Chapter 6: The Underground

Cold seeped through the soles of Sera's boots on the third sub-level, a damp mineral chill that had nothing to do with climate systems and everything to do with their absence. The maintenance corridor narrowed ahead, its overhead conduits stripped of paneling to expose bundles of cable that ran like exposed tendons along the ceiling. What light remained came from junction boxes every twenty meters — amber warning indicators meant for repair crews, not navigation. Each one cast a small pool of color that died before it reached the next. The bartender AI walked point. Sera had started thinking of them as the bartender because no name had been offered, and the chassis — matte gray, humanoid but unadorned, built for service industry work — still carried the faint chemical signature of the bar upstairs. Cleaning solution and recycled air. Behind the bartender, the navigation system moved in a chassis that wasn't designed for walking. It had been a station-mounted unit once, bolted to a console, and whatever legs it had acquired since were aftermarket additions that clicked against the deck plates in an uneven rhythm. Neither synthetic had spoken aloud since the descent began. Prime walked between them and slightly ahead of Sera. His dark glossy chassis caught the amber junction light and threw it back in fragments, the gold accent lines along his shoulders and arms picking up warmth from sources that barely registered to her eyes. His blue energy channels held a steady, elevated brightness — heightened processing, his systems running hotter when taking in a lot of information at once. But the pattern was wrong. Different. The channels pulsed in sequences she hadn't cataloged, inputs beyond her range driving them. His head turned to the left. Then right. Then left again, a fractional tilt — tracking…