’t going to let whatever Bee found ruin the night.