Book 17 — The Iron Orchard

Chapter 1 — The Moon That Fed the Route

The TARDIS landed with a dull, reluctant thud.

Not the jaunty, eager arrival the Doctor loved—the kind that felt like the universe was inviting him in. This was a landing that felt like a machine accepting a tool it didn’t ask for. The floor steadied. The lights settled. The air tasted faintly of copper even inside the ship, as if the place outside had already begun to press itself into everything.

Jun stood a half-step behind the Doctor, hands hovering near his pockets like he wasn’t sure whether to be brave or polite. He had that new-companion alertness—eyes wide, mind racing, body trying to pretend it wasn’t scared.

Raven leaned against the console rail, black coat open, hair pinned back, face composed. She watched the Doctor the way she always did when he got quiet: not with worry, but with readiness. She knew the difference between his curiosity and his caution. This was caution.

MINO’s voice pulsed softly from the watch.

“Atmospheric sampling complete. High particulate iron. Elevated metallic aerosols. External temperature: mild. Internal electromagnetic noise: significant.”

The Doctor flicked a glance at the scanner. “Industrial.”

“Industrial,” MINO confirmed. “Also agricultural.”

Jun frowned. “Those don’t usually go together.”

The Doctor’s mouth twitched. “They do when people have to make them.”

He moved to the doors. His hand hovered over the latch a beat longer than usual—an instinctive pause, not superstition. Then he opened them.

Outside was not a sky.

It was a ceiling of smoke.

A low, bruised canopy of slag-light clouds hung over the horizon, lit from beneath by the orange glow of furnaces and the cold white strobe of cargo towers. The air smelled like wet metal and cooked soil. Wind moved across a plain of blackened ground, carrying grit that clicked softly against the TARDIS doors.

In the distance, rows of crops grew in strict lines—tall, pale stalks with broad leaves that caught the light like dull foil. Between the rows, metal irrigation arms arced and hissed, spraying mist that glittered as it fell. Beyond that, conveyor valleys cut through the terrain, wide belts hauling dark soil one way and pale nutrient blocks the other.

It was ugly.

It was alive.

It was busy.

Jun stepped out and immediately coughed, then tried to hide it like it wasn’t his first instinctive reaction to inhaling a world.

Raven didn’t cough. She simply breathed shallowly and looked around as if cataloguing exits.

The Doctor stood still for a moment, letting the place speak with its own obviousness.

A siren sounded somewhere—three notes, repeated. Not urgent, not panicked. Routine.

A group of workers passed on a raised metal walkway to the left, boots clanging, faces half-covered by filter masks. Their clothing was patched, practical, marked with grease. One of them glanced at the TARDIS without slowing, then looked away as if blue boxes were just another piece of equipment someone forgot to log.

That told the Doctor a lot.

“People here don’t have time for wonder,” he murmured.

Raven’s voice was quiet. “Or they’ve learned it doesn’t pay.”

Jun looked at the crops again. “What are they growing?”

The Doctor’s gaze narrowed. “Something that likes iron.”

MINO’s watchface blinked with a soft overlay. “Designation: Kharon Spire. Classification: industrial-agricultural moon. Primary exports: nutrient paste, forged components, trace metals.”

Jun’s eyebrows lifted. “It feeds a route.”

“It feeds a route,” the Doctor repeated, and the word feed sounded heavier here than it should.

They walked.

The ground crunched underfoot—black grit over hard-packed soil. As they approached the walkway, the vibration of machinery became more apparent, like a constant low growl under the world. Every structure here had a utilitarian logic: ladders, rails, warning lights, signage in multiple languages and symbols.

A sign near a gate read:

ORCHARD ZONE 7 — SHIFT ACCESS ONLY
PPE REQUIRED
DO NOT ENTER CONVEYOR CHANNELS

Raven touched the metal rail lightly with her fingertips, then withdrew. “Cold,” she said.

“Metal everywhere,” Jun noted.

“Everything here is metal,” the Doctor replied. “Even the air.”

A security camera tracked their movement. A moment later, a voice crackled from a wall speaker.

“Unregistered presence at Zone 7 gate,” it said. “State purpose.”

The Doctor stepped closer, tilting his head slightly so the speaker picked up his voice clearly.

“We’re lost,” he said pleasantly. “Happens all the time. We’ll be out of your way.”

There was a pause, as if the system was deciding whether politeness was a category it understood.

Then: “Proceed to Intake. Do not obstruct operations.”

The Doctor smiled faintly. “Thank you.”

Jun blinked. “That worked.”

The Doctor’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s a moon that runs on throughput,” he said. “Anything that doesn’t interrupt throughput is tolerated.”

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “Until it becomes expensive.”

They followed painted lines along the ground toward an Intake structure that looked like a warehouse welded to a greenhouse. Inside, the air was warmer and more humid, carrying the sour-sweet smell of nutrient slurry.

A woman in a stained orange coverall sat behind a metal desk. She had short hair, a scar along one cheek, and eyes that didn’t waste emotion. A badge on her chest read: SHIFT MARSHAL: TALA REN.

She looked up, took in their clothes, their posture, the way the Doctor’s gaze kept moving.

“Not local,” she said.

The Doctor nodded. “Passing through.”

Tala snorted. “No one passes through Kharon Spire without wanting something.”

Jun started to speak, then hesitated.

Raven didn’t.

“We want to know why the crops smell like rust,” she said calmly.

Tala’s eyes flicked to Raven, then narrowed. “You’ve been in the orchards already.”

“We’ve stood near them,” the Doctor corrected gently. “Haven’t touched.”

Tala leaned back slightly, chair creaking. “If you’re looking for trouble,” she said, “you picked a place that has plenty.”

The Doctor’s voice stayed mild. “We’re looking for harm,” he said. “Trouble is usually just harm with paperwork.”

Tala’s mouth twitched as if she disliked him but respected the sentence.

“What are you,” she asked, “inspectors?”

“No,” the Doctor said. “Worse.”

Tala frowned.

“Helpful,” he added.

Jun’s lips twitched, then he suppressed it.

Tala studied them for a long beat. Then she gestured to a rack behind her. “Masks,” she said. “If you’re going into Zone 7, you wear filters. And you stay out of the conveyor channels.”

Raven took a mask without hesitation.

Jun took one and adjusted it awkwardly.

The Doctor took one last, slipping it on with the ease of someone who’d learned to breathe in hostile places. His glasses fogged for a second, then cleared.

“Why Zone 7?” he asked.

Tala’s eyes went flat. “Because that’s where the bleed started.”

Jun blinked. “Bleed?”

Tala reached under the desk and pulled out a sealed sample jar. Inside was soil—dark, wet—and streaked through it were thin threads of orange that looked like a wound.

“It’s not dirt anymore,” Tala said. “It’s iron in the wrong state.”

The Doctor leaned closer, eyes narrowing. “Oxidation patterns,” he murmured. “Accelerated.”

Tala nodded. “It eats tools,” she said. “At first. Then it ate irrigation arms. Then it ate support beams.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “And people.”

Tala’s jaw tightened. “Two,” she said. “Last cycle. Went into a maintenance corridor to clear a jam. Didn’t come back.”

Jun went very still.

The Doctor’s voice softened slightly, but it didn’t become comforting. It became precise. “Was there blood?”

Tala’s eyes flicked away. “No,” she said.

Raven’s voice sharpened. “Then what did you find?”

Tala’s shoulders rose and fell once, like she hated the memory.

“A smear,” she said. “Rust. On the wall. And a sound.”

The Doctor’s gaze lifted. “A sound?”

Tala swallowed. “Like a thousand little teeth,” she said. “On metal.”

Jun’s breath hitched through his mask.

MINO pulsed. “Doctor. Acoustic reference: micro-scraping. Potential swarm activity.”

The Doctor didn’t respond aloud. He didn’t need to. He felt the shape of it already: something small, many, hungry.

“Where is the corridor?” he asked.

Tala stood, grabbed a handheld lamp and a rugged tablet. “I’m not sending you alone,” she said.

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know us.”

Tala’s mouth hardened. “I know this place,” she said. “And I’m tired of losing people to it.”

Jun looked at the Doctor, uncertain. The Doctor nodded slightly—accepting the help, accepting the anchor.

Tala led them through a side door into a long passage lined with pipes and cables. The hum deepened here, more intimate. Metal sweat condensed on surfaces.

As they walked, the Doctor watched the small details: the way warning lights flickered at irregular intervals, the faint scratches along the lower panels, the subtle absence of casual clutter in a place where people should have left tools.

Something was cleaning.

Or eating.

They reached a maintenance hatch marked CONVEYOR SUBCHANNEL 7A.

Tala pointed to a smear on the hatch seam. Orange, powdery.

“This wasn’t here yesterday,” she said.

The Doctor crouched and touched it with a gloved finger. It came away like rust dust.

Raven watched him, eyes sharp. “What is it?”

“Metal,” he said. “Reduced. Chewed.”

Jun whispered, “Chewed?”

The Doctor straightened. “Stay close,” he said, not as a suggestion.

Tala keyed the hatch. The panel hissed open.

Cold air rolled out, carrying the scent of wet iron.

Inside, a narrow corridor ran along the conveyor’s underside. Dim lights. Thick cables. A constant vibration through the floor that you could feel in your teeth.

They stepped in.

The hatch sealed behind them with a heavy click.

Jun flinched at the sound.

The Doctor heard something else.

Very faint, very fast.

A dry, delicate scraping—like sandpaper on steel, multiplied, distant.

MINO’s voice was low. “Confirmed. Swarm acoustics.”

Raven’s hand slid into the Doctor’s briefly—one squeeze, quick, grounding. Not fear. Alignment.

The Doctor exhaled slowly.

“Alright,” he murmured. “Let’s see what’s feeding.”

And somewhere deeper in the corridor, the scraping sound shifted direction—like something small had noticed them and turned its hunger toward fresh metal.

⸻
///

Chapter 2 — Teeth in the Ducts

They moved in single file.

Tala first, lamp held low, her boots careful on the grated floor. The Doctor behind her, head tilted slightly as he listened. Raven behind him, silent, poised. Jun last, breathing shallowly, trying not to let the vibration of the conveyor translate into panic.

The corridor narrowed after the first bend. Pipes pressed close to the walls. Thick bundles of wiring ran along the ceiling like veins.

The scraping sound came again—closer now, but still not loud. It wasn’t the kind of noise that made you flinch. It was the kind that made you imagine what it would feel like on bone.

Tala stopped and lifted her lamp. “This is where the jam was,” she said.

Ahead, the conveyor belt had been halted. A maintenance panel was open, its edges warped as if something had been pried through from the inside. The smell of hot metal lingered.

Jun stared. “It ripped it open?”

The Doctor crouched. “Not ripped,” he said. “Consumed.”

He pointed at the panel’s edge. It wasn’t torn. It was thinned. Delicately scalloped, like a pastry crust made by a patient hand.

Raven’s voice was low. “Teeth.”

The Doctor nodded. “Many.”

MINO pulsed. “Material removal is consistent with micro-machining via coordinated agents. Swarm probability: high. Individual unit size estimate: 2–6 centimeters.”

Jun swallowed. “Like—bugs.”

“Like tools,” the Doctor corrected. “Bugs are alive. These are hungry machines.”

Tala’s jaw tightened. “So they’re real,” she said. She sounded almost relieved to have something solid to hate.

The Doctor stood slowly. His gaze moved along the corridor and caught on something that didn’t belong: a small strip of fabric snagged on a bolt—a sleeve from a coverall, stained dark, stiff with rust powder.

Jun’s eyes widened behind his mask.

The Doctor’s voice stayed gentle, but it was the gentleness of a surgeon, not a comforter. “The missing workers,” he said softly.

Tala’s shoulders went rigid. “Perrin and Sato,” she murmured. “They were good.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “No blood,” she said again, almost to herself. “No mess.”

“Because it’s efficient,” the Doctor replied.

Jun’s voice trembled. “What does that mean?”

The Doctor didn’t sugarcoat it. “It means they weren’t killed,” he said. “They were processed.”

Jun went pale. His hand gripped the strap of his bag as if holding on to something human.

Tala took a step forward as if she might march into the dark and punch the problem. The Doctor caught her with a quiet hand gesture.

“Don’t chase the sound,” he said.

Tala glared. “Then what do we do? Stand here until it eats us too?”

“We learn the rules,” the Doctor said. “Then we break them.”

Raven’s eyes flicked to him. “Quickly,” she added.

MINO’s voice sharpened. “Doctor. Swarm acoustics increasing. Likely approach vector: overhead duct line, three meters ahead.”

The Doctor looked up.

A ventilation duct ran along the ceiling, its grating intact but dusted with orange powder. For a second, everything was still.

Then the duct grating vibrated—tiny, rapid taps.

Jun’s breath hitched.

Tala raised her lamp, beam slicing across the duct.

The grating bulged outward slightly, as if something behind it pressed with many small bodies.

The Doctor held up his hand.

“Don’t run,” he said quietly. “Running is prey.”

Tala’s nostrils flared. “You have a plan?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “And it’s boring.”

Raven’s mouth twitched faintly. She liked boring plans when the alternative was death.

The Doctor reached into his coat and pulled out a small roll of adhesive emergency tape. He handed it to Jun.

“Jun,” he said, “tape your cuffs. Your ankles. Any gaps.”

Jun blinked. “Now?”

“Now,” the Doctor said.

Jun’s hands shook, but he obeyed, wrapping tape around the edges of his gloves and boots. Tala watched, then did the same with a curse under her breath.

Raven didn’t need instruction. Her movements were quick, precise.

The Doctor tapped his watch. “MINO,” he murmured, “infrared sweep. Identify units.”

MINO complied. The watchface shimmered with a faint overlay.

“Units detected,” MINO reported. “Count: approximately forty within duct line. Composition: ferrous micro-frames, rotating abrasion heads, magnetic adhesion feet.”

“Magnetic,” the Doctor said. He looked at the corridor walls.

Most surfaces here were metal.

The swarm had home advantage.

He scanned for anything non-metallic. There—an insulated polymer cable sheath bundle running along the corner.

He moved fast.

“Everyone,” he said, “to the polymer line. Feet off the grating.”

Tala hesitated, then shifted toward the corner. Raven moved immediately. Jun followed, awkwardly.

They pressed into the corner where the floor grating met a strip of polymer insulation. It was narrow, but it wasn’t magnetic.

The duct grating above them shuddered.

With a soft, clicking rush, the first unit dropped.

It was about the size of a human thumb, metallic, jointed. It hit the floor grating and immediately adhered with a tiny snap. A rotating head on its front began to scrape the metal, as if tasting it.

Then another dropped.

Then another.

A rain of small machines.

Jun froze.

Raven’s voice cut through his paralysis like a blade. “Jun,” she said sharply. “Breathe.”

Jun sucked in air and forced himself to exhale. His eyes stayed locked on the swarm.

The machines moved with terrifying coordination. They didn’t swarm randomly. They followed the grating lines like roads, spiraling outward, sampling, scraping, then converging toward heat—toward the bodies standing nearby.

Tala lifted a boot as if to stomp one.

The Doctor grabbed her wrist. “No,” he said. “You crush one, you trigger defensive behavior.”

Tala glared. “So we do nothing?”

“We do something smarter,” he replied.

He pulled a small metal tool from his pocket—a mundane thing, like a coin-sized disc. He held it between gloved fingers.

Jun’s voice shook. “That’s metal.”

“It is,” the Doctor said.

He flicked the disc down the corridor, away from them. It clinked against the grating and rolled to a stop.

The nearest units pivoted instantly, drawn by the fresh metal contact and vibration. They moved as a wave toward the disc.

“See?” the Doctor murmured. “They follow new feed.”

The swarm reached the disc and began scraping it, heads spinning. The disc’s surface dulled quickly.

Tala stared. “It’s eating it.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “And that means it wants iron. Not flesh. Flesh is incidental.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “So why take people?”

The Doctor’s gaze stayed on the swarm. “Because people carry metal,” he said. “Tools. Fasteners. Implants. Filtration clips. Reinforced boots. In an industrial moon, humans are walking ore.”

Jun’s face tightened with disgust.

The disc was nearly gone—reduced to powder and tiny shards.

The units didn’t stop. They moved past where the disc had been as if unsatisfied, spreading again, searching.

MINO spoke. “Doctor. Units are adapting. They are now sampling polymer insulation edges.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “They’re broadening diet.”

Raven’s voice was low. “Then we don’t have long.”

Tala’s lamp beam trembled slightly as she followed the movement. “How do we kill them?”

The Doctor shook his head. “We don’t kill forty,” he said. “We shut down the source.”

Jun swallowed. “Where’s the source?”

The Doctor looked deeper into the corridor, toward the conveyor’s heart.

“Down,” he said simply.

A sudden skittering sound came from behind them.

Jun spun.

A unit had climbed the wall and leapt—magnetic feet snapping onto Jun’s boot.

Jun froze in horror.

The Doctor moved instantly, slapping a strip of tape over the unit, sealing it. The unit’s abrasion head whined against the tape, unable to bite through quickly.

“Don’t move,” the Doctor said, voice controlled. “Let me.”

Jun’s breath came fast. “It’s on me.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “And it’s slow when it can’t taste metal.”

He peeled the tape away in one smooth motion, pulling the unit with it, then flung it onto the grating away from them. It snapped onto the metal and scuttled toward the others as if embarrassed.

Raven’s eyes stayed on Jun. “Are you here?” she asked him quietly.

Jun nodded, swallowing. “I’m here.”

“Say your name,” Raven said.

Jun blinked. “Jun.”

“Again,” Raven said.

“Jun,” he said louder.

Raven nodded once. “Good.”

Tala watched that exchange like she’d just seen a new kind of weapon.

The Doctor glanced at her. “Names matter,” he said softly. “Fear makes people go quiet. Quiet makes them easy to process.”

Tala’s jaw clenched. “Noted.”

The swarm was spreading again, clicking, scraping, sampling.

The Doctor took a slow breath, then looked at the maintenance panel.

“We need to get past them,” he said. “We need the lower access.”

Tala stared at the corridor ahead, now carpeted with metallic insects. “How?”

The Doctor’s gaze sharpened. “We give them something better than us,” he said.

Raven looked at him. “Don’t you dare,” she murmured, reading the impulse to sacrifice.

He met her eyes. “Not me,” he said calmly. “The moon.”

He pointed at a thick conduit line along the wall—an external feeder pipe carrying raw iron slurry toward the orchard systems.

“Open that,” he said to Tala.

Tala hesitated. “That’s regulated.”

Raven’s voice was flat. “People are being processed.”

Tala exhaled hard and moved to the conduit valve. She wrenched it open.

With a hiss, a small spray of iron-rich slurry misted onto the grating—wet, metallic, fresh.

The swarm reacted instantly.

Units pivoted. Heads lifted. They surged toward the spill with manic precision.

The corridor in front of them cleared as the machines converged on the new feast.

“Now,” the Doctor said.

They moved.

Fast, but not running—controlled steps along the polymer edge while the swarm ignored them. Jun nearly slipped, caught himself, kept going.

They reached the open maintenance panel and dropped through into the lower access chamber one by one, the Doctor last.

As he swung the hatch shut, he caught a final glimpse of the swarm above—forty tiny machines eating the spill like it was holy.

Then the hatch sealed, and the scraping became muffled.

Below, the access chamber was darker, hotter, closer to the conveyor’s motor heart. The hum was louder here, rattling teeth.

Jun leaned against the wall, breathing hard.

Tala wiped sweat from her forehead. “That was… that was—”

“Not the main problem,” the Doctor finished, voice tight.

Raven looked at the floor.

Orange dust drifted here too.

MINO spoke quietly. “Doctor. Subsurface electromagnetic signature detected. Large-scale machinery beneath. Unknown origin. Active.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed.

“Then it’s awake,” he said.

Jun swallowed. “What is?”

The Doctor looked down, as if he could see through layers of rock and metal into whatever was stirring beneath the orchard fields.

“The thing that built those teeth,” he said.

And somewhere below them, as if answering, the hum shifted—deeper, heavier—like a giant machine turning in its sleep and beginning, slowly, to dream of extraction.

///

Chapter 3 — The Foundry Under the Roots

The lower access chamber was a throat.

Hot air moved through it in pulses, drawn by fans that sounded tired. Condensation clung to the walls in beads that tasted metallic on the tongue even through the filter mask. The lighting was minimal—service strips set into the floor and occasional emergency bulbs that flickered as if the moon couldn’t be bothered to keep them steady.

Tala moved first again, lamp sweeping. The Doctor followed close enough to see the tension in her shoulders. She wasn’t afraid of hard work. She was afraid of losing more people to something that didn’t even bother to hate them.

Jun kept his hand on the wall as they walked, fingers sliding over cold metal, grounding himself through touch. His breathing had steadied, but his eyes were still wide. He was trying to translate a new kind of fear into something he could carry.

Raven was silent, but not passive. She watched the corridor junctions the way a soldier watches for ambush—measuring lines of sight, noting escape routes, reading the place’s intent.

MINO hummed quietly. “Subsurface machinery signature persistent. Increasing amplitude with proximity.”

The Doctor glanced down at his watch. “Define proximity,” he murmured.

“Within 200 meters,” MINO replied.

Jun swallowed. “Two hundred meters straight down?”

“Not straight,” the Doctor said. “Nothing on an industrial moon is straight if it can be routed.”

Tala stopped at a ladderwell bolted to the wall, descending into a deeper shaft. A sign above it read:

SUBCHANNEL 7A — MOTOR ACCESS
AUTHORIZED MAINTENANCE ONLY
LOCKOUT REQUIRED

Tala’s jaw tightened. “This isn’t used much,” she said. “We don’t come down here unless something breaks.”

The Doctor’s gaze flicked to a line of lockout tags hanging unused on a hook. “And something broke,” he said.

Tala looked at him, then down the ladder. “If the swarm’s down there too—”

“It will be,” the Doctor said calmly. “But it might not be in the same phase.”

Jun frowned. “Phase?”

The Doctor tapped the metal rail with his knuckle. “Those units above were feeding,” he said. “That’s one mode. But something built them. Something coordinates them. That takes a different mode.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Command,” she said.

The Doctor nodded once. “Which means,” he said softly, “it might be less hungry and more defensive down there.”

Tala muttered a curse and started down the ladder.

The shaft was narrow enough that the metal pressed close on either side. Heat rose from below like breath. The vibration through the ladder rungs felt stronger with each step.

Halfway down, Jun’s boot scraped a rung, and the sound echoed.

He froze.

The Doctor didn’t scold him. He spoke quietly, close enough for Jun to hear without raising his voice.

“Noise is information,” he said. “It doesn’t always mean danger. It just means something might look.”

Jun swallowed and continued.

When they reached the bottom, the shaft opened into a wide motor access hall that ran parallel to the main conveyor belt. This place felt older than the corridors above—less maintained, more scarred. The walls were pitted as if something had scraped them repeatedly. Orange dust lay in drifts along the corners.

Tala lifted her lamp. The beam caught on a set of boot prints in the dust—fresh, hurried.

She pointed. “That’s them,” she whispered. “Perrin and Sato.”

Jun’s throat tightened. “They came down here.”

The Doctor crouched, examining the prints. “They ran,” he murmured. “Not walked.”

Raven’s gaze shifted to the wall near the prints. There—thin streaks of orange powder dragged downward, as if a body had slid.

Raven’s voice was low. “They didn’t leave.”

Tala’s face went hard. “No,” she said. “They didn’t.”

The Doctor stood slowly, eyes sweeping the hall. The motor housing at the far end was enormous—a block of metal and piping with warning lights that blinked weakly. The conveyor’s heart. If the swarm wanted to stop the belt and draw more humans down, this was where it would do it.

But the Doctor’s attention kept drifting to something else: a seam in the far wall that didn’t match the industrial architecture. A line of stone—barely visible under layers of metal plating—like the moon’s original skin peeking through.

Jun followed his gaze. “That wall looks… wrong.”

“It is wrong,” the Doctor said softly.

MINO’s voice sharpened. “Non-native structural anomaly detected. Material composition: basalt and composite alloy. Age estimate: indeterminate. Not modern industrial.”

Tala frowned. “There’s nothing behind that wall,” she said. “Just bedrock.”

The Doctor walked toward it, slow, lamp beam angled. The seam wasn’t a crack. It was an interface—metal plating bolted over something older.

He reached out and pressed his gloved palm to the wall. It vibrated—not with the conveyor’s hum, but with a deeper rhythm. Like a heartbeat with no blood.

Raven stepped close, her shoulder nearly touching his. “You feel it,” she murmured.

“Yes,” he replied.

Jun hovered behind them, voice hesitant. “Is it… alive?”

The Doctor shook his head. “Not alive,” he said. “Active.”

He tapped the plating bolts. Old. Corroded. But not by time—by something that produced oxidation aggressively.

“Someone sealed this,” he said. “Recently.”

Tala’s eyes narrowed. “Who would seal bedrock?”

The Doctor looked at her. “Someone who didn’t want you going down,” he said. “Or someone who wanted to control who did.”

Tala’s mouth tightened. “Management,” she muttered. The word sounded like a curse here.

The Doctor stepped back and scanned the wall. The plating had a maintenance hatch—small, square, and locked with a code pad.

Tala sighed and pulled out her tablet. “I can override,” she said, fingers moving fast. “I have marshal access.”

Raven watched the corridor behind them while Tala worked. Her posture was easy, but her eyes were sharp.

Jun shifted his weight, trying not to look nervous. His eyes kept darting to the orange dust.

MINO hummed. “Doctor. Micro-unit presence detected in adjacent ventilation line. Count: low. Possibly scouts.”

The Doctor didn’t turn his head. “Noted,” he murmured.

Tala’s tablet beeped. “Unlocked,” she said.

She opened the hatch.

A breath of cold air spilled out, sharply different from the hot industrial atmosphere. It smelled like stone—dry, ancient—and faintly like ozone.

The opening revealed a narrow passage cut into bedrock, smooth and geometric, lined with dull composite alloy that didn’t match anything on the moon’s modern systems.

Jun stared. “That’s not a mine,” he whispered.

“No,” the Doctor said. “That’s a tunnel built by something that expected to be here forever.”

Raven’s voice was low. “A buried machine.”

The Doctor nodded. “An old one.”

They entered.

The tunnel sloped downward, away from the conveyor hall, deeper into the moon. The air grew cooler, the hum shifting into a more resonant vibration. The lighting changed too—faint strips along the floor that glowed with a weak blue-white, as if power still ran through them on some ancient reserve.

Jun’s footsteps sounded loud here, and he tried to soften them.

Tala’s lamp beam painted the walls. The alloy lining was scored with thousands of tiny scrape marks.

“Drones,” Tala muttered, recognizing it now. “They’ve been moving through here.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “This is their artery,” he said.

MINO’s voice was quiet. “Subsurface machine signal increasing. Estimated distance: 80 meters.”

Jun’s breathing quickened. “So close.”

Raven’s hand brushed Jun’s elbow lightly—just enough to steady him without patronizing him.

Jun glanced at her, grateful and embarrassed.

The tunnel opened abruptly into a chamber.

Jun stopped dead.

It was vast—far larger than the tunnel implied. A cavern carved with unnatural precision, its walls lined with ribbed alloy structures that spiraled downward like the inside of a shell. In the center, a column rose from the floor to the ceiling—metal and stone fused—covered in nodes that pulsed faintly like embers.

Around the base of the column, the floor was littered with metal debris: tool fragments, bolts, machine parts, and—Jun’s stomach clenched—pieces of boots, torn and dulled, and a belt buckle that looked like it had been ground down.

Tala’s lamp beam shook slightly as it passed over the debris.

“This is where they… bring it,” she whispered.

The Doctor didn’t answer immediately. He was listening.

The chamber was not silent.

A low hum filled it, layered with tiny clicks—like distant rain on metal. The sound of many small things moving.

Then he saw them.

Along the ribs of the chamber walls, dozens—hundreds—of small units clung, motionless, like insects sleeping. Their abrasion heads were tucked in. Their magnetic feet held them in place. They weren’t feeding.

They were waiting.

Jun’s voice came out thin. “How many?”

MINO responded instantly. “Current visible count: 312. Additional units likely in unseen recesses. This appears to be a staging chamber.”

Tala’s face went pale. “We never stood a chance,” she whispered.

The Doctor’s gaze remained fixed on the central column. It pulsed again—slow, steady.

“This is not just a nest,” he said quietly. “It’s a factory.”

Raven’s voice was flat. “Then where’s the heart?”

The Doctor looked down.

In the center of the chamber’s floor, a circular opening gaped—covered by a grate that had been bent inward. Beyond it, darkness breathed heat upward like a furnace.

MINO spoke, urgent. “Doctor. Heat signature below exceeds industrial norms. Likely foundry core.”

Jun stared at the opening. “It’s building something under us.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said.

Tala stepped forward, anger overriding fear. “Then we shut it down,” she snapped.

The Doctor’s eyes flicked to her. “We might,” he said. “But we need to know how it’s powered and why it woke.”

Tala glared. “Does it matter? It’s eating my people.”

“It matters,” Raven said sharply, not unkindly but absolute. “Because if you smash the wrong part, you feed the rest.”

Tala’s jaw clenched. She didn’t like being corrected, but she listened.

The Doctor moved closer to the central column, carefully stepping around debris. His lamp beam caught on a symbol etched into the alloy—faded, but still visible. A circular mark with branching lines like roots.

Jun frowned. “Is that—”

“Not local,” the Doctor said. “Not even close.”

He reached out, fingers hovering over the column’s pulsing node. The air around it tingled faintly—static.

Raven watched him, eyes narrowed. “Doctor,” she murmured, warning.

He didn’t touch it.

Instead, he leaned closer and listened.

The hum had a pattern—intervals, pulses. Not random. Not purely mechanical.

A command rhythm.

MINO murmured, “Signal resembles beacon synchronization. External trigger likely.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “A beacon,” he whispered. “So it didn’t wake because of damage. It woke because it was called.”

Jun’s face tightened. “By who?”

Tala’s anger flared. “Management,” she spat again. “Someone wants more output, so they woke an old machine and don’t care who gets eaten.”

The Doctor didn’t dismiss the suspicion. But he didn’t accept it blindly either. He looked at the chamber, at the sleeping swarm, at the debris.

“This thing doesn’t care about output,” he said quietly. “It cares about material.”

Raven’s voice was low. “Extraction.”

The Doctor nodded. “It’s reclaiming the moon,” he said. “Turning it into raw feed to build… something else.”

Jun swallowed. “Like a ship?”

The Doctor’s gaze drifted to the opening in the floor again. Heat rolled up from below, steady, alive.

“Possibly,” he said. “Or a launcher. Or more swarms.”

Tala stepped toward the debris pile at the base of the column, her lamp beam catching on something shiny. She reached down and picked it up, then froze.

In her palm was a small, dull metal tag—one of the lockout tags from the hook above. The tag’s plastic coating was mostly gone, and the metal beneath was chewed.

Tala’s hand trembled. “Perrin… did the lockout,” she whispered.

Jun’s throat tightened.

The Doctor looked at the tag. “He followed procedure,” he said softly.

Tala’s eyes filled with rage. “Procedure didn’t save him.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “Procedure wasn’t designed for this.”

A faint click sounded behind them.

Jun spun.

One of the units on the wall had moved—just slightly—its abrasion head unfolding like a flower opening.

Then another moved.

Then another.

The chamber’s quiet changed. The sleeping swarm was waking.

MINO’s voice sharpened. “Doctor. Units are activating. Trigger: presence detection. Recommendation: immediate withdrawal.”

Tala’s grip tightened on the chewed tag. “They’ve noticed us,” she whispered.

The Doctor’s mind moved fast. “No,” he said. “Not noticed. Registered.”

He backed away from the column, eyes sweeping for exits.

The tunnel they’d come through was the only obvious route—narrow, a bottleneck.

Raven’s gaze flicked to the opening in the floor. “Down,” she said.

The Doctor looked at her. “That’s the foundry heart,” he replied. “We go down, we commit.”

Raven’s eyes were steady. “We’re committed the moment they woke,” she said. “Up is a choke point.”

Jun’s voice shook. “I don’t want to go down there.”

The Doctor looked at Jun—really looked. “You don’t have to want to,” he said softly. “You just have to move.”

Jun swallowed hard and nodded.

The units began to detach from the walls, dropping onto the chamber floor with tiny snaps. They moved in coordinated lines, not chaotic. They were herding.

Tala cursed under her breath. “They’re pushing us.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “Toward the opening,” he said.

Raven’s voice went colder. “It wants us in the foundry.”

Jun’s breath hitched. “Why?”

The Doctor’s voice was tight. “Because it doesn’t just eat metal,” he said. “It eats complexity. Tools. Devices. Anything that makes humans valuable ore.”

He glanced at Jun’s taped cuffs. “And it may have learned that panic makes prey drop things.”

Tala’s lamp beam shook as the swarm drew closer.

The Doctor made a decision.

“MINO,” he said, “pulse a high-frequency interference burst. Not enough to fry—enough to stagger.”

MINO responded instantly. “Executing.”

The watch warmed, then pulsed with a barely audible whine.

The nearest units jerked as if struck by a sudden vibration. Their abrasion heads stalled for a second. Their coordinated lines wobbled.

“Now,” the Doctor said.

They moved as one toward the floor opening.

Tala went first, anger in her steps. Raven followed with calm. Jun hesitated for half a heartbeat, staring down into the heat-dark, then the Doctor’s hand gripped his forearm.

“Jun,” the Doctor said quietly, “stay with us.”

Jun nodded and stepped forward.

They reached the bent grate. The Doctor grabbed it and heaved, metal groaning. Raven helped without being asked, her strength controlled and efficient. Together they tore the grate aside.

Heat surged up, harsher now.

Below was a shaft with a maintenance ladder descending into a red-lit abyss. The walls were scorched, the metal stained.

The swarm recovered behind them, clicking faster now, closing the gap.

Tala didn’t hesitate. She swung onto the ladder and started down.

Raven followed.

Jun looked down and whispered, “This is insane.”

The Doctor’s voice was calm. “Yes,” he said. “But it’s tangible.”

Jun blinked at him.

The Doctor met his gaze briefly. “Meaning,” he said, “we can break it.”

Then he pushed Jun gently onto the ladder.

Jun climbed down, hands gripping rungs with white knuckles.

The Doctor stayed at the top a beat longer, watching the swarm approach. Hundreds of tiny machines flowed across the floor like a living carpet.

He tapped his watch again. “MINO—another pulse. Stronger.”

MINO’s reply was immediate. “Executing.”

The whine came again, louder. The swarm convulsed slightly, their feet snapping and re-snapping as they tried to hold coordination.

The Doctor used the moment to swing onto the ladder and descend.

As he climbed down, he looked up.

The swarm reached the shaft lip, and for a second, they paused—almost hesitant.

Then they began to climb.

Magnetic feet snapping onto the shaft walls, dozens of units descending after them like a glittering sickness.

Jun saw them and made a sound that was half gasp, half prayer.

Raven’s voice cut through the fear, low and fierce. “Keep moving.”

They climbed.

Down and down, heat rising, the air tasting like molten iron. The hum grew louder, vibrating through their bones.

The shaft opened into a lower chamber lit by a red-orange glow.

They stepped off the ladder onto a metal catwalk that overlooked a vast foundry space.

Jun froze.

Below them, a lake of molten metal churned, contained by dark walls. Mechanical arms moved above it, dipping, lifting, pouring. Sparks rose like fireflies. The ceiling was high, lost in smoke.

At the far end, something enormous was forming—an incomplete structure of ribbed alloy and stone, half-built, suspended by cranes. It looked like a heart being assembled out of weapons.

Tala stared, voice hollow. “What is that?”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “A forge core,” he said. “A reproduction engine.”

Raven’s gaze was hard. “Off-world capable,” she murmured.

MINO confirmed. “Trajectory of assembly suggests launch-compatible chassis. If completed, it can seed swarms beyond this moon.”

Jun’s hands trembled on the catwalk rail. “So it doesn’t stop here.”

The Doctor’s voice went very quiet. “No,” he said. “This moon is just the pantry.”

Above them, the sound of clicking grew louder.

The swarm was descending into the foundry chamber too.

And beneath their feet, the machine-colony’s heart throbbed with heat and purpose, building a future made of metal and hunger.

///

Chapter 4 — The Heat That Has No Mercy

The foundry didn’t feel like a room.

It felt like a rule.

Heat rose in thick layers, pressing against skin through clothing, through masks, through the thin human fiction that said bodies could simply endure if they wanted to. The air shimmered above the molten lake. Every breath tasted like pennies.

The catwalk vibrated under their boots with the rhythm of machines that didn’t care whether anyone was watching.

Jun stood at the rail like his legs had forgotten how to move. His eyes tracked the mechanical arms dipping into the molten metal, lifting it in glowing scoops, pouring it into molds that slid away on conveyor lines like offerings on an altar. Sparks drifted upward and died before reaching the ceiling.

Tala’s lamp seemed ridiculous here—its small beam swallowed by furnace light.

Raven was already scanning.

Not for beauty. For exits.

The Doctor took in the geometry: catwalks intersecting, ladders descending to maintenance platforms, control gantries spanning the lake, and, at the far end, the half-built chassis—ribbed alloy and stone fused into something that looked both ancient and newly born.

A reproduction engine.

Not a spaceship, exactly.

More like a seed-cannon: a structure capable of launching canisters—swarm pods—into the trade route lanes.

A pantry that had decided it wanted to hunt.

MINO’s voice came low and steady from the watch, as if calmness could be used as insulation.

“Hazard assessment: extreme. Recommended exposure limit at current temperature: twelve minutes without active cooling. Swarm units approaching from upper shaft. Estimated arrival: ninety seconds.”

Jun swallowed hard. “We’re going to cook.”

“Not yet,” the Doctor said, voice controlled. He wasn’t denying the danger. He was dividing it.

Raven’s eyes flicked to him. “What’s the priority?” she asked.

The Doctor’s gaze locked onto the far chassis. “Stop the reproduction cycle,” he said. “If it finishes, it launches. If it launches, this becomes a problem for every ship in the lane.”

Tala’s jaw clenched. “And my people?”

The Doctor looked at her. “And your people,” he said gently. “But if we don’t stop the launch, more people die—here and elsewhere.”

Tala hated the math, but she understood it. Her eyes burned with fury. “Then tell me where to hit it,” she said.

The Doctor turned slightly, eyes scanning for a control nexus. Machines like this always had a center. Even distributed systems needed a heartbeat.

He saw it—a control gantry to the left, elevated above the molten lake. A cluster of thick cables fed into it from below, and from it, smaller lines ran outward to the mechanical arms and conveyor feeds.

“Control gantry,” he said. “We get there, we find the command logic. We force a shutdown.”

Jun’s voice was strained. “Force? Like… turn it off?”

The Doctor’s mouth tightened. “Turn off implies consent,” he said. “This doesn’t consent.”

Raven glanced up toward the shaft. The clicking sound was louder now, echoing in the foundry like rain on tin.

“They’re here,” she said.

The Doctor nodded. “Move,” he said simply.

They ran—not blindly, not panicked, but fast enough to respect heat and teeth. Boots clanged on the catwalk. Jun’s breathing turned ragged. Tala moved like she’d spent her life on platforms like this—quick, sure-footed. Raven moved with controlled economy, not wasting motion.

As they reached the first junction, Jun glanced back.

The swarm had poured from the shaft like glittering debris in reverse—hundreds of small units clinging to walls, to ladders, to the underside of catwalks. They didn’t fall. They descended with magnetic certainty.

They were not chasing randomly.

They were moving to cut off routes.

“They’re herding again,” Jun gasped.

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “They learned the foundry’s layout. They’re using it.”

Tala swore. “They’re not dumb.”

“They’re not alive,” Raven said sharply. “But they are coordinated.”

MINO added, “Behavior indicates supervisory signal. Source likely within control gantry cluster.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Good,” he murmured. “That means there’s a brain. Brains can be disrupted.”

They reached a ladder down to a lower maintenance platform closer to the gantry. Heat increased as they descended; Jun flinched as the warmth hit his face through the mask.

At the lower platform, a row of coolant pipes ran along the wall, hissing faintly.

The Doctor stopped long enough to yank one valve open. A burst of cold mist sprayed outward, coating their clothing in a damp sheen.

Jun blinked. “What—”

“Temporary insulation,” the Doctor said, already moving. “Buy us minutes.”

Raven’s eyes flicked to him. “You planned that.”

The Doctor’s voice was quiet. “I plan for heat,” he said. “Always.”

They moved again, weaving through maintenance corridors cut along the foundry’s perimeter. Here, the floor wasn’t grating; it was solid metal plates, scorched and stained. Orange dust clung to seams like evidence.

A sound ahead—clicking, faster.

Tala raised her lamp reflexively.

The beam caught a cluster of units crawling across the floor, abrasion heads unfolding.

They weren’t feeding.

They were blocking.

Jun froze.

The Doctor didn’t.

He reached into his coat and pulled out a small pouch—dull, granular.

He ripped it open and tossed the contents across the floor in a wide arc.

The granules clattered—non-magnetic ceramic shards, sharp-edged.

The swarm hit the field and faltered. Their magnetic feet couldn’t find purchase on ceramic; their abrasion heads sparked uselessly against it.

“Go,” the Doctor said.

They moved around the ceramic scatter, hugging the wall.

Jun stared at the granules as they passed. “You carry that?”

The Doctor’s voice was clipped. “I carry more than you think.”

Raven’s mouth twitched faintly, almost a smile. She knew he did.

Behind them, the swarm reoriented, some climbing the wall to bypass the ceramic barrier.

MINO’s voice sharpened. “Bypass underway. Time to intercept: forty seconds.”

The Doctor looked ahead.

The corridor opened onto the base of the control gantry—an access stairway rising toward the elevated platform.

And there, at the bottom of the stairs, two human figures stood in hard helmets and reflective vests, holding shock batons like they were meaningful against a swarm of metal teeth.

Corporate security.

Tala stopped dead. “Oh, you’ve got to be—”

One of the guards raised his baton. “Unauthorized personnel,” he barked. “Step back. This is a restricted zone.”

The Doctor didn’t slow. He walked toward them as if they were merely inconvenient furniture.

The guard’s voice rose. “Stop!”

Raven stepped slightly forward beside the Doctor, her presence sharpening the air. She didn’t need to speak loudly to be heard.

“We’re here because your restricted zone is eating workers,” she said calmly.

The guard’s eyes flicked to her, then to Tala’s marshal badge. He hesitated.

“We have containment,” he said, too quickly.

Tala laughed—short, bitter. “Containment? Two people are gone. You want to show me where you contained them?”

The second guard shifted, uncomfortable. “The foreman said—”

“The foreman can say whatever keeps shipments moving,” Tala snapped. “You think you’re protecting operations? You’re protecting a lie.”

The first guard’s jaw tightened. “Orders are orders.”

The Doctor’s voice was quiet but absolute. “Then your orders are killing you too,” he said.

The guard blinked. “What?”

The Doctor pointed behind them.

The clicking sound had grown louder. The swarm was rounding the corridor bend, crawling over walls, ceiling, floor—an advancing field of metal hunger.

The guards turned and went pale.

Jun’s voice cracked. “Move!”

The guards stumbled backward instinctively, then panicked and lifted their batons as if electricity could scare machines.

The Doctor grabbed the nearest guard by the shoulder and shoved him toward the stairs. “Up,” he ordered.

The guard protested, “I—”

“Up,” Raven echoed, voice like a blade.

This time the guard obeyed.

They surged up the stairs together, boots pounding metal.

Halfway up, Jun glanced down.

The swarm hit the base of the stairs, magnetic feet snapping onto the steps, climbing fast.

“They’re climbing,” Jun gasped.

“They always climb,” the Doctor said. “Keep going.”

At the top, the stairway opened onto the control gantry platform.

It was worse up here—not hotter, but more exposed. The gantry hung over the molten lake on thick supports. Beneath the grated floor, heat shimmered. The air tasted of ozone and burnt iron.

A central control console sat near the platform’s edge, surrounded by thick cable bundles. Screens glowed with industrial readouts. Warning lights flashed in steady rhythm.

And standing at the console was a man in a clean suit under a protective overcoat—absurdly polished for a foundry. His helmet was pristine. His face was calm in the way only people with power could be calm.

Tala’s eyes narrowed. “Foreman Kells,” she spat.

Kells turned slowly, as if they were expected.

His gaze slid over the Doctor, Raven, Jun, Tala—and then, briefly, over the guards.

His smile was thin. “Marshal Ren,” he said. “This area is restricted.”

Tala stepped forward like she might punch him. “People are missing,” she hissed. “You sealed the bedrock tunnel. You knew.”

Kells’ expression didn’t change. “We had a minor incident,” he said. “Operations are under control.”

Behind them, the clicking reached the top of the stairs.

The swarm was arriving.

Jun’s voice rose, panicked. “We don’t have time—”

The Doctor stepped forward, eyes on Kells. “You woke it,” he said softly.

Kells blinked once. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You reactivated a buried machine-colony,” the Doctor said, voice steady. “You did it to increase output or reduce labor costs or because someone offered you a bonus big enough to forget you have a spine.”

Kells’ smile tightened. “You’re making wild accusations.”

Raven’s voice cut in, flat. “Your tunnel plating bolts were fresh,” she said. “Your lockout tags were chewed. Your workers are gone. Your calm is rehearsed.”

Kells’ eyes flicked to Raven, then back to the Doctor. He tilted his head slightly. “Who are you?”

The Doctor’s voice was almost gentle. “Someone who doesn’t tolerate people being processed,” he said.

Kells’ gaze sharpened, then shifted subtly to Jun. “And you brought a student,” he observed, dismissive.

Jun’s face flushed under the mask. He opened his mouth, then stopped—realizing outrage wouldn’t matter here.

The Doctor glanced at the control console, at the warning lights.

MINO spoke quietly. “Doctor. Control console broadcast includes supervisory swarm signal. Signal carrier: beacon uplink. Uplink identifier: CORE-ORDER.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “There,” he murmured.

Kells followed his gaze and, for the first time, something like unease flickered. “Do not touch that,” he snapped.

So the console mattered.

Good.

The swarm climbed onto the platform—dozens of units spilling over the stairs, clicking faster now, their abrasion heads unfolding like a thousand small mouths.

The guards screamed.

Kells’ calm shattered. He stepped back from the console, eyes wide. “This wasn’t—” he began.

Tala lunged toward him, grabbing his sleeve. “You did this!” she shouted.

Kells tore free, face contorted. “I did what I had to do!” he yelled over the rising clicking. “The route needs feed. The quotas were impossible. The consortium threatened to pull the contract—”

The Doctor’s voice cut through him. “So you fed them workers.”

Kells’ eyes snapped to him, furious and frightened. “They’re replaceable,” he spat, the ugliness slipping out now that heat and teeth were in the room. “Everyone here is replaceable.”

Raven’s expression went very still.

The Doctor’s gaze went cold.

Jun’s face tightened with disgust.

Tala’s hand clenched into a fist.

But the swarm didn’t care about any of it. It surged onto the platform, skittering toward the nearest metal—toward the console, the railings, the guards’ batons.

One unit leapt onto a guard’s boot. Another onto a baton. The baton’s tip dulled under scraping teeth.

The guard screamed and flailed.

“Stop moving!” the Doctor shouted, but it was too late. The guard’s panic shook units loose and scattered them, spreading danger.

Raven moved fast—she grabbed the guard’s arm and slammed him against the console housing, pinning him.

“Hold still,” she commanded, voice low and absolute.

The guard froze, eyes wild.

The Doctor snatched a coolant line from the console side, yanked it free, and sprayed cold mist directly onto the units clinging to the guard’s boot. The sudden temperature change made their magnetic adhesion stutter; several dropped and clattered onto the grating.

“Now move,” the Doctor said, and Raven shoved the guard toward the far side of the platform, away from the densest swarm cluster.

Jun stood at the platform edge, staring at the molten lake below, breathing hard. He looked like he might faint.

The Doctor turned to him. “Jun,” he said sharply. “Look at me.”

Jun snapped his gaze up, eyes wide.

“Are you here?” the Doctor asked.

Jun swallowed. “I’m here.”

“Say your name,” the Doctor demanded—not cruel, urgent.

“Jun,” Jun said.

“Again,” Raven said, already moving toward the console.

“Jun,” he repeated, louder.

The Doctor nodded. “Good. Now—help me.”

Jun blinked. “How?”

The Doctor pointed at the console’s cable bundles. “We cut the supervisory uplink,” he said. “We break swarm coordination.”

Jun stared at the cables as if they were snakes. “Which one?”

MINO answered immediately. “Uplink carrier cable: central bundle, braided black-silver sheath, emission signature 17.4 kilohertz.”

Jun’s eyes snapped to the braided black-silver line running into the console’s underside.

The Doctor pulled a small cutting tool from his pocket—insulated handle, ceramic blade. He handed it to Jun.

Jun hesitated. “Me?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “You. Because you’ll remember this feeling for the rest of your life and it will make you useful.”

Jun’s throat worked. He took the tool.

Raven was at the console now, fingers moving fast across the interface—not hacking, not decoding. Just navigating menus designed for human operators.

“Security lockout,” she said. “He’s got it set to remote authorization.”

Kells, backed against a rail, shouted over the chaos, “Don’t! You’ll destabilize the cycle!”

The Doctor didn’t look at him. “That’s the idea,” he said.

Tala grabbed Kells by the collar and slammed him into the rail. “You’re coming with me,” she snarled. “You’re going to explain why two people are rust.”

Kells struggled, face twisted. “Let go!”

A cluster of units climbed the rail near them, drawn to the metal.

Tala yanked Kells away just as the units began scraping the rail’s edge, making sparks.

Jun crouched under the console, tool poised at the braided cable. His hands shook.

The Doctor knelt beside him, low voice in his ear. “One clean cut,” he said. “Don’t hesitate. Hesitation makes you slip.”

Jun swallowed. “Okay.”

The swarm’s clicking rose, a frantic chorus.

Raven’s voice was sharp. “Doctor—thirty seconds. They’re converging on the console.”

MINO added, “Swarm density increasing. Coordination remains high.”

Jun’s eyes squeezed shut for a fraction of a second.

Then he opened them and cut.

The ceramic blade sliced through the braided cable with a sharp snap. A tiny shower of sparks flared, then died.

For a heartbeat, everything seemed to pause.

The swarm stuttered.

Units on the platform froze mid-step, abrasion heads spinning down. Those climbing the rail lost coordination, some slipping and clattering to the grating.

The clicking became uneven—no longer a unified wave, but scattered, confused.

Jun stared at the severed cable, breathing hard.

The Doctor’s mouth tightened in approval. “Good,” he said.

Raven’s eyes flicked to the swarm. “They’re… wobbling,” she murmured.

MINO confirmed. “Supervisory signal disrupted. Swarm behavior degraded to local feed-seeking. Coordination reduced by 68%.”

Tala exhaled a sound that was almost laughter. “Yes,” she whispered.

Kells’ face went pale. “You fools,” he breathed. “You don’t understand—”

The Doctor finally looked at him.

His voice was quiet and lethal. “Then explain,” he said.

Kells swallowed, eyes darting to the foundry below. The mechanical arms were still moving, but slightly out of rhythm now—like a dancer missing the beat.

“The beacon,” Kells whispered. “It’s not just a switch. It’s a command line. If you break the signal without shutting the core down correctly, the colony initiates autonomous reproduction safeguards.”

Raven’s gaze hardened. “Meaning it accelerates.”

Kells nodded, terrified now. “It floods the foundry,” he said. “It spawns everything at once. It launches whatever it can.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened.

So cutting coordination was only step one.

Now they needed the heart.

MINO’s voice came low. “Doctor. Foundry core sequence shift detected. Reproduction cycle time shortened. Kells’ statement is consistent.”

Jun’s face drained. “I made it worse.”

The Doctor grabbed Jun’s shoulder, firm. “You made it possible,” he said. “We don’t blame the person who pulls the right wire because the machine panics. We blame the machine.”

Jun swallowed, nodding, but fear still clawed at his ribs.

Raven looked at the Doctor, eyes steady. “We go down,” she said.

The Doctor nodded once.

He turned to Tala. “Get Kells out,” he ordered. “Get him locked somewhere not made of metal.”

Tala stared at him. “Not made of—”

The Doctor’s voice sharpened. “Plastic. Polymer. Stone. Anything these units won’t cling to easily. And keep him alive. We’ll need him to answer to his moon.”

Tala’s grip tightened on Kells. “Oh, he’ll answer,” she growled.

Raven stepped closer to the Doctor, their shoulders brushing in the heat. Her voice softened—just for him. “I’m with you,” she said.

He looked at her. Heat glowed on her cheekbones. Her eyes were steady.

“I love you,” he said quietly, not for romance, for alignment.

Raven’s mouth softened a fraction. “I love you,” she replied. “Now move.”

The Doctor nodded and turned to the platform’s far side, where a maintenance hatch led down toward the foundry’s core service tunnels.

Jun followed, still clutching the ceramic cutter like it was a talisman.

Behind them, the swarm—confused, hungry—began to reorient, drawn now not by a central command but by the simplest law of all: fresh metal contact, vibration, heat.

And beneath the gantry, the foundry-heart shifted its rhythm—accelerating, preparing to birth a storm of teeth into the trade routes beyond Kharon Spire.

///

Chapter 5 — The People Above the Machine

The maintenance hatch was a rectangle of scorched steel bolted into the gantry floor. Raven knelt without hesitation, fingers finding the release points. The Doctor watched her hands—steady, competent, unafraid of grime. She didn’t do delicate. She did effective.

Jun hovered, breathing shallowly. Heat rolled up from the hatch seams in gusts, like the foundry below was exhaling.

MINO pulsed. “Core acceleration continues. Estimated time to reproduction surge: nineteen minutes.”

The Doctor nodded once. “Plenty,” he lied.

Raven pried the hatch open. A ladder descended into darkness tinted red. The air rising from below was hotter and drier than the foundry’s open chamber—less oxygen, more furnace.

Jun looked down and whispered, “We’re going deeper into it.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “That’s where the rules live.”

They climbed.

The ladder led to a narrow service tunnel running along the foundry’s underside. Here the sound was different—less grand and more intimate: the hiss of coolant lines, the rattle of moving belts, the distant clang of metal arms. The walls were thick, layered, and stained, as if generations of heat had baked them into permanence.

The Doctor’s eyes tracked the infrastructure: feeder lines for raw material, coolant systems, exhaust vents, control conduits. A machine-colony like this didn’t just wake and start building. It needed fuel, power, feed.

And something had been providing that.

Jun’s foot slipped slightly on a rung; he caught himself, heart pounding.

Raven’s voice came immediately, calm and exact. “Slow,” she said. “One rung at a time. Don’t rush the ladder.”

Jun swallowed and steadied his breathing. “Okay.”

The Doctor glanced back at him. “You’re doing fine,” he said, not coddling. Just stating reality.

Jun nodded, grateful for any sentence that didn’t contain the words processed or launch.

They reached the tunnel floor.

A thin layer of orange dust coated the metal. It was everywhere now, like the moon’s bloodstream had been replaced with rust.

The Doctor crouched, touched it, and rubbed it between his gloved fingers.

“Not just oxidation,” he murmured. “It’s… active particulate.”

MINO confirmed. “Dust contains micro-fragments of swarm unit abrasion heads. This is waste product. Indicates long-term feeding and machining in this zone.”

Jun frowned. “Long-term? But Tala said the bleed started recently.”

“It did,” the Doctor said. “Which means something changed recently. Not the colony’s ability. Its permission.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “The beacon,” she murmured.

The Doctor nodded. “And the humans above who thought they could harness it.”

They moved along the tunnel, following the thickest conduit bundle. It led toward a junction where the tunnel widened into a maintenance bay.

The bay wasn’t empty.

There were people.

Not swarm units.

Workers.

Eight of them, pressed into the corner behind a stack of polymer crates. Faces streaked with sweat and rust dust. Eyes wide. They held improvised tools—wrenches, pry bars—like spears.

When the Doctor stepped into view, one of them lifted a wrench with shaking hands.

“Stay back!” the worker shouted, voice raw. “We’re not going down there!”

Tala wasn’t with them anymore—she’d taken Kells upward. So these workers saw only strangers emerging from the gantry’s depths.

The Doctor lifted both hands, palms open. “We’re not here to take you down,” he said gently. “We’re here to get you out.”

The workers stared, distrustful. One of them—a woman with a bandage around her forearm—laughed bitterly.

“Out?” she spat. “There is no out. The foreman sealed the lifts. The stairs are crawling.”

Jun swallowed. “You’ve seen them?”

The woman’s eyes flicked to Jun, then softened slightly. “Seen them?” she said. “I heard them eat the railing.”

A man beside her whispered, “Perrin and Sato…” and his voice broke.

The Doctor’s gaze softened. “I’m sorry,” he said.

The bandaged woman’s jaw clenched. “Sorry doesn’t bring them back,” she snapped.

Raven stepped forward, her voice level, controlled. “No,” she said. “But leaving you here guarantees more.”

The workers stared at Raven. Something about her—her steadiness, her refusal to perform empathy—made them listen.

The Doctor glanced down at his watch. “MINO,” he murmured, “scan for safe egress routes. Prioritize non-metal corridors.”

MINO replied instantly. “Mapping. Nearest polymer-lined service conduit: 60 meters east. Leads to emergency shelter node—composite walls. Capacity: thirty. Current occupancy: unknown.”

The Doctor nodded. He looked back at the workers. “There’s a shelter node nearby,” he said. “Composite walls. It’s safer than here.”

The bandaged woman narrowed her eyes. “Why would you help us?”

The Doctor didn’t hesitate. “Because you’re not ore,” he said simply.

The words landed hard.

The man who’d whispered Perrin’s name covered his mouth with his hand, eyes wet.

Jun felt something shift in his chest—anger, yes, but also a strange kind of resolve. This wasn’t theory. This wasn’t a lecture. These were people trapped in heat and metal, waiting to be consumed because someone above them had decided they were replaceable.

Raven looked at the bandaged woman. “What’s your name?” she asked.

The woman blinked. “Yara,” she said, guarded.

Raven nodded. “Yara,” she repeated. “You’re leading them. We’re getting you to the shelter. Then we go to the core.”

Yara stared at Raven. “You’re going to the core?” she said, incredulous.

The Doctor nodded. “Yes.”

Yara’s laugh was harsh. “Then you’re dead.”

“Maybe,” the Doctor said. “But not today.”

Jun’s voice came out shaky. “We… we cut the swarm’s coordination,” he said. “It’s confused right now.”

The workers looked at him, startled.

The Doctor glanced at Jun, approval in his eyes. Jun was learning: speak facts, not fear.

Yara hesitated, then nodded once. “Alright,” she said. “Shelter.”

The Doctor moved quickly, guiding them through the tunnel. Raven stayed at the rear, watching for pursuit, her posture protective without fuss. Jun walked beside the man who kept whispering names—Perrin, Sato—like he was afraid silence would erase them.

The tunnel narrowed, then opened into a polymer-lined conduit—walls covered in thick composite panels. The air felt marginally cooler here, less metallic.

The shelter node was a sealed chamber with benches, water dispensers, and emergency supplies. Its walls were composite, its floor rubberized. It smelled faintly of antiseptic instead of rust.

The workers stumbled inside like drowning people reaching shore.

Yara turned and looked at the Doctor, eyes hard. “If you go down there,” she said, “stop it. Stop it before it spreads.”

The Doctor met her gaze. “That’s the plan.”

Yara’s eyes flicked to Raven. “And you?” she asked.

Raven’s voice was quiet. “I keep him alive,” she said. “And I make sure the people above don’t get to hide.”

Yara nodded once, grimly satisfied.

The Doctor sealed the shelter door and keyed the lock. “Stay here,” he said. “Don’t open for anyone unless you hear your names spoken and repeated.”

Jun blinked. That was Raven’s lesson—turned into protocol.

Raven glanced at him. “Good,” she murmured.

They left the shelter and returned to the metal tunnel.

The air hit them again like a fist.

MINO pulsed. “Core acceleration update: fourteen minutes to reproduction surge.”

Jun’s throat tightened. “We’re running out.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “So we stop wasting time.”

They followed the thick conduit bundle deeper. The tunnel sloped downward, then opened into a service junction where the floor vibrated more intensely. The walls here were older, more scorched.

And then, ahead, they saw it:

A door.

Not industrial. Not modern.

A slab of composite alloy fused into the rock, etched with the same root-like symbol they’d seen above.

The Doctor’s voice went quiet. “That’s it,” he said. “The heart access.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “What do you think is behind it?”

The Doctor swallowed, then said the truth.

“A foundry-heart,” he replied. “A machine that believes everything is material.”

Jun stared at the door, hands trembling slightly. “How do we open it?”

The Doctor glanced down at his watch. “MINO,” he murmured, “interface.”

MINO responded. “Attempting.”

The watch warmed. A faint tone pulsed through the air, like a key.

The door did not open.

Instead, a low vibration answered from the other side, and the root symbol glowed faintly.

MINO spoke, tone sharpening. “Access denied. Door keyed to beacon authorization.”

Raven’s eyes hardened. “Kells,” she said.

The Doctor nodded. “The beacon is still calling,” he murmured. “And whoever holds the authorization thinks they own the moon.”

Jun’s voice shook. “We left him upstairs.”

“We did,” the Doctor said.

Raven’s gaze flicked upward, as if she could see through metal and stone to the gantry above. “Then we take authorization another way,” she said.

The Doctor looked at her. “There may not be another way.”

Raven’s voice was calm. “Then we make one.”

A faint clicking sound echoed behind them in the tunnel.

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “They’re coming.”

Jun spun. In the distance, along the tunnel floor and ceiling, a scattered cluster of swarm units moved—less coordinated now, but still hungry. They were drawn by vibration, by heat, by the presence of fresh metal and living bodies.

Raven stepped closer to the Doctor, shoulder touching his. Her voice softened just enough to be intimate.

“I’m here,” she said.

The Doctor’s throat tightened. “I know,” he whispered.

He turned back to the door.

Then he did something that felt both reckless and inevitable.

He placed his gloved palm on the root symbol and closed his eyes.

He listened—not for speech, not for emotion, but for rhythm.

The beacon’s pulse.

The machine’s answer.

The pattern of permission.

MINO murmured, “Doctor—”

“Quiet,” the Doctor whispered.

He breathed slowly, aligning his own heartbeat with the pulse.

Raven watched him, understanding what he was doing: not magic, not mind tricks—just the oldest thing in the universe. Matching a system’s rhythm to slip past its gate.

Jun held his breath, watching, terrified and awed.

The door’s symbol pulsed again.

The Doctor adjusted—fractionally—timing his pressure with the pulse.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the symbol flared brighter.

The door shuddered.

And with a deep, reluctant groan, the slab began to unlock—slowly, like a giant mouth deciding whether to open.

Behind them, the clicking grew louder.

The swarm was closing in.

The door opened just wide enough for a person to slip through.

Heat poured out—not foundry heat, not molten lake heat. Something deeper. Older. More absolute.

The Doctor opened his eyes.

“Go,” he said.

Raven moved first, slipping through the gap.

Jun followed, swallowing fear.

The Doctor turned for a final glance at the approaching swarm, then stepped through and pulled the door inward.

It closed behind them with a heavy seal.

The clicking stopped—muffled, distant.

For a heartbeat, there was silence.

Then, from somewhere in the darkness ahead, a low mechanical thrum began to rise—like a heart starting to beat faster because it had sensed fresh material enter its chamber.

///

Chapter 6 — The Heart That Makes More Teeth

The chamber beyond the door was not a room built for people.

It was a machine-space—an interior designed for maintenance drones, for automated arms, for processes that didn’t require breath or mercy. The floor was composite alloy ribbed for traction. The walls curved inward in slow spirals, as if the place had been grown instead of constructed. Faint red light bled from seams, pulsing in time with the thrum that filled the air.

The sound wasn’t loud, but it was constant: a deep, steady vibration you felt in your sternum more than you heard with your ears. Like standing beside an enormous engine that never idled.

Jun’s first instinct was to cough again, but the air down here was oddly clean—hot, dry, metallic, but filtered. The machine-colony protected its lungs better than it protected anyone else’s.

Raven stepped forward without hesitation, eyes scanning. “No exits,” she murmured.

The Doctor nodded. “There will be,” he said. “But they won’t be for us.”

MINO’s watchface glowed faintly. “Internal environment: controlled. Temperature: rising. Electromagnetic field: high. Beacon pulse: strongest here.”

Jun swallowed. “It feels like… we walked into its chest.”

“That’s exactly what we did,” the Doctor said quietly.

They moved deeper.

The corridor opened into a circular atrium, and Jun stopped dead.

In the center of the space, suspended over a pit of shifting heat, was the foundry-heart: a rotating core of black alloy and stone, layered like a turbine, with hundreds of small ports along its circumference. Each port opened and closed in rhythm, like gills. Beneath it, a molten channel ran in a loop—metal flowing through the machine, fed from somewhere deeper.

Mechanical arms—thicker than the ones above—moved around the core with deliberate precision. They didn’t flail. They didn’t hurry. They placed, welded, and assembled components with the calm inevitability of a system that had built itself a thousand times before.

Along the atrium’s edges, racks of inactive swarm units clung to the walls, feet locked, abrasion heads tucked in. Thousands of them. Sleeping teeth waiting for the next feeding cycle.

Jun’s voice came out small. “How do we fight that?”

The Doctor didn’t answer immediately. He was staring at the core’s ports. They opened, closed, opened—each time releasing a brief pulse of heat and a faint metallic hiss.

“Those ports,” he murmured. “That’s how it births them.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Then we jam the ports.”

The Doctor shook his head slightly. “Jam one, it routes around,” he said. “This isn’t a single throat. It’s a circulatory system.”

Jun forced himself to step closer. “So… the power. We cut power?”

The Doctor glanced at MINO. “Read the feed.”

MINO responded. “Power source is not external grid. It is internal: thermoelectric conversion from molten flow and subsurface geothermal pressure. Self-sustaining.”

Jun’s shoulders sank. “So it powers itself.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Which means the only way to stop it is to force it into a state it cannot recover from.”

Raven looked at him. “A hard shutdown.”

The Doctor nodded once.

They walked along the atrium’s perimeter, keeping distance from the core pit. The air was hotter here, heat rising in waves from the molten channel below. Jun’s skin prickled under his clothes.

Raven’s hand found the Doctor’s for a brief moment—warm, firm, grounding. It wasn’t romance. It was a shared agreement: we are here together, and we will not drift apart in the heat.

The Doctor squeezed once, then let go so his hands could work.

He crouched near a maintenance panel on the atrium wall. The panel wasn’t locked with modern codes. It had a mechanical latch—old, tangible.

He smiled faintly. “Good,” he murmured.

He popped it open.

Inside, thick braided lines ran along a channel—feed, coolant, control, and something else: a pair of heavy conduits marked with the root symbol, pulsing faintly with the beacon rhythm.

Jun leaned in. “Those are… control lines.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “The beacon authorization we spoofed to get in? It’s still being checked. The core is running in ‘commanded’ mode.”

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “So if we remove the command…”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “It may revert to autonomous safeguards,” he said. “Which could be worse. It might trigger maximum reproduction.”

Jun’s face tightened. “That’s what Kells said.”

“Yes,” the Doctor agreed. “Which means we don’t simply cut. We redirect.”

Raven tilted her head. “To what?”

The Doctor looked at the conduits, then at the core’s pulse rhythm.

“To shutdown,” he said.

Jun blinked. “You can tell it to shut down?”

The Doctor’s mouth tightened. “If its safety architecture includes it,” he said. “Old systems often do. They were built to preserve themselves. That means they know what ‘stop’ looks like, even if they hate it.”

MINO added, “Detected safety interlock protocol: QUENCH. Condition set: critical instability in molten loop + external contamination risk.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Quench,” she repeated. “Like cooling metal fast.”

The Doctor nodded. “If we trigger QUENCH, it will attempt to protect itself by freezing the molten loop,” he said. “But if we freeze it at the wrong moment, we can seize the core. Lock the turbine. Stop reproduction.”

Jun stared. “You want to jam its blood.”

The Doctor glanced at him. “Exactly,” he said. “You don’t fight a heart by punching it. You fight it by stopping the flow.”

Jun’s breathing quickened. “How do we trigger QUENCH?”

The Doctor pointed at the molten channel below. “We contaminate the molten loop in a way it recognizes as catastrophic,” he said. “Something it can’t machine. Something that breaks its purity assumptions.”

Raven’s gaze flicked to the racks of swarm units. “Ceramic,” she said immediately. “Like your shards upstairs.”

The Doctor nodded. “Ceramic will fracture its abrasion heads. But we need enough mass to register as contamination.”

Jun swallowed. “Where do we get enough ceramic?”

The Doctor looked around the atrium. His gaze landed on a set of emergency bulkheads—composite panels designed to withstand heat and pressure. Composite often meant ceramic fibers.

He moved toward one, pressed his hand to it, then struck it with his knuckle. The sound was dull. Dense.

“This,” he said.

Raven stepped beside him. “Can we break it?”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Yes,” he said. “But not quietly.”

MINO pulsed. “Warning: increased vibration may wake dormant units.”

Jun glanced at the racks, face pale. “If they wake—”

“We don’t let them,” Raven said flatly.

The Doctor looked at Jun. “I need you steady,” he said. “Not brave. Steady.”

Jun swallowed and nodded. “Tell me what to do.”

The Doctor’s gaze softened slightly. “Good,” he said.

He pulled a small tool from his coat—a compact wedge and a ceramic-edged pry bar. He handed the pry bar to Jun.

“Get that bulkhead panel loose,” he said. “If it splinters, collect pieces. Don’t drop them into the molten channel yet.”

Jun hesitated. “Me again?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Because you’re not a passenger. You’re part of the solution.”

Jun’s jaw tightened. He moved to the panel and wedged the tool into a seam, pushing hard. Metal groaned. The composite panel flexed.

Raven watched Jun’s posture, then murmured, “Feet planted. Use your legs. Not your back.”

Jun adjusted, did it again. The panel shifted with a harsh crack.

A faint click echoed from the racks.

Jun froze.

The Doctor’s head snapped up. The nearest rack of swarm units vibrated slightly, as if something inside had stirred.

MINO’s voice was urgent. “Dormant units transitioning to standby. Trigger: structural vibration.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed, cold. “Keep going,” she told Jun. “If you stop now, it’s for nothing.”

Jun’s throat worked. He shoved again.

The panel tore free with a sharp snap and fell inward, shattering at the edge into jagged ceramic-rich chunks.

The clicking from the racks increased—soft, like rain starting.

The Doctor moved fast, scooping pieces into a polymer maintenance tray and shoving it into Jun’s arms.

“Hold,” he said. “Don’t spill.”

Jun clutched the tray like it contained his own lungs.

Raven stepped to the atrium’s edge and scanned the racks. Several units had unfolded their abrasion heads. They weren’t moving yet, but they were awake enough to be dangerous.

“They’re listening,” Raven murmured.

“They’ll move when they taste,” the Doctor replied. He looked at the molten channel. The flow was fast—too fast to sprinkle gradually. This needed to be a single decisive contamination event.

He turned to the open maintenance panel and began rerouting a valve line—manual wheels, no digital interface. He cranked one wheel hard. A coolant hiss changed tone.

“Doctor,” MINO warned, “coolant diversion will reduce structural tolerance in this atrium by 12%.”

The Doctor grunted. “We only need it to last minutes.”

Raven’s gaze cut to him. “Don’t martyr yourself,” she murmured.

He didn’t look at her, but his voice softened. “I’m not,” he said. “I’m coming back to you.”

Raven held his gaze for a beat, then nodded once. “Good.”

The Doctor pointed at the molten loop’s narrowest point—where the channel ran close to a service lip beneath the core.

“Jun,” he said, “when I say, you dump the tray into the channel at that point. All of it. Fast.”

Jun stared at the molten metal, eyes wide. “It’ll splash.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “So you do it from the side, low, and you step back immediately.”

Jun swallowed. “Okay.”

The Doctor positioned himself at a secondary wheel—an emergency pressure relief. If the core responded by overpressurizing, he could vent it, forcing the quench sequence to commit.

Raven stood between Jun and the racks, body angled like a shield. She held a length of polymer piping in her hands—improvised club, useless against a swarm in theory, but she would rather die than let Jun freeze.

The clicking grew louder. A few units detached and dropped to the atrium floor with soft snaps. They didn’t rush. They moved cautiously, tasting metal seams, heading toward the open maintenance panel.

“Doctor,” MINO said, “units approaching your position.”

The Doctor didn’t look away from the wheel. “I know.”

He waited for the molten loop to align with the core’s port cycle—watching the rhythm, counting pulses.

“One,” he murmured. “Two… three…”

The core’s ports opened wider. The molten flow surged slightly.

“Now,” he said.

Jun moved.

He stepped to the service lip, lowered the tray, and dumped the ceramic chunks into the molten channel in one decisive pour.

For a split second, nothing happened.

Then the molten metal reacted violently—spluttering, spitting sparks as the ceramic fractured and flashed, sending a plume of white-hot fragments into the channel.

The core’s pulse stuttered.

A shrill alarm tone—mechanical, ancient—rang through the atrium.

MINO confirmed instantly. “Contamination detected. Safety interlock QUENCH engaged.”

The molten loop’s flow slowed abruptly as internal gates slammed shut. Coolant lines hissed louder. The core’s ports began to close in sequence, tightening like a clenched jaw.

The swarm units on the floor froze—then shifted direction, drawn toward the contamination site like predators smelling blood.

Raven stepped in front of Jun without thinking. “Back,” she ordered.

Jun stumbled backward, eyes fixed on the channel.

The Doctor cranked his pressure relief wheel hard.

A vent above the molten loop opened with a roar, releasing a blast of superheated gas that shook the atrium and made the racks shudder.

More units detached.

The clicking became frantic.

But the core—locked into safety—kept sealing itself.

The molten flow thickened, cooling rapidly, turning from bright orange to dull red to dark.

The turbine slowed.

The foundry-heart began to seize.

Jun stared, breath coming fast. “It’s working.”

The Doctor’s jaw was tight. “Not yet,” he said. “It will fight to restart.”

MINO’s voice sharpened. “Core attempting restart sequence. If restart succeeds, reproduction surge will resume at accelerated rate.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Then we stop the restart.”

The Doctor looked at the maintenance panel—at the beacon conduits pulsing.

“We cut permission,” he said quietly. “Now. While it’s choking.”

Jun’s eyes widened. “But you said—”

“I said it might trigger safeguards,” the Doctor replied. “But it’s already in safeguard mode. We’re not starting a fire; we’re starving it while it’s busy saving itself.”

He reached into the panel and gripped the two beacon conduits, one in each hand.

They were warm—alive with command pulse.

Raven stepped close, her hand sliding onto his wrist for a fraction of a second. A wordless tether.

“Together,” she murmured.

The Doctor exhaled. “Together,” he echoed.

He yanked.

The conduits tore free with a violent spark, severing the beacon’s rhythm.

The atrium’s red seam lights flickered.

The core’s pulse faltered again, and this time it didn’t recover. The ports stopped moving. The turbine shuddered, then locked with a grinding groan that felt like the whole moon exhaling.

For a moment, the clicking paused—confused, directionless.

Then the swarm units on the floor began moving again, not coordinated now, but hungry—drawn to the nearest metal, which was suddenly the three of them.

Raven’s voice went cold. “We’re not done.”

The Doctor’s eyes snapped to the corridor they’d entered from. “We run,” he said. “Because the heart is stopped, but the teeth are still alive.”

Jun clutched his empty tray, then dropped it without thinking and moved.

Raven grabbed his shoulder and shoved him toward the corridor first—no debate.

The Doctor followed, already pulling more ceramic shards from his pocket, scattering them behind like breadcrumbs made of pain.

As they fled the atrium, the dormant racks began to detach in earnest—hundreds of units dropping, clattering, skittering, no longer commanded but still driven by the simplest law in their code:

Feed.

Behind them, the foundry-heart—seized, choked, frozen—sat silent over its darkened molten loop.

But silence in a machine is not peace.

It is the pause between one kind of violence and the next.

///

Chapter 7 — The Tunnel That Didn’t Forgive

They ran into heat that chased them like breath.

The corridor beyond the heart chamber was narrower than it had felt on the way in—because now it had purpose. Now it was not a passage; it was a funnel. The walls pulsed with residual red from the core’s failing lights, and every seam seemed to vibrate with the sound of metal teeth finding direction again.

Jun’s boots clanged too loud. The noise sounded like a signal flare.

Raven shoved him forward once—hard, not cruel—just enough to keep him moving without looking back.

“Don’t look,” she said.

Jun obeyed because her voice made disobedience feel like dying.

The Doctor ran behind them, scattering ceramic shards and anything non-magnetic he had left, turning the floor into an ugly field of friction. It bought seconds. It didn’t buy safety.

MINO’s voice cut through the pounding heat.

“Swarm density increasing behind. Coordination remains degraded. However: local clustering around heat sources and vibration. You are the highest combined heat/vibration signature within range.”

Jun gasped, “That’s… comforting.”

“It’s accurate,” the Doctor replied, breath controlled. “Accuracy is what we have.”

They hit the door they’d used to enter the heart corridor—the same slab with the root symbol. It was still sealed.

Jun’s stomach dropped. “No.”

The Doctor reached it first, palm slapping the surface. He pressed, listened, tried to match the old pulse again.

Nothing.

The beacon rhythm was gone. He’d torn out the command conduits. The door no longer recognized them.

Raven’s eyes snapped to him. “Doctor.”

The clicking behind them was louder now—no longer a distant chorus but a storm in a hallway.

Jun turned involuntarily and saw a wave of units spilling into the corridor, skittering over each other, abrasion heads spinning, hungry without intelligence but lethal all the same.

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “Alright,” he murmured. “Then we do it the old way.”

He stepped back and looked for the door’s edges. It wasn’t keyed now; it was locked by a physical mechanism inside the seam—an ancient latch built to resist force.

Raven looked at him. “You can’t pry that.”

The Doctor’s mouth tightened. “No,” he agreed. “But I can break what it’s anchored to.”

He scanned the corridor quickly. Above the door, the composite alloy merged into basalt. Along the sides, the same. But to the right, a maintenance conduit ran past the doorframe—thick, pressurized, carrying coolant.

His eyes narrowed.

“Raven,” he said, “brace Jun.”

Raven didn’t ask why. She grabbed Jun by the shoulders and shoved him hard against the wall opposite the door, her body angled to shield him.

Jun’s eyes widened. “What—”

“Hold,” Raven ordered. “Breathe. Stay.”

The Doctor moved to the coolant conduit and grabbed the manual wheel. He cranked it violently.

The wheel resisted for half a beat, then gave with a harsh squeal.

A pressure gauge nearby flicked upward.

MINO warned, “Doctor. Coolant pressure rising beyond safe tolerance. Risk: rupture.”

“Good,” the Doctor muttered.

The clicking behind them became frantic as the swarm hit the ceramic scatter field and began climbing the walls to bypass it.

Jun’s breath came fast. “They’re coming!”

“I know,” the Doctor said.

He kept cranking.

The gauge climbed.

A low groan came from the conduit—metal under strain.

Raven’s grip tightened on Jun. “Keep your head down,” she murmured to him, low and fierce.

Jun nodded, jaw clenched.

The Doctor stepped back from the conduit and positioned himself beside the doorframe. He pulled his coat sleeve over his hand, then slapped the conduit hard at a stress point.

The conduit ruptured with a violent hiss.

A jet of super-cooled mist blasted outward, slamming into the doorframe and the basalt seam above it. The temperature shock made the stone crack with a sharp, brittle sound.

The door shuddered.

The Doctor moved instantly, driving his shoulder into the door at the exact moment the basalt seam split further.

The slab shifted—just a fraction.

Again.

He hit it again, teeth clenched.

The door groaned, then cracked open a finger-width.

Not enough.

The swarm surged closer, now close enough that individual units leapt, snapping onto the corridor’s metal floor with tiny clicks.

One unit reached the coolant spray and jerked as ice formed on its abrasion head. It dropped, clattering.

The Doctor saw it and understood.

“Cold,” he murmured. “They hate cold.”

MINO confirmed. “Abrasion heads and magnetic feet lose efficiency under rapid cooling. Adhesion failure increases.”

The Doctor snapped his gaze to the ruptured conduit. Coolant mist was still blasting, coating surfaces in frost.

He made a decision fast enough that it looked like instinct.

“Raven—move Jun closer to the spray,” he ordered.

Jun’s eyes widened. “What?”

Raven didn’t question. She dragged Jun toward the edge of the coolant plume, positioning him where the cold mist coated his taped cuffs and boots.

Jun flinched as the cold hit him through his clothing.

“It burns,” he gasped.

“It saves,” Raven replied.

The Doctor grabbed a length of polymer hose from a wall mount—emergency line, flexible, non-magnetic. He shoved one end into the coolant jet, redirecting the spray toward the floor where the swarm was approaching.

A thin sheet of frost spread across the metal grating. Units that stepped onto it skittered, feet slipping, adhesion failing. Some dropped from the walls as their magnets lost grip.

The wave stumbled.

Not stopped—but staggered.

The Doctor slammed his shoulder into the door again.

The basalt seam split wider.

The slab shifted another inch.

Jun stared, shaking. “It’s opening!”

The Doctor’s voice was tight. “Not fast enough.”

Raven’s eyes cut to him, then to the swarm, then back. She made her own decision.

She stepped forward into the corridor, between the oncoming units and the Doctor, and lifted the polymer pipe she’d carried earlier like a club.

The Doctor snapped, “Raven—”

Raven didn’t look at him. “Open the door,” she said.

A unit leapt toward her boot. It snapped on, abrasion head spinning.

Raven didn’t flail. She planted her foot and slammed the pipe down on the unit—not to crush it, but to pin it in place while the coolant mist washed over it. The unit’s head iced, whined, then stalled.

Raven kicked her foot once, hard, and the unit skittered off into the frost.

More units advanced, crawling over the icy floor, slower now but still relentless.

Raven moved with brutal economy—pin, freeze, kick, step back. Not heroic. Just functional violence.

Jun watched her, horrified and impressed and terrified.

The Doctor’s hands found purchase on the door edge. He wedged his fingers into the gap and pulled with everything he had, using the cracked basalt seam as leverage.

The slab screamed against its frame.

Then—finally—it gave.

The door swung open enough for a person to squeeze through.

The Doctor turned and shouted, “Go!”

Raven shoved Jun through first without ceremony.

Jun stumbled into the tunnel beyond, coughing as he hit slightly cooler air. He turned immediately, eyes wide.

“Raven!”

Raven stepped backward toward the door, still swinging the polymer pipe. Units skittered near her boots, slowed by frost, but still able to climb.

The Doctor grabbed her arm. “Now.”

Raven moved.

She slipped through the gap in one smooth motion, and the Doctor followed, pulling the polymer hose with him and letting it snap free of the coolant jet.

As he crossed the threshold, the swarm surged toward the opening.

The Doctor slammed his palm against an internal mechanical latch and forced it.

The door began to close.

Not quickly.

Jun’s stomach dropped. “It’s too slow!”

The Doctor’s jaw was clenched, shoulders straining as he hauled the slab shut.

A unit leapt through the narrowing gap and snapped onto the tunnel floor inside—magnetic feet clacking.

Jun recoiled.

Raven didn’t.

She stepped forward and stomped—not to crush, but to pin it. The unit’s abrasion head whined against her boot. She grabbed the ruptured polymer hose end and blasted residual coolant mist onto it.

The unit iced, stalled.

Raven kicked it away into the closing seam.

The door slammed shut with a final heavy seal, crushing the iced unit into scrap.

Silence—muffled, immediate—fell like a curtain.

Jun’s breathing sounded enormous in the narrow tunnel.

He leaned against the wall, shaking. “We— we—”

The Doctor stood for a second with his hand still on the door, chest heaving slightly. He listened.

Behind the slab, the clicking returned—faint, frustrated, scraping.

They were contained, for the moment.

Raven stepped close to the Doctor, her eyes scanning his face. She didn’t ask if he was alright; she checked it.

He met her gaze and exhaled.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

Raven’s voice was low. “Don’t thank me,” she said. “Keep moving.”

Jun swallowed, trying to steady himself. “Where are we now?”

The Doctor looked down the tunnel. It sloped upward, away from the heart chamber. The walls were still composite alloy, but the heat was less intense. The vibration was different—closer to the foundry above, farther from the core.

“We’re on the return artery,” the Doctor said. “Back toward the industrial layer.”

MINO pulsed. “Update: foundry-heart turbine locked. Reproduction cycle halted. However: autonomous swarms remain active. Without supervisory signal, they will spread along local gradients and continue feeding until power depletion or physical containment.”

Jun’s face tightened. “So… the heart is stopped, but the swarm will still eat the moon.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Unless we do one more thing.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Containment.”

The Doctor nodded. “We need to make the moon unappetizing,” he said. “Or we need to trap the units somewhere they can’t climb out of.”

Jun swallowed. “How do we do that?”

The Doctor’s gaze was focused now—no longer on stopping the launch, but on saving the living above.

“We use the thing the colony can’t ignore,” he said.

Raven’s voice was quiet. “Feed.”

The Doctor nodded once. “We lure them,” he said. “Then we lock them in.”

Jun stared at him, fear and dawning comprehension mixing. “In what?”

The Doctor’s eyes flicked upward along the tunnel. “In the foundry,” he said. “Where it’s hot and metal and full of traps.”

Raven’s mouth tightened. “And full of people.”

The Doctor’s gaze softened briefly. “Not for long,” he said. “We clear the people first.”

Jun’s shoulders sagged. “How do we clear everyone on a moon?”

The Doctor’s voice was steady. “One shelter at a time,” he said. “One corridor at a time. We teach them how to move, and we make management stop pretending.”

Raven’s eyes flashed. “And we make Kells answer.”

The Doctor nodded, then started walking up the tunnel.

Jun hesitated, then followed, still shaking but moving. Raven stayed close enough that Jun could feel her presence like a barrier against panic.

As they climbed, the muffled clicking behind the door faded into distance.

Ahead, the tunnel opened back toward the industrial layers—toward people, metal, and the ugly, practical problem of keeping an entire working moon from becoming food for a thousand hungry teeth.

///

Chapter 8 — The Foreman’s Truth

They emerged from the bedrock tunnel into the lower motor access hall again, but the place felt different now—like the moon had learned a new rhythm.

The conveyor hum was uneven. The warning lights along the walls blinked out of sync, some dead, some too bright. The air carried more dust—fine orange particulate that clung to the inside of Jun’s mask when he breathed.

Tala wasn’t there.

The hall was empty except for the smear of rust and the bootprints that still marked where Perrin and Sato had run.

Jun’s stomach turned again.

Raven’s gaze flicked to the floor, then up the corridor. “Where did she take him?” she murmured.

The Doctor didn’t answer immediately. He listened.

Far above, faint through layers of metal and machinery, voices echoed—shouts, alarms, the distant repetitive wail of a siren changing tone. Not the routine three-note siren from earlier. This one had urgency.

“People are moving,” the Doctor said softly. “Good. That means Tala’s making noise.”

MINO pulsed. “External network chatter indicates containment procedures initiated. However, foreman Kells has issued counter-orders to maintain production lines. Conflict escalating.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “He’s still giving orders?”

“Power doesn’t surrender because it’s wrong,” the Doctor said.

They moved fast through the corridor, taking the same ladderwell up toward the conveyor subchannel. The heat lessened slightly as they climbed, but the air grew thicker with panic.

At the top, the hatch opened into the lower access chamber beneath the conveyor belt—the place where the first swarm had poured from the ducts. The corridor above was brighter now, flashing with emergency lighting.

The scraping sound was present, but it was scattered—not a unified wave, more like multiple little storms moving in different directions.

Jun’s shoulders tightened. “They’re everywhere.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “And confused.”

Raven’s voice was cold. “Confused doesn’t mean harmless.”

They moved along the polymer edge again, careful to keep their boots off the grating when possible. The Doctor kept scanning for orange dust clusters—signs of swarm concentration.

At a junction, a door panel hung open, and inside, a worker lay on the floor, unmoving.

Jun’s heart lurched. He started forward.

Raven caught his sleeve. “Wait,” she said sharply.

The Doctor stepped closer, lamp angled, eyes scanning the worker’s boots.

Metal toe caps.

Orange dust around the soles.

“Trap,” the Doctor murmured.

He picked up a piece of polymer conduit and poked the boot gently.

A unit detached from the boot’s underside and skittered away, clicking.

Jun’s breath hitched. “It was… under him.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “They learned to hide under what they’ve already eaten.”

Raven’s voice softened slightly—just enough to be human. “He’s still breathing,” she noted.

The Doctor nodded. “He’s unconscious,” he said. “Heat and shock.”

Jun swallowed. “We can’t leave him.”

“We won’t,” the Doctor said.

He looked around, spotted a polymer cable sheath bundle, and used it to fashion a quick sling. Raven lifted the worker with efficient strength, hauling him onto her shoulder like dead weight.

Jun stared at her. “You—”

Raven didn’t look at him. “Walk,” she said.

Jun walked.

They pushed toward Intake.

When they reached the warehouse-greenhouse structure, it was chaos.

Workers crowded the open space, shouting over each other. Some were masked, some had torn masks off in panic. Security drones hovered overhead, their lights blinking.

Tala stood on a metal desk, shouting orders like a battlefield commander.

“Shelter nodes!” she barked. “Composite rooms only. No one goes into corridors alone. If you hear clicking, you turn around—”

Her voice cut as she saw the Doctor and Raven emerge.

Her eyes locked onto the unconscious worker on Raven’s shoulder. “Where did you find him?”

“Subchannel junction,” the Doctor said. “He’s alive.”

Tala nodded sharply. “Put him in Node Three. Polymer benches.”

Raven moved without waiting.

Jun looked around, overwhelmed. The mood here was not fear alone—it was fury too. People who’d been used to being tired were discovering a new kind of energy: the energy of being treated as disposable and deciding not to accept it.

Tala jumped down from the desk and grabbed the Doctor’s arm. “Kells is in Intake Two,” she said quickly. “Locked in the composite office. He’s screaming about quotas and calling the consortium.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Good,” he said. “He can scream.”

Tala’s jaw clenched. “He says if we stop production, we breach contract, and the route will blacklist the moon. He says people will starve.”

Raven returned, wiping sweat and rust dust from her cheek. “He’s not wrong about the route,” she said.

Jun blinked. “So what do we do?”

The Doctor’s voice was tight. “We stop the swarm,” he said. “Then we make the route face what it demanded.”

Tala’s eyes flashed. “And Kells?”

The Doctor turned toward the composite office door. “We use him,” he said. “Then we hand him to you.”

They entered.

The office was small, walls thick composite, no metal furnishings—Tala had learned fast. Kells sat on the floor, back against the wall, helmet off, hair damp with sweat. His suit was stained now, his polish broken.

When he saw the Doctor, his eyes flared with hatred and fear.

“You,” he spat. “You’ve destroyed everything. Do you know what you’ve done?”

The Doctor stood calmly, hands behind his back, as if they were in a debate chamber instead of a moon eating itself.

“I stopped your machine,” the Doctor said. “Your problem now is smaller.”

Kells laughed harshly. “Smaller?” he snapped. “There are still thousands of units loose! They’ll eat the conveyors, the towers, the irrigation arms—everything. We’ll lose the harvest. We’ll lose the forge. People will die anyway.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Unless we trap them,” he said.

Kells’ laugh died. “Trap them?” he repeated, voice thin. “You can’t trap them. They move through ducts, through shafts—”

“You sealed the bedrock tunnel,” Raven said sharply. “You can seal ducts.”

Kells’ eyes flicked to Raven, then back to the Doctor. “Seal every duct on a moon?” he scoffed. “Impossible.”

The Doctor stepped closer. His voice dropped, precise. “Not every duct,” he said. “Just one.”

Kells blinked. “What?”

The Doctor held Kells’ gaze. “Your foundry is a nest,” he said. “It’s hot. It’s metallic. It’s irresistible. Without coordination, the swarm will follow feed gradients. If we make the foundry the richest feed source—and we make every other corridor cold and composite—they will migrate back down. We lure them to the foundry and we lock them in.”

Kells stared, realization dawning slowly. “You want to… sacrifice the foundry.”

The Doctor didn’t flinch. “Yes,” he said.

Kells’ face twisted. “That’s insane. That’s our output. That’s—”

“That’s your bonus,” Tala snarled from the door.

Kells snapped at her, “You don’t understand contracts—”

Tala cut him off. “I understand bodies,” she said. “And rust on walls.”

Jun watched, heart pounding. He could feel the momentum of the room shifting—fear turning into decision.

Raven stepped closer to Kells, voice calm, lethal. “Tell us how you reactivated the beacon,” she said.

Kells’ mouth tightened. “I didn’t,” he lied.

The Doctor’s voice was quiet. “Yes, you did,” he said. “Because the beacon needed present-day authorization to route power. You had it. You still have access to the command channel, even if we tore out the conduits. You issued the wake. You can issue the sleep.”

Kells’ eyes widened. “It’s not that simple.”

“Nothing is,” the Doctor replied. “But you are going to try.”

Kells stared at the three of them—Doctor, Raven, Tala—then glanced at Jun, as if hoping the younger face might be sympathetic.

Jun met his gaze and felt something surprising: not pity, but contempt.

Kells swallowed. “Even if I could,” he said, voice brittle, “why would I help you? You’ll ruin me.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “Good,” she said.

The Doctor stepped closer, and when he spoke, there was no humor in it.

“You woke a machine that eats workers,” he said. “You sealed a tunnel so you could pretend it wasn’t happening. You decided people were replaceable. You don’t get to bargain. You get to repair what you broke.”

Kells’ face twisted. “The route—”

“The route will survive,” the Doctor said. “But you might not, if you keep refusing.”

Tala’s hand tightened on her baton. “He’s right,” she said flatly. “You’re not leaving this office until you help, Kells. And if you think the consortium can protect you, remember: they don’t even know your name. You’re replaceable too.”

Kells’ jaw trembled. Sweat ran down his temple.

Jun watched him break—not dramatically, but in small increments. Pride collapsing under the weight of heat and teeth.

Finally, Kells nodded once, rigid. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. I can access the beacon relay from the gantry console. I can issue a containment directive. But it won’t shut them off. It will only… bias their movement.”

The Doctor nodded. “That’s all we need,” he said. “Bias them toward the foundry.”

Kells swallowed. “And then what? Seal them in?”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Yes,” she said. “And then you watch your foundry burn before it eats another person.”

Kells flinched as if struck.

Tala smiled without warmth. “I’ll enjoy that,” she said.

The Doctor turned to Tala. “We need cold barriers,” he said. “Coolant spray lines in main corridors. Composite shelter nodes sealed. Evacuate everyone from the foundry and the gantry.”

Tala nodded sharply. “Already started,” she said. “But the foreman’s guards are resisting.”

Raven’s gaze hardened. “Then we remove their excuse,” she said.

Jun blinked. “How?”

The Doctor looked at Kells. “You,” he said. “You walk out there and you tell them to stand down. On open channel.”

Kells’ eyes widened. “They won’t listen.”

The Doctor’s voice was flat. “They will,” he said. “Because you’re still the man who signs their pay.”

Kells swallowed hard.

The Doctor stepped back, allowing space for the decision to become action.

MINO pulsed. “Swarm migration pattern indicates gradual drift toward heat centers. Without intervention, units will damage infrastructure in 2–4 hours.”

The Doctor nodded. “We don’t have hours,” he said.

He looked at Jun.

“Jun,” he said, “you’re with me. We’re going to the gantry. You’re going to help me keep the console stable while Kells issues the bias directive.”

Jun’s throat tightened. “Back there?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Back there.”

Jun stared at him, fear flickering—then he nodded. “Okay,” he said, voice thin. “Okay.”

Raven stepped close to Jun and touched his shoulder lightly—just a brief anchor.

“You’re not alone,” she said.

Jun swallowed. “I know.”

The Doctor looked at Raven, and for a moment, despite the urgency, his eyes softened.

“I need you topside,” he said quietly. “Keep people moving. Keep Tala from killing him before he’s useful.”

Raven’s mouth twitched faintly. “I can do both,” she said.

The Doctor nodded, then turned.

They moved out of the composite office into the chaotic Intake bay, where alarms wailed and people shouted and the moon trembled under the weight of its own machinery.

Somewhere beneath their feet, the seized foundry-heart sat silent—but the teeth it had birthed still crawled through ducts and corridors, hungry and directionless.

Now they had to turn directionless hunger into a trap.

And they had to do it fast.

///

Chapter 9 — The Lure

The path back to the gantry was louder now.

Not because the machines had changed, but because the people had. Panic had a sound on a working moon: boots too fast on metal, voices too sharp, doors slammed when they should have been latched gently. Every human instinct to hurry became a signal flare for the swarm.

The Doctor moved through it like a conductor trying to quiet an orchestra mid-storm.

“Slow down,” he told a group of workers rushing toward the corridor. “Two together. Not four. Stay off the grates if you can. Composite corridors only.”

They stared at him like he was mad, then did it because his voice didn’t wobble.

Jun stayed close, trying to copy the Doctor’s calm, failing, then trying again. His eyes kept darting to every seam, every vent.

MINO’s voice pulsed from the watch. “Multiple unit clusters detected within thirty meters. No coordinated attack patterns. Primary drivers: vibration, heat, exposed metal. Recommend cold barriers.”

They passed a coolant line that had been hastily cracked open, misting a corridor in a shimmering haze. A worker stood nearby, shivering, holding a polymer hose like a weapon.

The Doctor nodded at him. “Good,” he said. “Keep it steady. Don’t aim at people. Aim at the floor.”

The worker blinked, then nodded, relieved to be given a job that wasn’t dying.

Jun whispered, “You’re… teaching them.”

The Doctor didn’t look at him. “I’m giving them a way to not panic,” he said. “Panic is the swarm’s favorite food.”

Jun swallowed. “How do you do that when you’re—when you’re scared too?”

The Doctor glanced at him briefly, eyes sharp behind fogged glasses. “I don’t let my fear drive the steps,” he said. “I let it sharpen the plan.”

They reached the stairway up to the gantry. It was partially iced from coolant spray, and several guard bodies—alive, groaning—had been dragged to the side. Their batons lay abandoned, chewed at the tips.

Kells stood at the bottom of the stairs with two guards flanking him, their faces tight. He looked like a man who’d learned that authority didn’t stop teeth.

Tala wasn’t here. Raven wasn’t here. This was the part where the Doctor had to trust them to do their work elsewhere.

Kells saw the Doctor and glared. “This is madness,” he snapped.

The Doctor didn’t indulge the emotion. “Up,” he said.

Kells hesitated, then obeyed because his guards pushed him gently forward like a prisoner. The irony didn’t escape anyone.

Jun climbed behind the Doctor, careful on the iced steps. The clicking sound was faint, distant, like rain moving across a roof somewhere out of sight.

At the top, the gantry platform looked battered. Frost clung to the railings in patches. The control console’s underside was still open where Jun had cut the uplink cable earlier. Sparks had scorched the metal.

The molten lake below churned lazily, but the mechanical arms above it had slowed. Their rhythm was off. The foundry was no longer a confident machine; it was a wounded animal still moving out of inertia.

The Doctor went straight to the console.

“MINO,” he murmured, “status.”

MINO replied. “Foundry-heart remains seized. Industrial foundry above continues partial operation. Autonomous safety systems maintaining minimal flow. Swarm units continue distributed feeding. Migration bias possible via heat and fresh metal introduction.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Then we feed them,” he said softly.

Jun blinked. “You mean… lure with more metal?”

The Doctor nodded. “The foundry is already rich,” he said. “But we need to make it irresistible.”

Kells snapped, “You’re going to destroy the rest of our infrastructure!”

The Doctor looked at him, expression flat. “You already tried,” he said. “I’m just choosing where.”

Kells’ jaw clenched.

The Doctor pointed at the console interface. “Authorization,” he said. “Issue the bias directive.”

Kells hesitated. “It’s not called that,” he muttered, fingers hovering. “It’s a maintenance containment protocol. It tells subsystems to reroute… undesirable drift… back to intake zones.”

The Doctor’s voice was cold. “Do it,” he said.

Kells began typing, hands shaking slightly.

Jun leaned toward the open underside of the console, eyes scanning. “If he’s lying—”

“If he’s lying,” the Doctor said quietly, “we’ll know.”

Kells’ fingers moved fast. Screens flickered. Warning lights flashed.

MINO pulsed. “Beacon relay access detected. Limited. Foreman authorization is valid.”

Jun exhaled in relief he didn’t deserve yet.

The Doctor looked down over the gantry rail at the foundry floor below—at the metal platforms, the arms, the duct lines. “We still need an attractor,” he murmured.

Jun frowned. “What kind?”

The Doctor pointed to a feeder chute—one of the lines that poured raw iron slurry into the foundry’s process stream. “That,” he said. “We dump a fresh feed surge. Loud, hot, wet metal. They’ll come.”

Jun’s stomach tightened. “Won’t that make more units?”

“Not without the heart,” the Doctor said. “The foundry can melt and shape, but it can’t reproduce swarms at scale without the seized core. We’re using its appetite against it.”

Kells’ voice was brittle. “If you flood the feeder chute, you’ll overload the molds. You’ll ruin—”

The Doctor cut him off. “Yes,” he said. “And that’s the price of not being eaten.”

Kells’ face twisted with rage. “You don’t care about this moon!”

The Doctor’s eyes flashed. “I care about the people on it,” he said. “And you should have, before you cared about quotas.”

Jun watched that exchange and felt something settle in him: the Doctor’s morality wasn’t abstract. It was a simple hierarchy. People over metal. Always.

Kells hit a final key. The console beeped.

“There,” he snapped. “Bias directive issued. It will… encourage drift toward foundry heat signatures and away from coolant-chilled corridors.”

MINO confirmed. “Directive detected across local network. Swarm migration probability toward foundry increased by 41% within thirty minutes.”

The Doctor nodded. “Not enough,” he murmured.

Jun’s eyes widened. “Not enough?”

“We don’t have thirty minutes,” the Doctor said. “We have a moon full of metal and panic. We need them in the trap now.”

He looked at the feeder chute valve wheel nearby. It was huge—manual, designed for brute adjustments.

Jun stared at it. “You want me to—”

The Doctor looked at him. “Yes,” he said. “You. Again.”

Jun swallowed. “Why is it always me?”

The Doctor’s voice softened a fraction. “Because you’re learning the difference between being present and being useful,” he said. “And because I need my hands on the console.”

Jun’s throat worked. He nodded. “Okay,” he said.

He moved to the valve wheel and grabbed it. The metal was hot even through his gloves.

Raven wasn’t here to give him posture advice. The Doctor didn’t have time. Jun planted his feet, gritted his teeth, and pulled.

The wheel resisted. He strained. His arms shook.

The Doctor called, without looking away from the console, “Use your legs!”

Jun sucked in breath, bent his knees, and pushed with his whole body.

The wheel moved with a harsh groan.

Jun turned it again.

And again.

With each turn, the vibration through the gantry changed—deeper, heavier, like a throat clearing.

Below, the feeder chute began to roar.

A surge of raw iron slurry poured into the foundry stream, splashing, hissing, sending up a cloud of metallic vapor that glittered in the furnace light.

The sound was enormous—wet metal hitting hot metal. A hymn for machines.

Jun stared down, breath coming fast. “That’s—”

“Food,” the Doctor said.

MINO pulsed urgently. “Swarm clusters responding. Migration vectors shifting toward feeder chute zone. Speed: moderate to fast.”

From the far catwalks, small glints appeared—units moving in scattered packs, drawn toward the roar.

Jun’s stomach twisted. “They’re coming.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Good.”

Kells stared down at the flood, horrified. “You’ve lost your mind,” he whispered.

The Doctor glanced at him. “You never had yours,” he said.

A new alarm tone sounded—industrial overload warnings. Molds downstream began to clog. Molten metal spilled into overflow channels. Sparks rose.

The Doctor’s eyes tracked the flow. “We need to keep it contained,” he murmured. “We lure them to the foundry, then we seal the foundry.”

Jun blinked. “Seal it how? It has vents, corridors, ducts—”

The Doctor nodded. “That’s why this doesn’t work without help,” he said.

As if on cue, Tala’s voice crackled over the public address system—rough, amplified, furious.

“All shifts, this is Marshal Ren,” Tala barked. “Emergency protocol. Foundry evacuation now. Repeat: evacuate foundry. Composite shelter nodes only. If you are in a metal corridor, turn back. Do not run. Do not—”

Her voice cut for a moment, then returned, colder. “Foreman Kells’ authority is suspended. Any guard following his orders will be treated as obstruction of emergency response.”

Jun’s eyes widened. “She did it.”

The Doctor’s mouth tightened in satisfaction. “Good,” he murmured.

Raven’s voice came on a second channel—private, clean, close. MINO relayed it through the watch.

“Doctor,” Raven said. “I have the workers moving. Shelter nodes are filling. Kells’ guards are standing down. Tala is… restraining herself.”

The Doctor exhaled, tension easing a fraction. “And you?”

“I’m fine,” Raven said. A beat. Then: “Are you?”

The Doctor’s voice softened. “I’m here,” he said.

A pause. Raven’s voice, low and intimate through the crackle: “So am I.”

Then the channel went silent, not because she was gone, but because she was busy keeping people alive.

Jun listened to that exchange and felt, oddly, steadier. Love as a comms line. A tether across metal chaos.

MINO pulsed. “Swarm migration speed increasing. Estimated swarm density in foundry zone within ten minutes: high. However, units will continue to enter through multiple access points. Sealing requires coordinated closure of vents and corridors.”

The Doctor nodded. “We need to close the mouth,” he said.

Kells’ voice was strained, almost pleading. “You can’t seal the foundry,” he said. “It’s the central artery. You’ll suffocate systems. You’ll destroy the irrigation schedule. The harvest—”

The Doctor turned to him, eyes cold. “Tell me where the vent governors are,” he said.

Kells blinked. “What?”

“Where are the vent governors,” the Doctor repeated, voice sharp, “and the duct chokepoints? The physical shutters. The manual overrides. You know. You built procedures to keep heat contained.”

Kells hesitated, then his eyes flicked away. “There’s a maintenance ring,” he muttered. “East side. Four choke stations. But—”

“But they’re restricted,” the Doctor finished. “Good.”

He looked at Jun. “We’re going to the maintenance ring,” he said. “We’re sealing the foundry while the swarm is inside.”

Jun’s throat tightened. “What about people still in there?”

The Doctor’s voice was quiet. “Tala and Raven are getting them out,” he said. “We trust them. And if we do this too early, we trap people. If we do it too late, the swarm spreads again.”

Jun swallowed. “So timing.”

The Doctor nodded. “Timing,” he said.

MINO pulsed. “Optimal closure window: when foundry occupancy by humans approaches zero and swarm density peaks within foundry. Estimated in seven minutes.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “Seven minutes,” he murmured. “Alright.”

He turned to Kells. “You’re coming,” he said.

Kells’ eyes widened. “No.”

The Doctor’s voice was flat. “Yes,” he said. “Because you know where the stations are, and because if you try to run, you’ll be the loudest piece of metal on the moon.”

Kells swallowed, face pale.

The Doctor grabbed a polymer strap and looped it around Kells’ wrist, tying him to the gantry rail like a reluctant luggage tag.

Jun watched, stunned.

“You’re kidnapping him,” Jun whispered.

The Doctor’s eyes flicked to Jun. “I’m preventing him from getting other people killed,” he said. “Call it what you like.”

Then, without drama, he moved toward the gantry stairway.

“Come on,” he said.

Jun followed, heart pounding.

Behind them, down on the foundry floor, the feeder chute continued to roar, spilling fresh metal into the system like bait.

And from every corridor and duct line, glittering packs of teeth began to converge—drawn to the sound, the heat, and the wet promise of metal to chew.

The lure was working.

Now they had to slam the trap shut.

///

Chapter 10 — The Maintenance Ring

The maintenance ring was a circle of narrow catwalks and service corridors that wrapped around the foundry’s perimeter like a belt cinched too tight. It was built for technicians, not crowds: ladders, handrails, emergency valves, and big manual shutters that could seal vents in seconds if someone had the courage to pull them.

Heat rose in visible waves from below, and the roar of the feeder chute was louder here—wet metal thunder echoing through the metal skeleton of the foundry.

The Doctor moved fast, dragging Kells by the polymer strap like an unwilling guide. Kells stumbled, cursing, trying to keep his expensive boots from slipping on icy patches left by coolant mist.

Jun stayed close, eyes scanning every vent and seam. His muscles were tight with the knowledge that swarm units could appear anywhere—and now, with the lure active, they might be climbing upward as well as downward.

MINO’s voice was steady. “Swarm density in foundry zone increasing rapidly. Migration is successful. Human occupancy decreasing—Tala and Raven’s evacuation protocols are effective.”

Jun exhaled. “Good.”

“Not good,” the Doctor corrected. “Useful.”

They reached the first choke station: a large vent governor marked EAST CHOKE 1. A wheel the size of a person’s torso controlled a shutter deep in the duct. A pressure gauge vibrated, needle fluctuating.

Kells yanked against the strap. “If you close that,” he snapped, “you’ll spike pressure. The foundry will vent somewhere else. You’ll rupture lines.”

The Doctor looked at him. “Then tell me the safe sequence,” he said.

Kells hesitated, eyes darting. “You close in a pattern,” he muttered. “One and three, then two and four—”

The Doctor nodded. “Good,” he said. “You’re capable of being useful.”

Kells’ face flushed with humiliation and rage.

The Doctor grabbed the wheel and began turning. It resisted, then moved with a groan. The shutter in the duct shifted; the pressure gauge dipped slightly.

Jun watched the gauge, then the corridor behind. “How long until the units climb up here?”

MINO answered. “Estimated: three minutes to first contact at this elevation.”

Jun swallowed. “So we have—”

“Less,” Raven’s voice cut in over the private channel, clipped and urgent.

“Doctor,” she said. “Evacuation is nearly complete, but the west lower catwalk still has six workers pinned. Units are in the vents near them.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. “Where are you?”

“West catwalk,” Raven replied. “Tala is pulling people toward Node Two. I’m holding the corridor.”

Jun’s stomach dropped. “She’s in the foundry.”

The Doctor’s voice softened just enough to sound human. “Raven,” he said, “don’t be brave. Be alive.”

Raven’s reply was immediate and sharp. “Open the door you’re opening,” she said. “Then I’ll leave.”

The line cut.

Jun stared at the Doctor. “She—”

“She knows what she’s doing,” the Doctor said, but his eyes were tight.

He turned the wheel harder, forcing the shutter to close fully. The gauge flickered. A low hiss changed pitch.

Choke 1 sealed.

They ran to Choke 3—across the ring, metal clanging under their feet. Below, the foundry glowed orange. The swarm was visible now in places—dark, shifting patches moving along catwalks, clustering near the feeder chute like insects around a wound.

Jun’s throat tightened. “They’re everywhere.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Good.”

Kells gagged slightly as the heat and smell hit him. “This is insanity,” he rasped.

The Doctor didn’t answer.

At Choke 3, the wheel was hotter. The Doctor wrapped his sleeve around his hand and turned it anyway, jaw clenched.

Jun watched the pressure gauge. The needle climbed slightly, then stabilized.

Choke 3 sealed.

MINO pulsed. “Swarm density peak approaching. Recommended closure of Chokes 2 and 4 within two minutes to prevent outward drift.”

The Doctor nodded. “Jun,” he said, “you take Choke 2.”

Jun froze. “Me?”

The Doctor’s gaze was sharp. “Yes,” he said. “You can do it.”

Jun’s hands shook. “I—”

Raven’s voice echoed in his mind: Feet planted. Use your legs.

The Doctor grabbed Jun’s shoulder. “Jun,” he said quietly, “you are not helpless. Don’t make yourself helpless.”

Jun swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay,” he said.

He sprinted toward Choke 2, boots clanging. The wheel was massive, intimidating. Jun wrapped his gloved hands around it and pulled.

It didn’t move.

His arms strained, trembling.

He planted his feet, bent his knees, and pushed with his whole body.

The wheel groaned and began to turn.

Jun turned it again, breath coming in harsh bursts.

The shutter inside the duct shifted. The hiss changed pitch.

The pressure gauge flickered, then dipped.

Jun kept turning until his shoulders burned.

Finally, the wheel locked with a heavy clunk.

Choke 2 sealed.

Jun leaned against the wall for half a second, panting.

Then he heard it.

Clicking.

Close.

He turned his head slowly.

A cluster of swarm units had climbed into the maintenance ring corridor through a small service seam—drawn by the heat of his body and the metal vibration of the wheel.

They moved toward him in a scattered pack, abrasion heads unfolding.

Jun’s throat went dry.

He backed away instinctively, then stopped—remembering what the Doctor had said. Running is prey.

He looked around desperately.

Coolant line.

A thin polymer hose lay coiled against the wall—emergency spray.

Jun grabbed it, hands shaking, and yanked the valve.

A burst of cold mist sprayed across the floor.

The nearest units hit the frost and slipped, magnets failing briefly. Two clattered, skittering, clicking faster like angry teeth.

Jun aimed the spray low, coating the floor in a widening icy patch between him and the units.

His breathing steadied—just enough.

He wasn’t winning, but he was buying time.

“Doctor!” he shouted.

The Doctor’s voice echoed back from down the corridor. “Hold!”

Jun held.

The units began climbing the wall to bypass the frost.

Jun adjusted, spraying the wall seam too, making it slick and cold.

One unit dropped, clattering.

Jun swallowed hard, eyes locked, body shaking.

Then Raven’s lesson surfaced—not just the mechanics, but the mindset:

Say your name. Stay in yourself.

Jun whispered, “Jun,” under his breath, then said it louder. “Jun.”

He felt the panic shift into focus.

The Doctor appeared at the corridor bend, moving fast. He saw the units, saw Jun’s frost barrier, and nodded once—approval, quick.

“Good,” the Doctor said.

He flung a scatter of ceramic shards into the corridor. Units that hit them sparked and stalled.

The Doctor grabbed Jun’s arm. “Move,” he said.

Jun moved.

They sprinted toward Choke 4—the last station.

Kells stumbled behind, dragged by the strap, sweating, eyes wild. “You’re going to kill us,” he panted.

“No,” the Doctor said. “You tried. We’re preventing it.”

At Choke 4, the wheel was stuck—corroded, heat-warped. The Doctor grabbed it and pulled hard. It barely budged.

MINO pulsed. “Time window closing. Swarm drift toward external corridors increases if final choke not sealed within sixty seconds.”

The Doctor gritted his teeth and pulled again.

The wheel resisted like it hated him.

Jun stepped in without being asked, grabbing the opposite side. “Together,” he gasped.

The Doctor glanced at him—surprised, then approving. “Together,” he echoed.

They pushed in unison.

The wheel groaned, then turned.

Once it moved, it kept moving—slowly, reluctantly.

They turned it again and again, muscles straining, sweat running down their faces.

The hiss changed pitch. The pressure gauge spiked, then steadied.

A deep clunk sounded as the shutter slammed into place.

Choke 4 sealed.

For a moment, there was a strange stillness in the maintenance ring—as if the foundry itself had been wrapped in a tight lid.

MINO confirmed. “Foundry ventilation sealed. External drift pathways reduced by 83%. Swarm migration into foundry continues; exit probability decreasing. Trap integrity: high.”

Jun sagged against the wall, panting, relief flooding him.

Then Raven’s voice crackled urgently through the private channel.

“Doctor,” she said. “We’re clear. Last workers out. Tala is sealing the west catwalk doors now. Where are you?”

The Doctor closed his eyes for half a second. Relief hit him like a wave.

“We sealed the chokes,” he replied. “Get to composite nodes.”

Raven’s voice softened slightly. “I’m moving,” she said. “Meet you at Intake.”

The channel cut.

Jun swallowed, still shaking. “She’s okay.”

The Doctor nodded, but his eyes were still tight. “Not yet,” he said. “She’s alive. That’s not the same as safe.”

Kells sagged against the wall, sweat pouring down his face. “You’ve… sealed the foundry,” he whispered, horrified. “You’ve ruined—”

The Doctor’s gaze snapped to him, cold.

“You ruined it,” he said. “We just stopped it from ruining everyone else.”

Kells opened his mouth to argue, then stopped—because the roar below had changed.

The feeder chute still poured, but now the foundry sounded… different. More frantic. The swarm inside, drawn to the metal flood, was clustering thicker and thicker with nowhere to go.

A distant, muffled scraping began to rise from beneath the sealed vents—like a storm trapped in a box.

Jun’s stomach tightened. “They’re in there.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “And now we keep them there.”

He turned, grabbing Kells’ strap.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re not finished until the moon stops screaming.”

And as they ran back along the maintenance ring toward the stairs, the sealed foundry below them churned with trapped teeth—hungry, furious, and finally contained, for the first time since Kharon Spire had been foolish enough to wake the thing under its roots.

///

Chapter 11 — The Box That Shook

By the time they got off the maintenance ring, the moon sounded different.

Not quieter—worse.

A sealed foundry doesn’t become silent. It becomes a drum.

The scraping inside it rose and fell in waves, muffled by closed shutters and composite seals, but unmistakable: thousands of small abrasion heads chewing at railings, catwalks, duct seams, and each other’s discarded scrap. The sound travelled through the structure and up into the walkways, turning the whole industrial layer into an instrument vibrating with hunger.

Jun’s teeth hurt from the constant tremor.

Kells stumbled beside them, dragged by the polymer strap, pale and sweating. He kept glancing back as if he could see the swarm through metal, as if looking might change physics.

“It’s going to breach,” he rasped.

The Doctor didn’t look back. “Not if we finish the job,” he said.

They hit the gantry stairway and descended into the more chaotic human layer again—Intake corridors, shelters, workers clustered in composite nodes like refugees from their own shift schedules. The air was colder now in places where coolant mist had been deployed, and the cold carried its own brutality: wet clothing, shivering bodies, the sharp sting of inhaling chilled metal air.

But it was a useful brutality. The kind that kept people alive.

Tala met them at the base of the stairs, face streaked with sweat and rust dust, baton tucked into her belt, a tablet in her hand. Behind her, two workers held a makeshift barrier of composite panels like a shield.

She took one look at the Doctor’s face and didn’t bother with pleasantries.

“Chokes closed?” she demanded.

The Doctor nodded. “All four,” he said. “Foundry sealed. Drift reduced.”

Tala exhaled through her nose, a sound that was half relief and half rage. “Good,” she said. Then her eyes snapped to Kells.

“He still breathing?”

Kells flinched at her tone. “I—”

Tala stepped close enough that her shadow fell across his polished shoes. “Don’t speak,” she said. “Not unless spoken to.”

Kells shut his mouth.

Jun watched her and realized: Tala wasn’t just angry. She was holding the line between justice and murder by sheer willpower.

MINO pulsed. “Structural vibration increasing. Foundry interior swarm density at maximum. Units likely attempting escape via secondary micro-gaps. However, chokes sealed. Breach probability remains low—unless interior structural supports fail.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Supports,” he murmured.

Tala’s gaze sharpened. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re chewing the box,” Raven’s voice said, crisp, close—coming not through the watch but from behind them.

Jun spun.

Raven walked toward them from the composite shelter corridor, coat damp at the hem from coolant mist, hair slightly loosened at the edges. Her face was flushed from heat and exertion, but her eyes were steady. There was orange dust on one sleeve, like evidence.

Alive. Moving. Here.

Jun’s chest loosened so suddenly it almost hurt.

The Doctor’s shoulders—just barely—dropped.

Raven didn’t go straight to him. She went straight to Tala.

“West catwalk cleared,” Raven reported. “Last workers in Node Two. We sealed composite doors and iced the corridor mouths. No one left in metal corridors except your guards, and they’re listening now.”

Tala nodded once, accepting it like a report on a battlefield. “Good.”

Raven’s eyes flicked to Kells. “He helped?” she asked.

The Doctor’s voice was flat. “He complied,” he said.

Raven stepped closer to Kells, stopping at arm’s length. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t threaten. She simply looked at him with the kind of attention that makes lies feel embarrassing.

“Two men are gone,” she said quietly. “What did you tell their partners?”

Kells swallowed. His eyes darted to Tala, then away. “I—there were procedures—”

Raven’s voice stayed even. “What did you tell them?”

Kells’ mouth trembled. “That it was an accident,” he whispered.

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “You called it an accident,” she said, not asking. “Because accident is a word that washes blood off hands.”

Kells flinched as if struck.

Tala’s fists clenched.

Jun stared at Kells and felt something ugly rise in him—an urge to do violence. He didn’t like it. He didn’t feel heroic about it. He just felt it.

The Doctor saw Jun’s face and spoke quietly, not to Kells, but to Jun.

“Anger is normal,” he said. “But don’t let it make you sloppy.”

Jun swallowed and nodded, holding himself together by force.

A deep shudder ran through the floor.

Everyone froze.

The tremor wasn’t from the conveyor belt. It wasn’t from panic. It came from the sealed foundry itself—like a caged animal slamming into the walls.

Somewhere distant, metal shrieked.

Tala’s eyes snapped to the ceiling. “That’s new,” she said.

MINO pulsed, urgent. “Structural integrity alert. Internal support struts within foundry experiencing accelerated degradation. Cause: sustained abrasion by swarms. If a primary strut fails, foundry roof may collapse into molten channels. Secondary risk: breach of sealed ducts from collapse impact.”

Jun’s stomach dropped. “So sealing it wasn’t enough.”

“No,” the Doctor said, jaw tight. “Sealing was step one. Now we have to neutralize the teeth.”

Tala stared. “Kill them.”

The Doctor shook his head slightly. “Not kill,” he said. “Disable. Starve. Freeze. Make them inert.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Cold worked,” she said. “They hate cold.”

The Doctor nodded. “Cold breaks adhesion and stalls abrasion heads,” he said. “But a few lines of mist won’t freeze a foundry full of metal and heat. We need mass cooling.”

Tala’s gaze flicked toward Intake. “We have coolant reserves,” she said. “For emergencies. But if we dump them into the foundry—”

“We ruin the foundry anyway,” Raven said flatly. “We already chose that.”

Tala’s jaw clenched. “Yes,” she said. “We did.”

The Doctor turned toward Tala’s tablet. “Show me the coolant system map,” he said.

Tala brought it up quickly. The screen displayed a rough schematic: coolant tanks, distribution lines, emergency vents, and four major injection ports around the foundry’s perimeter.

The Doctor’s eyes moved fast. “We inject coolant at all four ports simultaneously,” he said. “We shock-cool the foundry interior—floor, catwalks, rails. We force the units into adhesion failure en masse.”

Jun frowned. “Won’t they just… fall?”

“They will,” the Doctor said. “And if we’re lucky, they fall into the molten overflow channels that are now cooler because the foundry’s rhythm is off. If we’re unlucky, they pile in corners. But either way, their movement slows enough for the next step.”

Raven’s eyes sharpened. “Next step.”

The Doctor looked at Jun. “Ceramic contamination,” he said. “Not in the heart this time—in the foundry’s grinding points. When the units try to bite through ceramic fibers in coolant-frozen composite, their abrasion heads fracture and jam.”

Jun swallowed. “So we freeze them, then feed them something that breaks their teeth.”

The Doctor nodded. “Exactly.”

Tala stared at the schematic. “We can flood coolant,” she said. “But the injection ports are manual. You have to be at each station to open them.”

Raven and the Doctor exchanged a glance.

Jun felt the inevitable and hated it.

The Doctor spoke first. “Four stations,” he said. “We have four people.”

Tala’s eyes widened. “Absolutely not,” she snapped. “Those stations are metal corridors adjacent to the sealed foundry. That’s where stray units will be clustering.”

Raven’s voice was calm. “They’ll be colder now,” she said. “And the units are biased inward. We go quickly, we open valves, we leave.”

Tala shook her head, furious. “I won’t send you—”

“You won’t send us,” Raven corrected. “We’re already here.”

Jun swallowed hard. “I can—” he began, then stopped because he didn’t know what he could do besides be scared.

The Doctor looked at Jun. “You can open a valve,” he said. “You’ve opened worse.”

Jun’s throat tightened. “I almost died opening worse.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “And you didn’t. You adapted.”

Raven stepped close to Jun, her voice low. “Jun,” she said, “fear is not a veto. It’s information. Use it.”

Jun stared at her, then nodded—small, shaky.

Tala’s eyes burned. “If any of you get eaten—”

The Doctor cut in gently. “Then it will be because Kells woke a colony,” he said. “Not because you asked for help.”

Tala’s gaze snapped to Kells, murderous.

Kells tried to back away and found a composite wall.

The Doctor turned to him. “You’re opening one of the valves,” he said.

Kells’ eyes widened. “No—”

“Yes,” Raven said, voice like ice.

Kells stammered, “I’ll— I’ll be killed—”

The Doctor’s voice was flat. “Then don’t panic,” he said. “You told everyone panic was replaceable.”

Kells’ mouth opened, then closed.

Tala stared at the Doctor. “You’re using him as bait.”

“I’m using him as labor,” the Doctor replied. “Like he used them.”

Tala exhaled sharply. “Fine,” she snapped. “But he’s tethered.”

She grabbed a polymer restraint strap and looped it around Kells’ waist, clipping it to a composite-handled reel. “If he runs,” she said, “I haul.”

Kells’ face went gray.

The Doctor looked at MINO. “Map the quickest routes to each injection port,” he said.

MINO responded immediately. “Routes plotted. Injection ports: North, South, East, West. Current swarm presence: scattered. Highest risk: East corridor—residual cluster near maintenance seam. Recommend cold spray and ceramic scatter for passage.”

The Doctor nodded. “We go now,” he said.

Raven’s gaze flicked to the Doctor for a brief moment—an intimate check-in.

He met her eyes. “Stay in comms,” he murmured.

“I’m always in comms,” Raven replied.

Jun’s hands trembled slightly. He flexed his fingers, trying to force sensation into them.

Tala assigned quickly, voice snapping like orders on a ship in a storm.

“I’ll take North,” she said. “Doctor, East. Raven, West. Jun—South with me until the split, then you go.”

Jun blinked. “Alone?”

Raven’s voice cut in. “Not alone,” she said, tapping the Doctor’s wrist. “MINO is with you. And you have the pattern.”

Jun swallowed. “Okay.”

Kells croaked, “Which one am I—”

Tala shoved him toward West. “You’re with Raven,” she said. “Lucky you.”

Raven didn’t look lucky. She looked like she was about to turn him into a lesson.

They moved.

The corridors toward the injection ports were narrower and colder, laced with coolant mist. Emergency lights flashed in red pulses. Every surface was slick with condensation. The scraping sound inside the sealed foundry continued, but now it was accompanied by occasional metallic thumps—support struts giving way somewhere inside.

Jun’s stomach tightened with each tremor.

At the first junction, they split.

Raven hauled Kells down the West corridor, Tala moving alongside for the first ten meters to ensure compliance. The Doctor peeled off toward East, moving fast, his coat damp and heavy. Jun watched him go with a sudden spike of fear he didn’t want to admit.

Then Tala squeezed Jun’s shoulder once—quick, firm. “South,” she snapped.

Jun moved.

The South corridor was quieter than he expected. That didn’t comfort him. Quiet on a moon like this meant something was hiding.

MINO’s voice pulsed, calm in his ear. “Jun. Maintain steady pace. Avoid grates where possible. Cold mist is beneficial. If units appear, spray floor and wall seams. Do not run.”

Jun swallowed. “Not running,” he whispered.

He kept moving.

Halfway down the corridor, he saw them: three units clinging to a ceiling seam, abrasion heads unfolding slowly.

Jun froze.

Then he remembered.

He didn’t run. He didn’t scream. He didn’t flail.

He reached for the coolant hose mounted on the wall, yanked it free, and cracked the valve.

Cold mist blasted upward, coating the seam.

The units jerked, feet snapping and re-snapping as adhesion failed. Two dropped and clattered onto the floor, skittering.

Jun aimed low, icing the floor in front of them.

The units slipped, their heads whining uselessly against frost.

Jun stepped around them, keeping the spray between them and his boots, then shut the valve and kept moving.

His heart hammered, but he was still moving.

At the end of the corridor, the injection port station waited: a heavy valve wheel beside a hatch labeled COOLANT INJECT — SOUTH PORT.

Jun stared at the wheel.

Metal. Hot. Heavy.

His hands shook.

MINO’s voice, steady. “Open valve to 100% flow. Maintain for sixty seconds. Then close and withdraw.”

Jun nodded, throat tight. “Okay,” he whispered.

He grabbed the wheel and turned.

It resisted.

He planted his feet, bent his knees, and pushed with everything he had.

The wheel moved.

Jun turned again.

And again.

The hatch behind the wheel shuddered as coolant surged through the line.

A low roar rose from beyond the hatch—coolant flooding into the sealed foundry interior.

Jun kept turning until the wheel locked.

His arms burned. Sweat ran down his back despite the cold mist.

He glanced at the timer on the station panel—mechanical, old—counting seconds.

He had to hold it open for sixty.

Behind him, faint clicking began in the corridor.

Jun’s stomach dropped.

He turned slowly.

A cluster of units—five, maybe six—was moving toward him along the floor seam, drawn by the vibration of the valve and the heat of his body.

Jun’s breath hitched.

He looked back at the valve. He had forty seconds left.

He looked at the units.

He looked at the coolant hose.

And he did not run.

He took the hose, cracked the valve, and sprayed the floor in a wide icy arc between him and the approaching units.

The units hit the frost and slipped. Two clattered. One tried to climb the wall; Jun sprayed the wall seam too.

He kept the spray steady, low, controlled.

Thirty seconds.

The units began to retreat slightly, then circle, searching for a dry path.

Jun shifted his stance, keeping the frost barrier between them and his boots, letting the cold do the work.

Twenty seconds.

His arms shook from holding the hose.

Ten seconds.

The units clustered at the edge of the frost, clicking, hungry, confused.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Jun shut the hose, spun, and grabbed the valve wheel.

He turned it back, closing fast but controlled, feeling the resistance as flow reduced.

The hatch shuddered, then settled.

He released the wheel and stepped backward, eyes on the units.

They surged forward again as the vibration changed.

Jun cracked the coolant hose once more, sprayed a quick icy burst, and slipped past them, moving down the corridor away from the station.

His heart hammered so hard it made his vision pulse.

But he was moving.

In his ear, MINO pulsed: “South injection successful. Flow sustained for sixty-one seconds. Excellent.”

Jun almost laughed, almost cried.

He didn’t. He just kept walking.

Because somewhere in the sealed foundry, coolant was now flooding in from four directions—if the others succeeded—turning heat into shock, turning hunger into stalled teeth.

And the moon, for the first time since it had been called awake, was starting to learn a new rule:

Metal could be made cold.

///

Chapter 12 — Frost in the Furnace

The foundry’s roar changed first.

Not the big sound of fire and flow—that had already been wounded when the heart seized. This was smaller, sharper: the sudden hiss of mass coolant hitting superheated surfaces, the crack-pop of thermal shock, the metallic groan of structures shrinking unevenly under cold.

It sounded like a giant inhaling and choking.

Jun could feel it through the corridor floor as he hurried back from the South port—vibration shifting from a steady hum to a stuttering tremor, as if the entire foundry was trying to decide whether it could stay standing.

He reached the junction where Tala had sent him alone and found her there, waiting, face tight with focus.

Her hair was damp with coolant mist. Her eyes snapped to him.

“South?” she demanded.

Jun nodded, breath ragged. “Done,” he said. “Sixty-one seconds.”

Tala’s expression shifted—just for a moment—into something like pride. Then it hardened again.

“Good,” she said. “North is open. East is open. West is—” she cut herself off and listened.

A deep tremor rolled through the structure. A muffled, furious scraping came from beneath—thousands of units reacting to the sudden cold.

Tala’s jaw clenched. “West needs to be open,” she said.

MINO pulsed in Jun’s ear. “Doctor and Raven are still at stations. West injection pending. High risk due to Kells’ presence and corridor cluster.”

Jun swallowed. “Raven—”

“Raven will handle it,” Tala snapped, but her eyes flicked toward the West corridor anyway.

They moved back toward Intake, meeting other workers in the corridors—shivering, wide-eyed, clustered in small groups like Tala instructed. Composite barricades had been erected at metal corridor mouths. Coolant lines sprayed steady mist across floors, making icy boundaries.

People were learning fast. Not because they wanted to. Because they had to.

At Intake, the shelter nodes were full. Yara stood near the Node Three door, arms crossed, eyes sharp. When she saw Jun and Tala, she stepped forward.

“Is it stopping?” she demanded.

Tala’s voice was flat. “We’re freezing it,” she said. “Then we break it.”

Yara’s gaze shifted to Jun. “You’re still alive,” she said, as if surprised.

Jun swallowed. “Yes,” he replied.

Yara nodded once, approving. “Good,” she said. “Stay that way.”

A new sound rose through Intake: a muffled, distant clatter—like hail hitting a roof.

Jun’s stomach tightened. “What’s that?”

The Doctor’s voice answered from behind him.

“Teeth falling,” he said.

Jun spun.

The Doctor stood at the edge of the Intake bay, coat damp, glasses fogged and wiped clear, face streaked with sweat and orange dust. His eyes were sharp, but there was a thin line of relief under the tension.

Jun’s throat tightened. “East worked?”

The Doctor nodded. “East is open,” he said. “Held it. Cut through a cluster. It wasn’t pretty.”

Jun exhaled. “And Raven?”

The Doctor’s gaze flicked toward the West corridor. “Not back yet,” he said.

Jun’s chest tightened.

Tala’s face went hard. “If Kells—”

The Doctor cut her off. “He won’t,” he said, but his voice was tight enough to show he wasn’t sure.

MINO pulsed. “Foundry internal temperature dropping rapidly. Adhesion failures increasing. Swarm units entering stall phase. However, if West injection does not engage, migration imbalance may leave significant active clusters near West duct lines.”

Jun swallowed. “So West matters.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said simply.

The tremors increased—sharp, shuddering waves. A muffled metallic crash came from deep inside the sealed foundry.

Tala’s eyes narrowed. “A support strut failed,” she murmured.

The Doctor nodded. “Let it,” he said. “Collapse inward. Better the box breaks inside than outside.”

Jun stared at him. “That sounds—”

“Cold,” the Doctor finished. “Yes. It is. Because the alternative is everyone here being edible.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “You talk like you’ve done this before.”

The Doctor looked at her. “Too many times,” he said quietly.

Another tremor.

Then—finally—a voice crackled over the private channel, relayed through MINO.

“Doctor,” Raven said, breathless but controlled. “West is open. Sixty seconds. Kells tried to bolt. I corrected him.”

The Doctor’s shoulders loosened—just slightly. “Are you hurt?” he asked immediately.

A pause. Raven’s voice, dry. “No,” she said. “I’m annoyed. Which is a good sign.”

The Doctor exhaled. “Good,” he murmured.

Raven continued, “Units clustered near the West station, but coolant is biting. They’re slipping. They’re… slowing.”

MINO confirmed. “All four injections active. Foundry interior temperature now below swarm optimal operating range. Abrasion heads stall probability: high.”

Jun let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

Tala closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again like a person refusing to let relief make her sloppy.

“Next step,” Tala said.

The Doctor nodded. “Ceramic contamination,” he said.

Tala stared. “We don’t have enough ceramic to feed thousands of units.”

The Doctor’s eyes flicked to the composite barricades stacked nearby—paneling with ceramic fibers. “We do if we sacrifice every composite panel we’ve got,” he said. “We shred them and feed the fibers into the foundry’s grinding points.”

Tala’s jaw tightened. “That’s our shelter material.”

“Temporary,” Raven’s voice said, now over the public channel as she entered Intake from the West corridor, dragging Kells behind her by the polymer strap like a trash bag that refused to cooperate.

Raven looked exhausted in the way only people who’ve held a corridor against teeth look exhausted. Her coat was streaked with frost and dust. Her eyes were hard.

Kells stumbled, face scratched, hair wet, expression humiliated and furious.

Raven shoved him toward Tala without ceremony. “He’s intact,” she said. “Unfortunately.”

Kells spat, “She assaulted me—”

Raven’s gaze snapped to him, ice-cold. “You tried to run,” she said. “Running is prey.”

The Doctor’s mouth twitched faintly despite himself. Raven using his own line against Kells.

Tala grabbed Kells by the collar and hauled him into the composite office again like she was putting away a tool.

Then she turned back to the Doctor. “Shelter panels,” she said. “If we shred them, people will be exposed.”

The Doctor’s voice was steady. “Only for hours,” he said. “And if we don’t, they’ll be exposed forever.”

Tala stared at him, then nodded sharply. “Fine,” she snapped. “Yara—get your people to stay in Node rooms. We’re repurposing barricades. No one leaves composite walls unless commanded.”

Yara nodded once, grim. “Understood.”

Workers began moving composite panels, ripping them apart with tools, shredding them into fibrous chunks. The air filled with dust—white, ceramic, and choking. People coughed and swore and kept working.

Jun watched, heart pounding. “Where do we put it?” he asked.

The Doctor pointed toward the foundry’s emergency overflow intake—a hatch leading into a sealed chute that fed into the grinding channel. “There,” he said. “We feed the fibers into the grinding points where the units will cluster—because they’re cold, and they’ll seek any remaining heat pockets. Grinding points are warm.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “And when they bite ceramic fibers…”

“They break their teeth,” the Doctor said. “Abrasion heads fracture. Magnetic feet stall. They become inert scrap.”

Jun swallowed. “How long?”

MINO answered. “Estimated: three to six hours for widespread incapacitation if ceramic feed is sustained and foundry remains sealed and cooled.”

Tala’s jaw clenched. “We can hold people in nodes for six hours,” she said. “Barely.”

Raven’s voice was flat. “Then we do it,” she said. “Because six hours is survivable.”

The Doctor nodded. “We do it.”

They moved toward the overflow hatch together—Doctor, Raven, Jun, Tala—carrying fiber sacks, guided by MINO’s map and the moon’s shaking.

As they approached the hatch, the sound beneath their feet shifted again: the scraping inside the sealed foundry had become uneven and sluggish, like a storm running out of wind.

Occasionally, a sharp clatter echoed—units dropping from catwalks as adhesion failed.

Frost in the furnace.

Jun felt a strange, grim satisfaction. The machines weren’t clever now. They weren’t coordinated predators. They were cold tools losing their edge.

At the overflow hatch, the Doctor knelt and unsealed the latch. Heat breathed out—less than before, but still present. A faint orange glow flickered within.

He looked at Jun. “Ready?” he asked.

Jun’s throat tightened. He nodded. “Yes,” he said.

Raven stepped close to Jun and touched his shoulder briefly—anchor and approval.

Tala handed Jun a sack of ceramic fiber, eyes hard. “Don’t drop it on yourself,” she snapped.

Jun almost laughed. Almost.

He didn’t.

They opened the hatch.

And together, they began feeding ceramic fibers into the sealed foundry’s grinding throat—turning shelter into weapon, turning desperation into a plan that didn’t rely on hope or miracles.

Just physics.

Just consequences.

Just the old, tangible truth that even the hungriest machine cannot chew what breaks its teeth.

///

Chapter 13 — Ash and Accounting

The hours that followed were not cinematic.

They were work.

They were coughing in ceramic dust. They were sore shoulders from hauling shredded panels. They were bodies shivering in composite shelter nodes while the industrial layer above them shook like it had a fever.

They were Tala walking the Intake bay like a marshal in a war zone, shouting instructions until her voice went hoarse, then switching to gestures when words became too expensive.

They were Raven moving through shelter nodes with a kind of quiet authority—checking masks, checking seals, telling people, without flourish, what to do next. When someone started to panic, she didn’t soothe them with comfort. She gave them a task.

Fear starved when given a job.

The Doctor stayed near the overflow hatch, feeding the grinding throat with ceramic fiber and listening to the moon’s changing rhythm like a physician listening to a heart.

Jun stayed beside him, because leaving felt impossible and because staying made him feel like he was paying his debt to the people who’d been treated like ore.

MINO counted time, probabilities, and shifts in sound.

“Swarm abrasion head stall rate increasing,” MINO reported periodically. “Magnetic adhesion failures now widespread. Unit mobility decreasing.”

The scraping inside the sealed foundry became less like rain and more like occasional restless tapping—pockets of units still trying to move, trying to feed, failing.

Then, after what felt like forever and was actually just shy of four hours, a new sound came from inside the foundry.

Not scraping.

A long, drawn-out grinding groan—like a machine trying to turn and discovering it couldn’t.

The Doctor froze, head tilted.

Raven, standing nearby, stopped moving too.

Tala looked up sharply. “What was that?”

The Doctor’s voice was quiet. “The last cluster,” he said. “Breaking.”

MINO confirmed. “Internal swarm activity has dropped below critical threshold. Estimated remaining mobile units: under 2%. Remaining units likely inert.”

Jun’s breath left him in a rush. He leaned against the wall, shaking—not from fear now, but from delayed collapse.

Raven’s hand found the Doctor’s forearm briefly, squeezing once. He glanced at her, eyes softening for a fraction.

“Alive,” he murmured.

Raven’s mouth tightened—almost a smile. “Still,” she replied.

Tala exhaled hard and wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her sleeve. “So what now?” she asked.

The Doctor looked at the sealed foundry hatch. “Now we confirm,” he said. “Then we clean.”

Tala’s face hardened. “And Kells,” she said.

The Doctor’s gaze flicked to her. “After confirmation,” he said. “Justice doesn’t work if you die on the way to it.”

Tala didn’t like the ordering, but she nodded.

They moved toward the foundry’s maintenance ring access. The chokes were still sealed. Frost clung to seams. The air was colder than it had been all day—coolant mist lingering in pockets like ghosts.

Jun followed, legs aching, hands stained with dust.

Kells was still in the composite office, bound and silent now, the kind of silent that came after a person realized shouting didn’t change physics.

As they approached the ring, MINO pulsed. “Residual hazard: low. However, isolated mobile units may remain near warm pockets. Maintain cold spray readiness.”

Raven took a coolant hose from a wall mount without being asked.

Jun took another, hands steadier now.

They reached a small inspection hatch—composite-lined—that opened into a narrow viewing port overlooking the sealed foundry interior.

The Doctor unlatched it.

A gust of air came out—cold, metallic, smelling of wet rust and ceramic dust.

Jun peered through.

The foundry floor below looked… wrong.

Where there had been movement and heat and glittering waves, now there was stillness. Catwalks were coated in frost and white ceramic dust. Along the rails and seams, piles of inert units lay like metallic gravel—thousands of them, piled where they’d slipped and stalled.

Some were half-buried in cooled slag splashes. Some were jammed in corners, abrasion heads snapped, fractured.

A few lay in awkward positions mid-climb, magnets dead.

It looked like a storm had frozen mid-fall.

Jun swallowed. “They’re… dead.”

The Doctor’s voice was precise. “Inert,” he corrected. “A dead thing can’t be repurposed. An inert thing can be.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “You’re thinking about salvage.”

The Doctor glanced at her. “I’m thinking about what people will do next,” he said. “If you leave this much metal waste lying around, someone will sell it. Someone will get greedy. Someone will try to wake something again.”

Tala’s jaw clenched. “Not on my watch,” she said.

The Doctor nodded. “Good,” he said. “Then we set rules.”

Jun looked at Tala. “Can you… keep it shut?”

Tala stared down into the frozen foundry, fury and fatigue mixing. “Yes,” she said. “I can keep it shut. And I can keep Kells from ever touching anything like this again.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “And the consortium?” she asked.

Tala’s face hardened. “They’ll demand output,” she said. “They’ll threaten blacklist. They’ll pretend this is our failure.”

The Doctor looked at her. “Then we make them look at the bodies,” he said.

Tala’s eyes flashed. “They won’t care.”

The Doctor’s voice went colder. “Then we make their ships care,” he said.

Jun blinked. “What does that mean?”

The Doctor didn’t smile. “It means you tell them the truth,” he said. “And if they refuse to alter contract terms to include safety and redundancy, you refuse to feed the route.”

Tala scoffed, exhausted. “Refuse? They’ll starve us.”

The Doctor met her gaze. “Not if you control the narrative,” he said. “Not if you send evidence to every buyer at once. Not if you show them that their ‘cheap paste’ and ‘forged components’ were being made with worker bodies and an uncontrolled machine-colony beneath their feet.”

Tala’s jaw clenched. “You think shame works.”

The Doctor shook his head. “No,” he said. “But risk does. If buyers think Kharon Spire is unstable—if they think their ships will be damaged by swarms—then the consortium loses leverage. They need you to be reliable. You just proved you aren’t, unless they change.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed in approval. “Make it their problem.”

The Doctor nodded. “Always,” he said.

Jun stared at the frozen piles of units. “And Perrin and Sato?”

The air tightened.

Tala’s face went flat. “We don’t have bodies,” she said. “We have… dust. We have chewed tags.”

Jun’s throat tightened. He looked down, ashamed of his helplessness.

The Doctor’s voice softened, just slightly. “Then you name what happened,” he said. “You don’t let the word ‘accident’ swallow them.”

Raven’s gaze flicked to him, steady. “And you remember,” she murmured.

The Doctor nodded once, eyes dark. “Yes,” he said.

They closed the inspection hatch and returned to Intake.

The shelter nodes were opening now. People stepped out cautiously, blinking as if they’d been underground for days. Some cried. Some laughed. Some just sat on the floor, exhausted and alive.

Yara approached the Doctor, arms crossed. “Is it done?” she demanded.

The Doctor nodded. “The swarm is inert,” he said. “The heart is seized. The foundry is sealed and cold.”

Yara stared at him for a long moment. Then she nodded once—an acknowledgment that didn’t pretend gratitude was enough.

“Good,” she said. Then, quieter: “They won’t call it an accident anymore.”

Tala’s eyes flashed. “No,” she said. “They won’t.”

She marched toward the composite office.

The Doctor followed, Raven beside him, Jun trailing.

Kells looked up as they entered, eyes wary. “Is it—” he began.

Tala grabbed him by the collar and yanked him to his feet.

“It’s contained,” she snarled. “Which means you’re alive long enough to face what you did.”

Kells’ face twisted. “I saved this moon,” he spat. “Without the contract—”

Tala slammed him against the composite wall. “You fed workers to a machine,” she hissed. “You sealed a tunnel. You lied.”

Kells’ eyes flicked to the Doctor. “And you,” he snapped. “You’ll leave. You’ll go on to your next adventure. You don’t have to live with the contract.”

The Doctor stepped forward, voice quiet. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t.”

Kells’ mouth tightened, triumphant for half a second.

Then the Doctor continued.

“But you do,” he said. “And that’s the point.”

Raven’s gaze was cold. “He doesn’t get to escape the consequences,” she said to Tala. “Not by death, not by excuses.”

Tala’s jaw clenched. “No,” she said. “He goes on record. He signs a full admission. He names Perrin and Sato. He names the consortium contact who authorized the beacon wake.”

Kells’ face went pale. “There is no—”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Yes there is,” he said. “Old beacons don’t wake without a call. You didn’t invent that call. You received it.”

Kells swallowed, sweat appearing again. “If I name them, they’ll—”

Tala smiled without warmth. “They’ll replace you,” she said. “Like you replaced them.”

Kells’ shoulders sagged, defeated.

Jun watched and felt something settle. It wasn’t satisfaction. It was something more grounded: accountability. The ugly, necessary kind.

Outside the office, the moon still vibrated faintly with the aftershocks of frozen teeth.

But the screaming had stopped.

Now came the quieter work: ash, accounting, and making sure no one ever again pretended that people were a form of metal you could spend.

///

Chapter 14 — The Contract That Bled

Two days later, Kharon Spire looked almost normal—if you were the kind of person who called a moon normal when its main foundry was entombed in frost and its workforce walked like survivors.

The conveyor belt ran again, but at reduced load. The greenhouse vats pulsed under dimmer lights. Emergency coolant lines had been rewound and rehung. Composite barricades—rebuilt from whatever could be spared—still sat at corridor mouths like reminders.

And beneath all of it, the sealed foundry stayed sealed.

A box full of inert teeth.

Tala insisted on daily inspections at three points: the chokes, the overflow throat, and the bedrock tunnel seal. She treated the moon like it had been bitten and might become infected again if she blinked.

The Doctor didn’t argue with that.

He watched her in the mornings—tired, furious, upright—moving through the corridors with a tablet and a baton and the kind of authority that came from having been right when it mattered.

Raven walked with him. Always close enough that her shoulder brushed his sometimes in narrow corridors. Not clingy. Not performative. Just present.

Jun stayed near Intake, sleeping in short bursts, waking to do whatever task was put in front of him. He looked older now, not because he’d learned more facts, but because he’d learned how fast facts could become teeth.

Yara worked like a machine—ironically—with her people, rebuilding barriers, rerouting composite panels, and organizing shift rotations so no one went alone into metal corridors again. She didn’t smile often. But she did speak more, now that the panic had been replaced by the harder thing: anger with direction.

Kells, meanwhile, sat in the composite office under guard, writing.

Tala made him write everything.

Not summaries. Not carefully phrased corporate language. Everything.

Who had authorized the beacon relay access. When the tunnel plating was installed. Which safety reports were buried. Which workers had complained. Which guards had been told to “discourage alarmism.” The line items that had turned bodies into acceptable loss.

He wrote until his hands cramped.

Then he signed.

And then Tala made him read it aloud on open channel to the entire moon.

The moment he said Perrin and Sato’s names, there was no going back. Words had weight now. The lie had been named.

The consortium responded within an hour.

Not with empathy.

With a summons.

A ship in the trade route lane—a sleek courier, sharp and clean—docked at Kharon Spire’s outer ring and broadcast a message that was almost polite:

NOTICE OF BREACH REVIEW.
PRODUCTION INTERRUPTION. SAFETY INCIDENT. CONTRACT COMPLIANCE.
FOREMAN KELLS AND MARSHAL REN TO PRESENT ACCOUNT.

Tala stared at the message, jaw clenched. “They don’t care about bodies,” she said. “They care about shipments.”

The Doctor’s voice was quiet. “Then we speak in the language they understand,” he said.

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Risk,” she murmured.

The Doctor nodded.

Jun looked between them, uneasy. “They’re going to punish her,” he said.

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Unless we make punishment expensive.”

Tala’s mouth tightened. “I’m not leaving my moon,” she snapped. “Not with this still—”

The Doctor lifted a hand slightly. “You’re not leaving it unguarded,” he said. “You’re taking the fight to the people who wrote your quotas.”

Tala laughed—short, bitter. “And you think they’ll listen to me?”

The Doctor’s eyes held hers. “They will listen,” he said, “because if they don’t, the next time a swarm gets into a ship’s ducting, it won’t be your moon that pays.”

Tala stared at him.

Raven’s voice was calm. “He’s right,” she said. “They are only brave when the danger is outsourced.”

Tala looked away, then back. “Kells goes,” she said. “In restraints.”

“Agreed,” the Doctor said.

“And I go,” Tala continued, voice hard. “Because if I don’t, they’ll replace me with someone obedient.”

The Doctor nodded. “Yes.”

Jun swallowed. “And me?”

Tala’s eyes flicked to Jun. “You stay,” she said. “You’re too valuable here.”

Jun flinched at the word valuable. Then he understood she meant it differently than Kells had.

The Doctor looked at Jun. “You keep people moving,” he said quietly. “You keep the rules alive.”

Jun nodded, throat tight.

Raven turned slightly, her gaze finding Yara across the bay as she directed a team moving composite panels. Yara’s posture was stiff with purpose, her expression sharp.

Raven said, almost to herself, “She should come.”

The Doctor followed Raven’s gaze. “Yara?” he murmured.

Raven nodded. “She’s steady,” she said. “She’s angry in the right way. And she sees through management language.”

The Doctor didn’t disagree. He watched Yara for a moment—how she spoke, how she listened, how people responded to her without needing to be coerced.

A person like that didn’t just survive. They reorganized survival.

He moved toward her.

Yara saw him coming and didn’t soften her expression. “What now?” she demanded.

“The consortium wants a review,” the Doctor said.

Yara snorted. “A review. Like a meal they didn’t like.”

“Exactly,” the Doctor said. “Tala is going. Kells is going. I’m going.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “And you want me to clap?”

The Doctor shook his head. “I want you to come,” he said.

Yara blinked. “Why?”

Raven stepped in beside the Doctor, voice level. “Because they will try to spin this,” she said. “They will say it was an accident. They will say the workers panicked. They will say Tala overreacted. They will say Kharon Spire is unstable.”

Yara’s jaw tightened. “And it isn’t?”

“It is,” the Doctor said. “But not because of the workers. Because of them.”

Yara stared at him, skeptical. “What would I do?”

“You tell the truth without corporate grammar,” the Doctor said. “You tell them what it sounded like when metal ate metal. You tell them what it smelled like when a lockout tag came back chewed. You tell them why people had to learn to walk slowly to not be eaten.”

Yara’s eyes flashed. “They won’t care.”

The Doctor’s voice went colder. “Then we make them care,” he said. “You’re a witness they didn’t choose. That matters.”

Yara looked past him at the sealed foundry access corridor, where frost still clung to seams like scars.

Then she looked back at the Doctor. “If I go,” she said, “I’m not polite.”

Raven’s mouth tightened faintly. “Good,” she replied.

Yara nodded once. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll come.”

Jun watched from a few meters away, and something in his chest shifted—hope, maybe, but not soft hope. The kind that came from seeing someone decide to walk into a room full of power and not bend.

Tala approached, having overheard enough. “You?” she said to Yara.

Yara met her gaze. “Me,” she said.

Tala hesitated for half a beat, then nodded. “Good,” she said. “I’ll sleep better.”

The courier ship’s airlock was a sterile mouth. Everything inside it was clean, polished, and designed to make hard decisions feel weightless.

Kells was brought aboard in polymer restraints with two guards. He looked smaller in the ship’s bright light, like his authority had been a costume that didn’t fit outside the foundry.

Tala carried her tablet and a sealed data block—evidence, logs, recordings, Kells’ signed admission.

Yara carried nothing but herself.

The Doctor and Raven stepped into the ship together.

As the airlock sealed behind them, Raven’s hand found the Doctor’s again—brief, firm, grounding. In the clean, bright silence of the corridor, that touch felt louder than any alarm.

He looked at her. “You okay?” he murmured.

Raven’s eyes held his. “I’m with you,” she said.

He nodded once, then leaned closer—forehead almost touching hers for a heartbeat.

“I love you,” he said quietly.

Raven’s voice softened, just enough. “I know,” she replied. “I love you too. Now don’t let them play you.”

His mouth twitched faintly. “I won’t,” he said.

MINO pulsed from the watch, voice calm and faintly dry. “Reminder: consortium negotiators will attempt narrative control. Recommended strategy: introduce quantified risk and liability early. Emotional appeals have low predicted efficacy.”

The Doctor glanced down at the watch. “Thank you, MINO,” he murmured.

“Always,” MINO replied.

The courier undocked.

Kharon Spire fell away behind them—an industrial moon with a sealed wound, a workforce newly awake, and a foundry box full of frozen teeth that would not stay forgotten by those who had tried to profit from it.

As the ship slid into the trade route lane, the Doctor looked out at the stars and felt the old, familiar shape of the problem:

A system that treated lives as replaceable.

A machine that was never truly the villain—only the tool.

And somewhere, beyond Kharon Spire, someone had issued the call that woke the beacon in the first place.

Someone who would not be satisfied with a single moon.

Someone who would try again.

Not because they were evil.

Because it made sense on a spreadsheet.

Raven stood beside him, close enough that her presence warmed the sterile corridor.

“Next,” she murmured.

The Doctor nodded, eyes narrowing toward the dark.

“Next,” he agreed.

///

Chapter 15 — The Clean Room

The consortium’s station was not a place you lived.

It was a place you passed through on the way to something else—like a throat designed to swallow cargo and spit it onward without ever tasting it.

The docking bay was immaculate. White composite walls. Soft lighting that erased shadows. Air scrubbers that removed every scent until breath felt clinical. Even the sound was curated: footsteps dampened, machinery muted, voices reduced to polite reverberations.

A station built to make violence feel theoretical.

Tala’s jaw tightened as soon as she stepped off the courier. “I hate this,” she muttered.

Yara’s gaze moved across the bay, unimpressed. “They don’t want to see dirt,” she said. “Dirt reminds them something was worked for.”

Kells walked between two guards, polymer restraints cutting into his wrists. He looked around like a man who’d never been in a room where his name meant nothing.

The Doctor felt the station’s order trying to press itself into him—trying to sand down urgency until it became a complaint filed properly.

He didn’t let it.

Raven walked at his side, eyes sharp, posture relaxed but ready. She looked too real for this place. Like a scar entering a boardroom.

MINO pulsed quietly. “Negotiation environment optimized for psychological dominance. Features: sterile lighting, controlled acoustics, elevated platforms. Expect asymmetrical seating arrangement.”

“Of course,” the Doctor murmured.

They were led through corridors that curved gently, never allowing a clear line of sight to the station’s deeper workings. Doors opened without visible mechanisms. Screens displayed trade flow metrics like art.

Finally, they reached the hearing chamber.

It was exactly what MINO predicted.

A clean room with a long white table at the center. Around it, a half-circle of elevated seats where three consortium representatives waited—two in dark uniforms with insignia, one in a tailored suit that somehow looked even more expensive than Kells’ had.

Behind them, a wall screen showed Kharon Spire’s production metrics—lines of output, percentages of downtime, contract compliance figures. There were no names. No faces. No bodies.

Just numbers.

The representatives didn’t stand when Tala entered.

They didn’t stand when the Doctor entered.

They did glance at Raven—briefly—and then away, like she was an inconvenient variable.

The suited representative spoke first. Their voice was pleasant in a way that meant it had never needed to be loud.

“Marshal Ren,” they said. “Foreman Kells. Thank you for attending. This review concerns production interruption and contract breach.”

Tala didn’t sit. She stood at the table like it was a firing line.

“It also concerns negligence,” she said flatly. “And worker deaths.”

The suited representative’s expression didn’t change. “We have received preliminary reports indicating an industrial incident,” they said. “We are here to determine responsibility and remediation.”

Yara laughed once—short and sharp. “Industrial incident,” she repeated. “You mean a machine that ate people.”

The representative’s eyes flicked to Yara. “And you are…?”

Yara leaned forward slightly, no fear. “A worker,” she said. “A witness. A person you didn’t invite.”

The representative’s smile tightened, almost imperceptibly. “This hearing is for authorized parties.”

The Doctor finally sat—slowly—so that his calm read as deliberate rather than submissive. Raven sat beside him, posture composed.

Then the Doctor spoke.

“She’s authorized,” he said quietly. “Because your contract was executed on her body and the bodies of her colleagues. That makes her relevant.”

A pause.

The representative’s eyes flicked to the Doctor. “And you are?”

The Doctor didn’t give them a title. Titles were leverage.

“I’m the person who stopped your machine-colony from launching swarm pods into your trade lane,” he said. “If you’d like, I can leave and allow you to discover the consequences on your own ships later.”

The room shifted—not dramatically, but enough. One of the uniformed representatives leaned slightly forward, attention sharpening.

The suited representative’s pleasantness cooled. “There was no indication of off-world risk,” they said.

MINO pulsed, and the Doctor let the watch project a small holographic data slice onto the table—schematics, signal logs, a timeline of the beacon pulse, and the partial chassis assembly image captured by the gantry console before it seized.

The suited representative’s eyes flicked to the projection and hardened.

“That is not part of the official report,” they said.

“Correct,” the Doctor replied. “Because Foreman Kells concealed it.”

Kells flinched. “I—”

Tala slammed a data block onto the table, hard enough to make the clean room’s silence crack. “Signed admission,” she said. “He sealed the bedrock tunnel, reactivated the beacon relay, suppressed safety reports, and maintained production while people went missing.”

The uniformed representatives exchanged a glance.

The suited representative’s smile returned—thin. “Marshal Ren,” they said, “your authority is local. You are not empowered to suspend consortium operational directives.”

Tala’s eyes flashed. “I suspended them because people were dying,” she said.

The representative’s tone stayed polite. “And in doing so, you halted shipments. That harms dependent stations along the route.”

Raven’s voice cut in, calm and lethal. “So your argument is: because other people need product, these workers were acceptable loss.”

The suited representative didn’t blink. “All industrial environments carry inherent risk,” they said.

Yara’s laugh was bitter. “Inherent,” she repeated. “Funny how the inherent risk is always paid by people who don’t own the contract.”

The representative’s eyes narrowed slightly. “This is not a forum for ideology.”

The Doctor’s voice was quiet. “It’s not ideology,” he said. “It’s liability.”

He gestured to MINO’s projection again. “Your lane is full of ships with ducting, vents, and metallic infrastructure,” he said. “If even a small cluster of those units reached a ship, they would crawl. They would feed. They would degrade systems. They would cause catastrophic failures.”

One of the uniformed reps spoke for the first time, voice sharper. “What is the probability of off-world contamination if Kharon Spire remains operational?”

MINO answered before the Doctor could. “Based on observed behavior and chassis assembly trajectory: 67% chance of an attempted launch within three days if the foundry-heart had completed its cycle. Post-seizure, off-world risk reduced. However, if consortium actors attempt to reactivate the heart without comprehensive containment, risk returns.”

The uniformed rep’s mouth tightened. They looked at the suited rep.

The suited rep held their smile. “We appreciate your… assessment,” they said. “However, the consortium’s priority is maintaining route stability.”

The Doctor nodded. “Then you have two options,” he said. “You can punish Tala and replace her with someone obedient, and the moon will keep producing until the next crisis and the next deaths—until the next time a machine-colony wakes and you’re unlucky enough that no one is there to stop it.”

He leaned forward slightly. “Or,” he continued, “you amend the contract: you fund safety retrofits, composite corridor upgrades, mandatory coolant barrier systems, and you formalize a shutdown protocol for all buried anomalies. You also investigate who issued the beacon wake command upstream.”

The suited rep’s eyes hardened. “You are not in a position to negotiate contract terms.”

The Doctor’s gaze stayed steady. “I am,” he said, “because you now know your lane was minutes away from being seeded with a swarm. And because I can share this evidence with every client station that buys from you.”

Silence.

Clean room silence—the kind that tries to suffocate momentum.

Tala’s jaw clenched. Yara’s fists tightened. Kells stared at the floor, shaking.

Raven leaned in slightly, voice low and surgical. “You don’t want this public,” she said. “Not because you care about workers. Because you care about the route’s reputation.”

The suited rep’s smile twitched.

One of the uniformed reps cleared their throat. “Marshal Ren,” they said, “why was the anomaly not reported earlier?”

Tala’s eyes flashed. “We didn’t know it existed,” she said. “Because it was sealed behind plating installed without oversight. Because Foreman Kells concealed the bedrock access and suppressed the first reports of unit activity.”

Kells flinched as the uniformed rep turned toward him. “Foreman,” the rep said, “did you reactivate the beacon relay?”

Kells swallowed. He glanced at the suited rep—fear. Then at Tala—fear. Then at the Doctor—something like resignation.

“Yes,” he whispered.

The suited rep’s pleasant voice turned sharp. “Foreman Kells, you are aware that unauthorized activation of legacy beacons violates consortium safety statutes.”

Kells’ eyes widened. “You— you told me—”

The suited rep cut him off. “Answer the question,” they said.

Kells’ mouth opened, closed. He swallowed. “Yes,” he repeated, louder. “I did.”

The uniformed reps exchanged looks again—this time not subtle. This was a crack in the clean room’s control.

The Doctor watched the crack and widened it.

“Who gave you the relay authorization token?” he asked Kells quietly.

Kells’ face went pale. He looked at the suited rep again, terrified.

Tala leaned forward, voice like a hammer. “Name them.”

Kells shook his head. “I can’t—”

Raven’s voice was soft, almost gentle. “You can,” she said. “You’re replaceable.”

Kells’ face twisted. Tears threatened—not from remorse, from fear.

He whispered a name.

Not loud enough at first.

The Doctor leaned forward. “Again,” he said.

Kells swallowed and said it clearly this time.

The suited rep’s smile vanished.

The name landed in the room like a dropped tool.

One of the uniformed reps’ eyes narrowed sharply. “That name is not within Kharon Spire’s contract chain,” they said.

The suited rep’s voice went colder. “This hearing is adjourned,” they snapped.

Tala’s eyes flashed. “No,” she said. “It’s not.”

The suited rep stood abruptly. “It is,” they said. “Marshal Ren, you will remain here. Foreman Kells will be taken into custody pending investigation. The worker will be removed.”

Raven stood too, slower, controlled. “Try,” she said quietly.

The room tightened.

The Doctor didn’t rise yet. He stayed seated, because seated gave him leverage here—it made the others look reactive.

He looked at the uniformed reps, not the suited one.

“If you adjourn now,” he said calmly, “you confirm her fear: that this isn’t about safety, it’s about protecting whoever sits above contracts.”

The uniformed reps hesitated.

They were soldiers of the system, but they were also tasked with route stability. And route stability didn’t survive scandals and swarm infestations.

Finally, the older of the two uniformed reps spoke.

“Marshal Ren will not be detained,” they said. “This review shifts to a security investigation.”

The suited rep’s face tightened with anger, but they said nothing.

The uniformed rep continued. “Foreman Kells is remanded. Evidence will be copied. Kharon Spire’s contract will be provisionally amended pending safety compliance verification.”

Tala’s shoulders loosened slightly.

Yara exhaled, sharp.

The Doctor nodded once—small, acknowledging the win without celebrating too early.

Raven sat back down beside him, eyes still hard, but her hand found his under the table for a brief second, fingers curling.

The Doctor squeezed once.

The clean room had cracked.

Not because anyone cared about workers.

Because the system had finally been forced to care about consequences.

As they were escorted out, Tala walked with her chin high, tablet clutched like a weapon. Yara walked like a witness who’d refused to be erased. Kells was taken away, pale and shaking, finally learning what it felt like to be replaceable.

In the corridor outside, Raven leaned close to the Doctor, voice low.

“That name,” she murmured. “It wasn’t local.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “No,” he said quietly. “Which means someone upstream is using legacy beacons.”

Raven’s voice was soft but fierce. “Then they’ll do it again.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “Yes,” he said. “And next time, it might not be a foundry moon.”

MINO pulsed, almost like a sigh. “Recommendation: retain evidence copies. Threat actor likely embedded within contract governance. Probability of recurrence: high.”

The Doctor glanced at the watch. “Noted,” he murmured.

They reached the docking bay, the courier ship waiting like a way out.

Tala paused at the airlock and looked back at the consortium station—clean, bright, indifferent.

“I won’t forget this,” she said quietly.

The Doctor looked at her. “Good,” he said. “Don’t.”

Raven stepped into the airlock with him, close. When the door sealed, her shoulders finally eased.

“You did well,” she murmured.

The Doctor’s voice was tired. “We survived,” he said.

Raven’s eyes held his. “That’s not all you did,” she said. “You made them blink.”

He let out a breath, then leaned his forehead briefly against hers.

“I love you,” he whispered.

Raven’s reply was immediate, steady. “I love you,” she said. “Now get us home.”

And as the courier ship undocked from the sterile throat of the consortium station, the Doctor looked at the trade lane ahead and felt the shape of the next problem already forming—an upstream hand pulling on old machine strings, believing it could keep feeding the route without paying the cost.

Not knowing the Doctor had learned its name.

///

Chapter 16 — The Quiet After

The return to Kharon Spire felt slower than the journey out, even though the courier ran the same lane at the same speed.

It’s always slower when you’re carrying the weight of what you’ve seen.

Tala sat strapped into a jump seat with her tablet in her lap, staring at the contract amendment clauses like they were a list of promises she didn’t trust. Her jaw worked occasionally as if chewing anger.

Yara sat opposite, arms folded, eyes half-lidded—not sleeping, simply refusing to give the clean room any more of her attention than it had already stolen.

Kells was gone. Taken. Replaced in the system’s eyes by a case file number.

The Doctor watched the lane outside the small viewport—stars sliding, indifferent. Raven stood beside him, close enough that the sleeve of her coat brushed his. She didn’t speak unless it mattered. That was one of the reasons he loved her: she didn’t waste words to perform feeling. She made feeling useful.

MINO pulsed softly. “Evidence backup complete. Threat actor identifier stored. Advisory: do not transmit widely yet. Likely monitoring of communication channels.”

The Doctor murmured, “Understood.”

Raven glanced at the watch. “You trust it,” she said.

The Doctor’s mouth twitched faintly. “It’s been right,” he said.

MINO replied, dry. “Statistical accuracy acknowledged.”

Yara watched the exchange, unimpressed. “Your watch talks,” she said.

Raven’s eyes flicked to her. “Yes,” she replied, like it was the least surprising thing in the universe.

Yara grunted. “Figures.”

Tala looked up briefly. “If it can tell me whether the consortium will actually honor these safety retrofits,” she said, “I’ll buy it a drink.”

MINO responded without missing a beat. “Probability of full compliance without external pressure: 22%. With public risk exposure: 71%.”

Tala stared. “So we need pressure.”

The Doctor nodded. “We apply it,” he said.

Yara’s gaze sharpened. “How?”

The Doctor looked at her. “You,” he said.

Yara blinked. “Me?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “You’re not a marshal. You’re not a foreman. You’re not a negotiator. You’re a witness who can speak plainly and be believed.”

Yara’s jaw tightened. “Believed by who?”

“The buyers,” the Doctor said. “The stations that rely on Kharon Spire’s product. The crews who fly the lane. The people who don’t want swarms in their ducting. Risk makes them listen.”

Tala’s eyes narrowed. “You want her to be the face.”

Yara’s voice was rough. “I don’t want to be anyone’s face.”

Raven’s gaze held Yara’s. “You don’t have to be a face,” Raven said. “You can be a lever.”

Yara stared at Raven for a long beat, then nodded once, begrudging. “Fine,” she said. “But I’m not doing speeches. I’m doing statements.”

“Statements are better,” the Doctor said. “Speeches get edited.”

The courier docked two hours later.

Kharon Spire’s outer ring looked scarred from a distance—not physically, but in how it moved. More caution. Fewer people in open corridors. More composite barriers. Less casual noise.

A moon learning.

As they stepped off the ship, Tala inhaled deeply—air that was still metallic, still industrial, but hers. Her anger softened into something like determination.

“Welcome back,” she muttered to no one in particular.

Inside, the Intake bay was more organized than before. People moved in pairs. Coolant hoses were mounted at intervals like fire extinguishers. Composite signs had been posted with new rules in plain language:
• MOVE IN PAIRS.
• COMPOSITE CORRIDORS ONLY.
• IF YOU HEAR CLICKING, DON’T RUN.
• COLD FIRST. THEN MOVE.

Jun spotted them immediately and jogged over—careful not to run full tilt, as if he’d internalized the rule.

He stopped a meter away, breathing hard, eyes bright. “You’re back,” he said.

The Doctor nodded. “We’re back,” he replied.

Jun’s gaze flicked to Tala and Yara. “Did it work?” he asked.

Tala’s mouth tightened. “We got amendments,” she said. “We got Kells taken. We got an investigation.”

Jun exhaled. “So… justice?”

Raven’s voice was flat. “Not yet,” she said. “Process.”

Jun nodded, eyes darkening. He understood. He was learning the difference between victory and survival.

Yara stepped forward and put a hand on Jun’s shoulder—brief, firm. “You kept people alive,” she said. “Good.”

Jun blinked, swallowing. “I tried,” he murmured.

“Trying counts when it becomes doing,” Yara replied.

The Doctor watched that exchange and felt the quiet shift he’d sensed earlier:

Yara was not just a survivor. She was becoming part of the shape of this story.

Tala moved toward the composite office—now repurposed as an incident command center. “We have work,” she said. “Safety retrofits. Evidence packets. Statements to buyers. And someone upstream to hunt.”

The Doctor nodded. “We’ll help,” he said.

Raven’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Then we leave,” she said, but not as a contradiction—more like a reminder that help had limits.

The Doctor glanced at her. She was right. They couldn’t become Kharon Spire’s permanent solution. They could only change the slope.

They spent the next day doing the kind of work that didn’t involve running.

They compiled evidence: footage from the gantry console, logs from MINO’s scans, Kells’ signed admission, the schematic of the half-built swarm-launch chassis, the timeline of the beacon pulse and cut.

Tala wrote the formal report. The Doctor stripped it of corporate nonsense. Raven stripped it further—removing anything that sounded like pleading. Yara added short, blunt witness statements that cut like knives.

By evening, a packet was ready to send across the trade lane to every major buyer station and route captain.

Tala stared at the send button like it was a detonator.

“If I press this,” she said, “they can’t pretend anymore.”

The Doctor’s voice was quiet. “Good,” he said. “Pretending killed people.”

Tala pressed send.

A small act. A huge consequence.

Afterward, the four of them stood in Intake bay silence for a moment—listening to the moon’s normal sounds returning: water pumps, distant chatter, the hum of greenhouse lights.

No clicking.

No screaming.

Just the tired breathing of a place that had almost been eaten.

Later, when the shift lights dimmed and the workers settled into rest cycles, the Doctor and Raven walked alone along a composite corridor overlooking the greenhouse vats.

The air here smelled faintly of plant growth and recycled water—a scent that felt like reprieve.

Raven leaned against the railing and looked down at the pale green glow.

“You did what you came to do,” she said.

The Doctor stared at the vats. “We stopped the immediate threat,” he replied. “But the upstream hand—”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “We have the name.”

The Doctor nodded. “Yes,” he said. “And now we decide what to do with it.”

Raven turned to him, gaze steady. “We don’t chase it here,” she said. “Not on their ground. We don’t become management’s pet emergency response.”

The Doctor’s mouth twitched faintly. “You’re right,” he said.

Raven stepped closer. Her voice softened—not performative, just true.

“You’re tired,” she said.

The Doctor exhaled. “Yes,” he admitted.

Raven’s hand rose and touched his cheek—brief, warm, grounding. “Then let me hold you,” she said.

The Doctor closed his eyes for a second, leaning into her touch. “I love you,” he murmured.

Raven’s reply was immediate. “I love you,” she said. “And I’m still here.”

He opened his eyes and smiled faintly, a crack in the armor.

“Still here,” he echoed.

MINO pulsed quietly from his wrist. “Reminder: rest improves decision quality.”

Raven glanced at the watch. “Even your watch thinks you need sleep,” she said.

The Doctor huffed a small, tired laugh. “Fine,” he murmured. “We’ll sleep.”

They returned to the TARDIS—parked in a quiet composite bay Tala had authorized for them. The ship’s doors opened like a familiar throat swallowing them into warmth.

Inside, the lighting was soft. The air smelled faintly of black tea and polished wood—home in a way no station could be.

Jun lingered at the door, hesitant. “Are you leaving?” he asked quietly.

The Doctor looked at him. “Soon,” he said.

Jun nodded, swallowing. “Thank you,” he said.

The Doctor’s eyes softened. “You did more than thank,” he said. “You acted. Remember that.”

Jun nodded once, then stepped back into the corridor, leaving them in the quiet hum of the ship.

Raven leaned against the TARDIS console, watching the Doctor like she was reading his fatigue the way she read danger.

“What now?” she asked.

The Doctor looked at the console lights, then down at MINO’s stored threat actor identifier, then at Raven.

“Now we leave,” he said. “We let Kharon Spire build its own spine. And we follow the upstream thread—somewhere off this lane, somewhere not Earth, somewhere tangible.”

Raven’s eyes sharpened. “Old-school threat,” she murmured.

The Doctor nodded. “Old-school,” he agreed. “No mirrors. No memory games. Just someone using machines and contracts to turn people into material.”

Raven stepped closer, her hand sliding into his.

“Then we go together,” she said.

The Doctor squeezed her hand once.

“Together,” he replied.

And for the first time in days, the TARDIS hummed not with urgency, but with the quiet readiness of a ship preparing to leave a scarred moon behind—carrying love, evidence, and a name that would not stay hidden forever.

///

Chapter 17 — The Passenger Who Chose

The TARDIS doors shut with their familiar finality—wood and iron and impossible geometry sealing behind the day’s last echoes of alarms and shouted orders.

Inside, the console room held its own weather: warm light, quiet hum, the faint scent of black tea that clung to the air like a ritual. The ship felt steadier than the moon outside. Not kinder—just steadier.

Jun stood just inside the threshold, hands still dust-stained from ceramic fibers and coolant valves. He’d washed twice and it hadn’t helped. His eyes kept flicking toward the doors, toward the world he could still hear through the bay walls: pumps, footsteps, distant machinery. The ordinary sounds of survival.

Yara stood beside him with her arms folded, posture rigid in the way of someone refusing to be impressed by miracles. Her jaw was set like a locked tool chest. She’d stepped into the TARDIS and stopped, not with wonder, but with suspicion—because anything that big on the inside had to have a price.

Tala stood outside the threshold in the composite bay, not entering. Her moon needed her attention, not her awe. She kept herself on the other side of the doors like a boundary line: the place where responsibility stayed.

“You leave,” Tala said to the Doctor, voice hoarse with exhaustion and iron. “And you don’t forget Kharon Spire.”

The Doctor met her gaze, calm and direct. “I don’t forget what mattered,” he said.

Tala’s eyes flicked to Raven. “And you,” she said, not unkindly—just precise. “Keep him pointed at the right fights.”

Raven’s mouth tightened faintly. “I do,” she said.

Tala nodded once. Then she looked at Yara, and the hardness in her face shifted into something like reluctant respect.

“You sure about this?” Tala asked.

Yara didn’t answer immediately. She looked down the bay: the composite barricades rebuilt, coolant hoses rehung, the new plain-language rules posted where everyone could see them. She watched Jun’s crew moving in pairs, practicing the patterns like drills instead of desperation.

A moon learning to hold itself.

Then Yara looked back at Tala. “I’m sure,” she said.

Tala exhaled sharply. “Fine,” she muttered. “But you come back alive.”

Yara’s expression didn’t soften. “I don’t do promises,” she said. “I do decisions.”

Tala snorted once, approving despite herself, and stepped forward. She pressed a small polymer data tag into Yara’s palm.

“Route contacts,” Tala said. “People who’ll listen because they know I don’t hand endorsements out like candy. If anything smells like beacon manipulation or buried anomalies, you message me first. Not the consortium. Not the buyers. Me.”

Yara closed her fist around the tag. “Understood,” she said.

Jun stared at the tag in Yara’s hand, then at the Doctor, and then—like his courage had been hoarding itself for the right moment—he spoke.

“I want to come,” Jun blurted.

The words landed hard.

Tala’s face tightened instantly. Yara’s eyes sharpened. Raven’s gaze went to Jun with a steadiness that wasn’t judgment, but assessment.

The Doctor didn’t answer right away. He stepped closer to Jun, lowering his voice until the ship’s hum almost swallowed it.

“You can,” the Doctor said. “But you shouldn’t.”

Jun’s jaw clenched. “Why?”

The Doctor nodded toward the bay outside. “Because Kharon Spire is alive right now because people like you learned the pattern,” he said. “And because the next week is when the pattern will be forgotten if the people who learned it first disappear.”

Jun swallowed. “But I could help you.”

“You already have,” the Doctor said quietly. “And you will keep helping—here—by teaching others to move without panic. By making safety boring. By being the person who notices when management starts saying ‘accident’ again.”

Jun’s throat worked. His eyes shone with frustration and grief and a fierce desire to be more than a survivor.

Raven stepped closer, not soft, but kind in her own way. “Jun,” she said, “you don’t need to leave to be brave.”

Jun stared at her, then nodded once, shaky. “Okay,” he whispered.

Tala’s shoulders eased by a fraction. “Good,” she muttered. “Because I need him,” she said, and it sounded like admitting it cost her pride.

Jun looked at the Doctor one last time. “Thank you,” he said, and this time it wasn’t repetition. It was closure.

The Doctor nodded. “Stay steady,” he said.

Jun nodded once—hard—and stepped back out of the TARDIS into the bay, moving toward the corridor where his people waited and where his spine would be needed daily.

The Doctor watched him go and felt the quiet weight of it: choosing not to run into the stars was sometimes the harder choice.

Yara shifted her weight, watching Jun with something like recognition. “He’ll be fine,” she said. “If they don’t grind him down.”

The Doctor’s voice was quiet. “Then we gave him tools,” he said. “And Tala gave him authority.”

Tala looked at the Doctor sharply. “Don’t romanticize it,” she snapped. “He’ll be tired. He’ll mess up. He’ll get scared again. But he’ll get up.”

The Doctor nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That.”

Tala’s gaze lingered on the TARDIS interior—just long enough to prove she could be tempted by escape—then she looked away and hardened again.

“Yara,” Tala said, “you keep them honest.”

Yara’s expression was flat. “That’s what I’m for,” she said.

Tala turned to go, then stopped and looked back at the Doctor.

“One more thing,” she said.

The Doctor waited.

Tala’s voice went quieter. “That upstream name,” she said. “If you find where it leads… you tell me before you burn anything.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed slightly. The Doctor’s mouth twitched faintly.

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “Before I burn anything I don’t have to.”

Tala gave him a look that said she didn’t entirely believe him, then nodded once and walked away down the composite corridor—back to her moon, back to the slow work of keeping people alive when the hero leaves.

The bay grew quieter.

Yara stepped fully into the TARDIS.

She stopped again, eyes widening—not with wonder, but with suspicion at the scale.

“It’s bigger,” she said flatly.

The Doctor’s mouth twitched. “Yes,” he replied. “That happens.”

Yara stared at the console room—its glowing panels, its impossible columns, the corridors branching away like ribs. “You live in this?”

“I travel in it,” the Doctor corrected.

Yara grunted. “Fine. Where do I sleep?”

“Anywhere you like,” the Doctor said. “Not in the engine room.”

Yara nodded once and walked toward a corridor without waiting to be guided, as if she’d decided the ship would adapt to her, not the other way around.

The Doctor watched her go, thoughtful.

Raven stepped close beside him, voice low. “She’s going to fight you,” she murmured.

The Doctor’s tone was dry. “Good,” he said. “I’m tired of people who agree with me to keep things smooth.”

Raven’s eyes softened slightly. “And because you know it keeps you honest.”

He glanced at her. “Yes,” he admitted.

MINO pulsed from the Doctor’s wrist. “New companion profile logged. Assessment: high resilience, low tolerance for abstraction, strong moral clarity. Compatibility: high. Conflict probability: 34%. Predicted usefulness: 93%.”

Yara’s voice drifted faintly from the corridor, as if she’d heard the last part and was responding anyway.

“If that watch calls me useful again, I’m taking it apart,” she said.

Raven’s mouth tightened faintly. “She’ll try,” Raven murmured.

The Doctor almost smiled.

He moved to the console and rested his hand on the warm edge, feeling the ship’s hum under his palm.

“MINO,” he said quietly, “set course. Off the trade lane. Quiet vector. No broadcasts.”

“Confirmed,” MINO replied. “Recommended departure within ten minutes to reduce surveillance probability.”

The Doctor nodded. Then he turned to Raven.

She was close, as always—steady presence, steady gaze. The exhaustion in him softened in the space between her eyes.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

Raven’s answer was immediate. “I’m with you,” she said.

He nodded, then leaned in until their foreheads touched for a brief heartbeat—an old ritual that didn’t need words.

“I love you,” he murmured.

Raven’s voice softened, just enough to be unmistakable. “Still here,” she replied.

“Still here,” he echoed.

They separated, hands still linked, and the TARDIS lights shifted as the ship prepared to move.

Outside, Kharon Spire continued—scarred, learning, watched by a marshal who refused to forget.

Inside, the Doctor and Raven stood at the console with a new companion somewhere down the corridors, unpacking anger like equipment.

And with MINO pulsing quietly at his wrist, the Doctor set them on a course toward the upstream thread—toward whoever had pulled on a legacy beacon and believed the universe would keep letting them turn living people into line items.

Not today.

///

Chapter 18 — The Thread Upstream

The TARDIS didn’t lurch when it left.

It withdrew—like a blade sliding back into a sheath, like a breath held and released carefully. The console lights dimmed into a dusk palette, and the familiar hum deepened, smoothing into a frequency that made the bones behind the Doctor’s ears feel less raw.

Outside, Kharon Spire fell away into the black: a working moon with a sealed wound, a new set of rules, and a marshal who’d chosen spine over obedience. Jun would be there now, walking corridors in pairs, teaching others not to run. That mattered. It mattered more than heroics.

The Doctor kept his hands on the console as the ship settled into its departure vector.

“MINO,” he said quietly, “confirm we’re off the trade lane.”

MINO pulsed. “Confirmed. Course: oblique drift relative to primary route corridor. Communications silent. Transponder masked. Estimated detection probability reduced by 82%.”

Raven watched the time rotor like it was a weather report.

“You’re tense,” she said.

The Doctor huffed a breath through his nose. “I’m focused,” he replied.

Raven’s mouth tightened faintly. “That’s a yes.”

He glanced at her. She was leaning lightly against the console rail, coat hem still carrying faint frost marks from Kharon Spire. Her hair was pinned back more tightly than usual, the practical version of her—no loose strands for the universe to grab.

He loved her for that too: how she could shift aesthetics like armor. How she didn’t pretend softness was always the right tool.

“You’re not wrong,” he admitted.

Raven’s eyes softened just enough. “Good,” she said. “Then tell me what you’re doing.”

He lifted his hand and tapped the holographic map MINO was projecting above the console: a spidery lattice of route lines, orbital nodes, and consortium stations. Kharon Spire was a small red dot behind them now, already fading.

“The name Kells gave,” the Doctor said. “It wasn’t in Kharon Spire’s chain.”

Raven nodded. “Upstream,” she said.

“Upstream,” he confirmed. “Which means someone is using legacy infrastructure—beacons, relays, dormant nodes—outside standard contract oversight. Someone who can issue authorization tokens without showing up in local logs.”

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “Internal,” she said. “Or at least adjacent.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”

Raven’s fingers traced the air near the map without touching it, as if she could feel the routes. “So where do we go?”

The Doctor pointed to a small, unremarkable node marked in pale gray.

“Here,” he said.

Raven squinted. “That’s not a station.”

“It’s not supposed to be,” the Doctor replied. “It’s an old relay buoy—a legacy beacon coupling point. It sits off-lane, technically abandoned. It’s where you’d hide if you wanted to issue calls without being seen.”

MINO added, “Relay buoy designation: HARP-7. Last official maintenance record: 68 years. Status: ‘decommissioned’ but still broadcasting intermittent handshake pings.”

Raven’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Intermittent,” she repeated.

The Doctor nodded. “Old machines don’t die when you stop paying them,” he said. “They just… wait.”

He keyed the console with two precise movements. The time rotor steadied.

The TARDIS began to slide.

⸻

Yara reappeared twenty minutes into the drift, moving into the console room with the unhurried confidence of someone who had already claimed a corner of the ship as her own.

She looked different out of her work environment. Still the same hard eyes, but her posture had loosened a fraction—as if the TARDIS’s warmth was doing something she hadn’t agreed to.

“You’ve got food?” she asked, like it was an accusation.

The Doctor blinked. “Yes,” he said. “We’re not monsters.”

Yara grunted. “Good. Because I’m starving.”

Raven gestured toward a corridor. “Galley,” she said. “Tea is black. Don’t add sugar unless you’re trying to start a fight.”

Yara paused, looking Raven up and down. “You drink it plain,” she said.

Raven’s mouth tightened faintly. “Yes,” she replied.

Yara nodded once, as if that was one of the few things she considered respectable, and disappeared again.

The Doctor watched her go. “She’s going to tear the ship apart with questions,” he murmured.

Raven’s gaze stayed on the map. “Good,” she said. “Better questions than panic.”

MINO pulsed. “Approach to HARP-7 in twelve minutes. External conditions: debris field, low-level radiation, intermittent signal spikes.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Debris field wasn’t in your first report.”

MINO replied, “Debris field is small and scattered. Likely recent compared to maintenance record.”

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “Recent,” she said.

The Doctor nodded once. “Which means someone’s been there,” he said.

Raven’s voice went quiet. “Or something has fed there.”

The Doctor didn’t answer, but the way his jaw tightened said she’d hit a possibility he didn’t like.

He adjusted the controls. The TARDIS hummed in compliance.

⸻

HARP-7 didn’t look like much when they arrived, and that was part of the problem.

It hung in the dark like a forgotten tooth—an old relay buoy the size of a small shuttle, all angular plating and antenna arrays like ribs. Most of its external lights were dead. A few glowed weakly in irregular pulses, like a dying heartbeat.

Around it, a loose debris halo drifted: fragments of composite panels, twisted struts, a half-shattered drone casing, and something that looked like a torn segment of docking collar.

Yara re-entered the console room mid-materialization, carrying a mug of tea. She nearly spilled it as the external view snapped into place.

“What is that?” she demanded.

“A relay buoy,” the Doctor said.

“It looks like a corpse,” Yara replied.

“It might be,” Raven said quietly.

MINO pulsed. “Signal spike detected. Handshake pattern matches legacy beacon authorization structure. Similar to Kharon Spire pulse signature.”

The Doctor’s eyes sharpened. “So it’s active.”

“Intermittently,” MINO confirmed.

Raven’s fingers tightened around the console rail. “And the debris?”

MINO replied, “Debris includes recently fractured components. Estimated age: under three months.”

The Doctor exhaled. “Someone has been using it,” he said. “And something happened.”

Yara sipped her tea, eyes narrowed. “So we go in,” she said.

The Doctor glanced at her. “We assess first,” he replied.

Yara’s mouth tightened. “That’s what I meant,” she said, flat.

Raven’s gaze flicked to the Doctor. “We go together,” she said.

He nodded.

The Doctor opened a compartment and pulled out three items: two slim polymer spray canisters and a compact thermal patch kit.

Yara raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“Cold,” the Doctor said.

Yara stared. “Are you always like this?”

“Yes,” Raven answered before he could. “He learns one thing and turns it into a doctrine.”

The Doctor shot Raven a look. She held it, unbothered.

“We learned cold makes certain machines stupid,” he said. “I’d like to keep that advantage.”

Yara nodded once. “Fine,” she said. “If anything clicks, we freeze it.”

“Don’t run,” Raven added.

Yara’s eyes flashed. “I don’t run,” she said.

Raven’s voice stayed calm. “Good,” she replied. “Then you won’t die.”

The Doctor keyed the doors.

The TARDIS opened into vacuum-adapted threshold mode, and the three of them stepped out in sealed gear—light, flexible suits with magnetic boots that the Doctor clearly disliked but accepted as necessary.

Yara looked at her boots and grimaced. “Metal,” she muttered.

“Temporarily,” the Doctor said. “Stay on Raven’s heels.”

Raven moved first, stepping onto the debris-strewn approach path the TARDIS had chosen. Her movements were controlled, economical. She wasn’t afraid. She was attentive.

The buoy loomed larger as they approached.

Close up, it was uglier. Its hull plating had scars—long gouges across the surface, as if something had scraped against it repeatedly. Not micrometeorite strikes. Too patterned. Too deliberate.

Yara touched a gouge with a gloved finger and frowned. “That’s abrasion,” she said.

The Doctor didn’t answer immediately. He angled his lamp, scanning.

“Not swarm,” he murmured. “Not the same. Different tooth.”

Raven’s voice was low. “Still teeth,” she said.

They reached the buoy’s docking collar—half broken, twisted. A hatch sat to the side, emergency access.

The Doctor ran a scanner along it. “No life signs,” he murmured.

MINO’s voice came through the suit comms. “Internal thermal signature: low but present. Signal originates from core module. Recommend caution: power spikes imply active system cycling.”

The Doctor’s hands moved quickly, unlatching the emergency hatch with old mechanical levers. The buoy wanted to be opened; it wasn’t designed to keep people out, only to keep space out.

The hatch swung inward with a metallic groan.

A stale, dry air gusted out—smelling of ozone, old insulation, and something faintly organic gone wrong.

Yara wrinkled her nose. “That’s not vacuum stink,” she said.

Raven’s voice was quiet. “No,” she agreed.

The Doctor stepped inside first.

The corridor beyond was narrow and cramped, lit by intermittent red strips that flickered like failing nerves. The walls were lined with cable conduits—some ripped open, wires exposed like tendons.

There were scorch marks.

And there were footprints—faint, dusty, recent enough to see.

Yara pointed. “Someone was here,” she said.

“Yes,” the Doctor replied. “And they left in a hurry.”

They moved deeper, boots clacking softly.

The buoy’s internal structure spiraled toward its core module. Every few meters, a maintenance panel hung open. Someone had accessed components. Not a scavenger—too neat. Someone who knew what to touch.

They passed a small storage alcove and found a dropped tool—an official consortium calibrator, stamped with an insignia.

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Not a pirate,” she murmured.

The Doctor picked it up, turning it in his gloved hand. “No,” he said. “Official.”

Yara’s voice was tight. “So the clean rooms do come down here,” she said.

The Doctor didn’t answer, but the silence was confirmation.

They reached the core module door.

It was sealed, but the seal was weak. The red strips around it pulsed in the same rhythm they’d seen under Kharon Spire—the legacy handshake pattern, trying to speak to anyone who would answer.

MINO pulsed. “Handshake spike in ten seconds. If you enter during spike, system may attempt to authenticate and log.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “We don’t want a log,” he said.

Raven’s voice was quiet. “So we wait for trough,” she said.

He nodded.

They stood still in the corridor, listening to the buoy’s faint hum rise, peak, then dip.

As the pulse fell, the Doctor moved, slipping a thin polymer shim into the door seam and forcing the latch.

The door opened with a sigh.

Inside, the core module was a tight chamber packed with old consoles and relay coils. Most screens were dark. One screen glowed faintly with a scrolling handshake code.

And in the center, mounted on a pedestal, was the relay heart: a cylindrical unit with a translucent casing, inside which a lattice of old-fashioned crystalline circuitry pulsed with faint light.

It was beautiful in a way that made the Doctor uneasy.

“Legacy crystal relay,” he murmured. “Old Gallifreyan-adjacent design. Not mine. But close enough to be dangerous.”

Yara stared. “It’s… a jewel,” she said.

Raven’s gaze narrowed. “And it’s been modified,” she said.

She was right. The casing had been opened. Additional wiring had been added—newer, cheaper, strapped on like a parasite.

The Doctor moved around it, scanning. “Someone grafted a token generator onto it,” he murmured. “They’re issuing authorization calls from here.”

Yara’s jaw tightened. “So this is where the call came from.”

“Likely,” the Doctor said.

MINO pulsed. “Signature match probability: 74%.”

Raven’s voice was low. “What happened here?” she asked.

The Doctor’s scanner beeped. He frowned.

“There was a surge,” he said. “A feedback event. Someone tried to push too much signal through an old relay.”

Yara looked at the scorch marks. “And it burned,” she said.

“Yes,” the Doctor replied. “But not enough to stop it.”

He reached toward the relay heart—then stopped.

A sound.

Very faint.

Not clicking.

Not scraping.

A soft, wet, rhythmic tap—like something small striking the inside of a wall.

Raven froze instantly.

Yara’s shoulders tightened.

The Doctor angled his lamp toward a shadowed corner behind the relay pedestal.

There, half hidden, was a maintenance duct. Its cover plate was slightly ajar.

The tapping came again.

Raven raised her coolant canister.

Yara whispered, “What is that?”

The Doctor’s voice was controlled. “I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s alive.”

The tapping became faster.

Then the duct cover plate moved—just a fraction—pushed from inside.

Raven’s voice was flat. “Whatever it is, it’s not supposed to be here.”

The Doctor didn’t argue. He stepped back slightly, placing himself between the duct and Yara without making a show of it.

The cover plate slid further.

Something inside shifted.

A pale, segmented limb—thin, jointed—emerged, feeling the air.

Not metal.

Not exactly.

It looked like composite grown into bone.

Yara’s breath hitched. “That’s—”

Raven fired cold.

A burst of frost mist slammed into the limb. It jerked violently, recoiling.

A sound came from inside the duct—an angry, chittering rasp.

The limb withdrew.

The duct cover plate snapped shut, as if whatever was inside had learned: cold hurts.

The Doctor’s heart pounded once, hard.

He looked at Raven. “Good,” he murmured.

Raven didn’t look pleased. “That wasn’t a swarm,” she said.

“No,” he agreed. “It wasn’t.”

Yara’s eyes were wide, but her voice stayed hard. “So what is it?”

The Doctor scanned the duct cover plate. The scanner beeped, confused.

“Bio-composite,” he murmured. “Something engineered. Something that eats insulation and wiring, maybe. Something that likes warm relay coils.”

Raven’s gaze narrowed. “A parasite,” she said.

“Or a guard,” the Doctor replied quietly.

They stood in the humming core module, the relay heart pulsing, the duct now still.

Yara swallowed. “You’re telling me,” she said slowly, “someone not only used this buoy to issue calls… they left something living in the walls.”

The Doctor’s voice went colder. “Yes,” he said. “And that means whoever is upstream is not careless. They’re protective.”

MINO pulsed. “Advisory: remove relay modifications and exfiltrate evidence. Threat of internal organism unknown.”

Raven’s eyes flicked to the relay heart. “Can you copy its log?” she asked.

The Doctor nodded. “If it has one,” he said. “And if we don’t trigger authentication spike.”

Yara gestured at the duct. “And if that thing doesn’t crawl out again.”

Raven’s voice stayed calm. “Then we move quickly,” she said.

The Doctor moved to a side console, prying open a panel and attaching a small passive capture device—polymer, non-metallic, designed to listen rather than speak.

He worked fast, hands precise, minimizing noise.

The relay heart pulsed again—handshake rising.

The capture device blinked once, absorbing.

The Doctor watched it like a hawk.

MINO counted down quietly. “Handshake peak in three… two… one…”

The relay’s light surged.

The duct cover plate trembled slightly, as if something inside reacted to the signal.

Raven tensed.

The Doctor held still, letting the capture device do its work.

Then the pulse dropped.

The duct went still again.

The capture device displayed a small green indicator—data acquired.

The Doctor exhaled. “We have it,” he murmured.

Yara’s jaw clenched. “Good. Now smash it.”

The Doctor shook his head. “No,” he said. “We don’t smash the relay. Not yet.”

Raven looked at him sharply. “Why?”

“Because someone upstream will notice,” he said. “And they’ll shift methods. I want them to think their buoy is still usable.”

Yara scoffed. “So we leave it.”

“We leave it,” the Doctor confirmed. “But we take the parasite sample if we can.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “You want to poke the thing in the wall.”

The Doctor’s mouth tightened. “I want to know what it is,” he said. “Because if it’s being deployed as a guard, it might show up again—somewhere with people.”

Yara’s voice went hard. “Everything shows up somewhere with people,” she said. “That’s the problem.”

The Doctor met her gaze. “Yes,” he said quietly. “That’s why we learn it now, while the only thing at risk is us.”

Raven didn’t argue, but her stance shifted—closer to him, ready.

The Doctor moved to the duct cover plate and knelt, pulling out a small micro-sampler—polymer blade, adhesive pad, cold-resistant.

He slid it into the seam carefully.

The duct trembled.

A rasp came from inside—angry, hungry.

Raven raised her coolant canister again.

The Doctor whispered, “On my mark.”

Yara’s hands clenched into fists. She didn’t have a weapon. She had stubbornness.

The duct cover plate shifted.

That pale limb emerged again—faster this time, reaching.

Raven blasted cold instantly.

The limb jerked, but this time it didn’t fully retreat. It writhed, resisting, as if it had adapted slightly—learning.

The Doctor snapped the adhesive pad onto the limb’s surface, then pulled back sharply.

A thin strip of bio-composite tissue tore free with a wet snap.

The limb vanished back into the duct, chittering furiously.

The cover plate slammed shut.

Silence.

The Doctor held the sample pad up, breathing controlled.

“Got it,” he said.

Raven’s eyes stayed on the duct, cold. “Now we leave,” she said.

The Doctor didn’t argue.

They backed out of the core module and sealed the door behind them.

As they moved down the corridor, the buoy’s handshake pulse rose again, and somewhere behind a wall, something tapped once—angry and patient.

⸻

Back in the TARDIS, the warmth hit them like relief.

Yara ripped her helmet off first, breathing hard. “That was alive,” she said, as if accusing the universe.

The Doctor removed his helmet more slowly, mind already parsing.

Raven stripped her gloves, flexing her fingers as if checking they still belonged to her. “It learned,” she said quietly.

“Yes,” the Doctor agreed. “It didn’t retreat as fast the second time.”

Yara glared at him. “And you still poked it.”

The Doctor met her gaze. “Yes,” he said. “Because now I know it’s bio-composite, signal-reactive, and cold-averse. That’s three facts I didn’t have ten minutes ago.”

Yara stared at him like she wanted to throw the tea mug she didn’t have. Then she exhaled sharply.

“Fine,” she said. “Facts help.”

MINO pulsed. “Data capture complete. Relay logs indicate repeated token issuance events. Originating command signature traces to upstream node cluster: Lattice-Edge Sector. Specific sub-node: ‘CORMORANT’.”

Raven’s eyes sharpened. “CORMORANT,” she repeated.

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “A code name,” he said. “Not a person. Not a station.”

Yara frowned. “What is Lattice-Edge Sector?”

The Doctor tapped the map. A region of space lit up—sparser, older trade lines, more debris, fewer official stations.

“Border infrastructure,” he said. “Where old things get left because it’s cheaper than retrieving them.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “And where people hide.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said.

MINO continued. “Token generator graft appears consortium-grade. Not black-market. Threat actor likely has access to security inventory.”

Yara’s face hardened. “So it’s internal.”

“Or internal-adjacent,” Raven said.

The Doctor nodded, eyes narrow. “Either way,” he murmured, “they’re building an ecosystem: old beacons, hidden relays, and living guards in the walls.”

Yara stared at him. “And you’re going there.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said.

Raven stepped closer to him, hand brushing his wrist lightly—an anchor. “Together,” she said.

The Doctor squeezed her fingers once. “Together,” he replied.

Yara watched them, expression unreadable for a moment, then nodded once. “Then we go,” she said. “But if that wall-thing shows up again, I’m freezing it and stomping it.”

Raven’s mouth tightened faintly. “Reasonable,” she said.

The Doctor turned back to the console. “MINO,” he said quietly, “plot to CORMORANT. Quiet approach. No broadcasts. And give me everything you can on that bio-composite sample.”

“Confirmed,” MINO replied. “Course plotted. ETA: variable. Sector turbulence likely. Sample analysis initiated.”

The time rotor began to rise again, slow and steady.

Raven stood beside him, gaze locked on the map, as if she could already see the shape of what waited.

Yara leaned against a console pillar, arms folded, jaw set, like someone preparing to walk into a room full of power and refuse to be softened by it.

Behind them, HARP-7 hung in the dark, still pulsing its intermittent handshake—still usable, still tempting, still guarded by something that tapped in the walls and waited for the next signal spike like a dog trained to bite when it heard a whistle.

The thread upstream had a name now.

CORMORANT.

And whatever it was, it wasn’t just leveraging contracts.

It was engineering the space between systems—placing teeth where oversight couldn’t reach, and calling it efficiency.

The Doctor set his hands on the console, feeling the ship respond beneath his palms.

“Alright,” he murmured.

Raven’s voice was soft but fierce. “Alright,” she echoed.

Yara’s tone was flat. “Let’s go,” she added.

The TARDIS hummed, and the universe shifted—toward a sector where old machinery drifted like bones, where the consortium’s clean rooms didn’t like to look, and where something alive had learned to hate the cold.

And that meant, sooner or later, it would learn to hate the people who carried it.

///

Chapter 19 — Lattice-Edge Drift

Space changed as they crossed into Lattice-Edge.

It wasn’t the romantic kind of change—the bright nebulae and perfect rings people sold in postcards. This was the change you felt in your teeth: a subtle distortion of signal, a faint static in the bones of the TARDIS, a tug at the edges of navigation like the universe itself had loose threads here.

Old corridors.

Abandoned infrastructure.

Places that once mattered, then stopped being profitable.

The time rotor rose and fell with a slower cadence, as if the ship was listening harder than usual.

MINO pulsed. “Entering Lattice-Edge Sector boundary. Environmental notes: elevated particulate debris, low-grade radiation pockets, intermittent electromagnetic shear. Route beacons sparse. Recommend passive navigation.”

The Doctor’s fingers moved across the console with careful economy. He wasn’t showing off. He was working.

Raven watched him without speaking, her posture angled in a way that kept her eyes on both the external view and the Doctor’s hands. Love didn’t make her sentimental. Love made her attentive.

Yara sat on the lower step of the console dais with her arms folded, boots braced, looking like someone who’d decided she wouldn’t let the ship’s mood infect her.

“Where are we?” she asked.

The Doctor didn’t look up. “Between ledgers,” he said.

Yara frowned. “That’s not an answer.”

“It is,” Raven said quietly. “He means the places they don’t audit.”

Yara’s jaw tightened. “Good,” she said. “Then we’ll find what they’re hiding.”

The Doctor glanced at Yara for half a beat, approving the direction even if he didn’t say it.

MINO added, “CORMORANT sub-node signal detected intermittently. Bearing fluctuates. Likely using signal-bounce through derelict arrays to mask location.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “So it’s not a single point.”

“Could be,” the Doctor said. “But it’s being careful.”

Yara snorted. “So we’re hunting a careful coward.”

The Doctor’s mouth tightened faintly. “Careful doesn’t mean coward,” he said. “It means practiced.”

They drifted.

Outside, the stars looked slightly wrong—dimmed and dusted by particulate haze. A field of debris moved slowly, like the skeleton of an old station torn apart and left to orbit in pieces.

The Doctor adjusted their vector again, favoring shadowed paths that used larger debris as cover. It wasn’t stealth for stealth’s sake; it was leverage. If someone was watching, he wanted to choose the moment they noticed him.

Raven’s voice was low. “You think they’ll expect you.”

The Doctor didn’t deny it. “If they’re issuing tokens from hidden relays,” he said, “they’ve already accounted for detection. The question is whether they accounted for me.”

Yara’s gaze sharpened. “You like saying that.”

The Doctor glanced at her. “No,” he said. “I hate it. It usually means someone else has already been hurt.”

Silence settled for a moment—quiet in a ship that still carried the aftertaste of Kharon Spire’s grinding throat.

MINO pulsed again. “Signal spike ahead. Not handshake. Different modulation. Possible active sensor sweep.”

Raven straightened. “They’re looking,” she murmured.

The Doctor’s hands moved fast but not frantic. He dimmed external emissions, shifted the TARDIS’s approach angle, and let a large slab of broken station hull drift between them and the sweep.

On the external view, a faint shimmer passed through space—like a ripple in dust.

Yara stared. “That’s a scan?”

“Yes,” Raven said.

Yara’s jaw tightened. “So they’re not asleep.”

“No,” the Doctor agreed. “They’re awake.”

He waited.

The shimmer passed again, wider, stronger.

MINO’s voice was calm. “Scan sweep appears keyed to legacy beacon signatures. It is searching for relay activity, not for mass.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “They’re checking their own traps,” he murmured.

Raven’s voice went colder. “Or checking whether someone touched HARP-7.”

The Doctor didn’t answer, but his silence was agreement.

They let the scan pass.

Then MINO pulsed sharply. “CORMORANT signal lock acquired. Bearing stabilized. Source: clustered debris structure ahead—non-natural geometry.”

The external view shifted as the TARDIS rotated slightly.

At first, it looked like more debris: twisted struts, torn panels, chunks of black composite drifting in a loose knot.

Then the Doctor zoomed the view.

And the knot became a shape.

Not a station. Not a ship.

A nest.

A structure built out of scavenged hull fragments and relay arrays, fused together into a lopsided scaffold that held multiple antenna spines. Some were old beacon rods. Some were consortium-grade. Some looked like they’d been grown rather than welded—bio-composite filaments laced through metal like tendons through bone.

Raven’s breath caught once—small, involuntary.

Yara stared. “That’s… built,” she said.

“Yes,” the Doctor replied. “And it’s not supposed to exist.”

MINO added, “Structure contains active relay heart signatures. Multiple. Not just one. This is a hub.”

Yara’s voice went hard. “So this is CORMORANT.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “This is part of it,” he said. “CORMORANT isn’t a buoy. It’s an ecosystem.”

Raven’s gaze narrowed. “Like Kharon Spire,” she murmured. “But off-world.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “And someone has been feeding it.”

Yara’s fists clenched. “Who?”

The Doctor didn’t answer yet, because the nest had moved.

Not the whole structure, but a portion—an articulated panel sliding aside like a jaw opening.

Something emerged.

A drone—except not the kind the consortium used.

It was too organic in its lines, too asymmetrical. Its casing looked grown from composite rather than machined. Its propulsion was quiet, almost insect-like. And along its underside, thin segmented limbs flexed, testing empty space.

Yara’s voice dropped. “That’s alive.”

Raven’s eyes were ice. “Bio-composite again,” she said.

MINO pulsed. “Drone signature: hybrid mechanical/biological. Sensor suite active. It is performing local sweep. It may detect TARDIS if within direct line.”

The Doctor’s hands went still for a heartbeat, thinking.

Then he spoke, quiet and decisive. “We dock.”

Yara blinked. “What?”

Raven’s gaze snapped to him. “Dock where?”

“Inside,” the Doctor said.

Yara stared at him like he’d suggested walking into a furnace. “That’s insane.”

The Doctor’s voice was flat. “If we hover outside, we get scanned. If we run, we confirm suspicion. If we dock inside, we control the environment and we see the relay hearts.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “And we meet the thing that put a guard in HARP-7’s walls.”

The Doctor nodded. “Yes,” he said.

Yara’s jaw clenched. “So we’re walking into a nest of living machines.”

The Doctor looked at her. “You wanted tangible,” he said. “This is tangible.”

Yara held his gaze for a beat, then nodded once—hard. “Fine,” she said. “But I’m not being eaten in a clean room’s name.”

Raven’s mouth tightened faintly. “Nobody is,” she said.

The Doctor reached into a compartment and pulled out three coolant canisters, a ceramic fiber pouch, and a small polymer launcher that looked like it belonged in a maintenance kit rather than a battle.

Yara eyed it. “What’s that?”

“Anchor and snare,” the Doctor said. “Polymer netting. Non-metal. Cold-resistant. If something comes at us, we slow it.”

Raven took a canister, checking its seal. “If it learns,” she said quietly, “we keep changing.”

The Doctor nodded. “Exactly.”

MINO pulsed. “Recommendation: minimal team. Three only. Maintain constant comms. Avoid activating relay cores. Passive capture preferred.”

Yara smirked faintly. “Even your watch doesn’t want you to be heroic.”

The Doctor’s tone was dry. “It’s very rude about it.”

MINO replied, “It is accurate about it.”

They moved to the doors.

The TARDIS began a careful approach, sliding toward the nest’s shadowed understructure where broken hull plating formed an opening—an improvised hangar mouth.

As they drifted closer, the Doctor could see more details: relay coils embedded in the scaffold, conduit lines patched with bio-composite growth, and—most unnerving—small, pale, jointed shapes clinging in clusters to the interior walls like barnacles waiting for heat.

Raven’s voice was low. “There are more of them.”

“Yes,” the Doctor murmured.

Yara’s jaw tightened. “So it’s not one parasite,” she said. “It’s a colony.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “A colony with purpose,” he said. “Someone built this to persist.”

The TARDIS eased into the opening.

The darkness swallowed the external stars.

Inside, faint red lights flickered—old beacon strips, repurposed. The air on sensors wasn’t vacuum. It was thin, stale, and artificially maintained.

The Doctor felt the ship’s hum change as it settled onto a patch of composite deck inside the nest.

Docked.

Enclosed.

Surrounded.

The doors remained shut for a long moment.

In that pause, Raven’s hand found the Doctor’s wrist—brief, firm.

“You’re sure?” she asked quietly.

The Doctor met her eyes. “No,” he said honestly. “But I’m here.”

Raven’s mouth tightened with something like approval. “Good,” she murmured. “So am I.”

Yara shifted her stance, rolling her shoulders like she was preparing for a fight that didn’t care about her opinions.

“Open it,” she said.

The Doctor nodded.

He keyed the doors.

The TARDIS opened into the stale, dim interior of CORMORANT’s nest.

And somewhere in the darkness beyond, something moved—soft, segmented, patient—responding not to fear, but to the arrival of warm bodies and the faint promise of new metal to learn.

///

Chapter 20 — The Nest Interior

The air inside the nest tasted wrong.

Not poison—not immediately. Just… stale, recycled through systems that hadn’t been designed for lungs. It carried a faint metallic tang and an underlying organic note, like damp insulation left too long in heat.

The Doctor stepped out first, boots finding the deck with a muted clack. The surface wasn’t bare metal. It was a patchwork: composite plates bolted over older hull fragments, seams stitched with pale bio-composite filaments that looked disturbingly like tendons.

Raven followed close, her posture calm but ready, coolant canister in hand. Yara stepped out last, scanning hard, jaw tight.

The TARDIS doors stayed open behind them like a held breath.

MINO’s voice came through their comms, quiet and level. “Atmosphere is thin but stable. Oxygen content acceptable. Radiation low. Multiple heat pockets detected within structure. Motion signatures: intermittent.”

Yara muttered, “Intermittent means it’s choosing when to move.”

Raven’s eyes didn’t leave the shadows. “Or something else is choosing,” she said.

The nest’s interior was dimly lit by repurposed beacon strips—old red diagnostic lights that flickered in irregular pulses. They threw everything into harsh angles: scaffolds, cable runs, antenna supports, and clusters of relay coils embedded into the walls like organs.

The Doctor moved slowly, deliberately. Not stealthy—measured. Every footstep transmitted vibration. Every breath warmed the air. In a place like this, speed wasn’t safety.

Yara hated it, visibly. She wanted forward momentum like a weapon. But she didn’t argue—because the memory of Kharon Spire’s lesson still sat in her muscles.

They advanced along a narrow corridor that curved inward, deeper into the structure.

Every few meters, the Doctor stopped and listened.

Not for clicking.

For rhythm.

This place had a pulse, and it wasn’t just electrical. The relay coils hummed faintly, and under that hum there was a softer sound—tiny, irregular taps, like fingernails against plastic.

Raven raised her canister slightly. “There,” she murmured.

The Doctor nodded. “I hear it.”

Yara leaned closer to a wall seam without touching it. “It’s in the walls again.”

MINO added, “Motion signatures correspond to duct microspaces. Likely the same bio-composite organism class observed at HARP-7. Density is higher here.”

Yara’s voice went hard. “So this is where they breed.”

The Doctor didn’t correct her wording. He wasn’t sure it was wrong.

They reached a junction where the corridor opened into a wider chamber—an old cargo bay repurposed into something that made the Doctor’s stomach tighten.

Relay hearts.

Not one.

Not even three.

A cluster—dozens—mounted on a lattice scaffold like a forest of translucent cylinders. Each pulsed faintly with handshake light, out of sync with the others, creating a flickering constellation of authorization patterns.

And woven between them, running like veins, were the pale bio-composite filaments—supporting, insulating, binding the structure together.

Raven’s breath caught once. “That’s… a lot,” she said quietly.

The Doctor’s voice was flat. “Yes,” he said. “This isn’t a workaround. It’s infrastructure.”

Yara stared, anger sharpening her face. “This is a factory,” she said.

“No,” the Doctor replied, eyes narrowing. “It’s a switchboard.”

MINO pulsed. “Multiple token issuance events detected across relay cluster. Target destinations include: Kharon Spire; additional industrial nodes; several decommissioned beacons. Pattern suggests coordinated activation schedule.”

Yara’s head snapped to the Doctor. “Additional nodes,” she said. “So Kharon Spire wasn’t the only one.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “No,” he said. “It was just the one that screamed loud enough for us to hear.”

Raven’s voice went colder. “So whoever is doing this is seeding problems,” she said. “Making crises. Then—what—profiting?”

The Doctor didn’t answer immediately. His eyes moved across the scaffold, searching for the human layer in the machine pattern: access points, manual ports, signs of maintenance.

He found them.

At the far end of the chamber, behind the relay forest, a small clean zone had been established: a narrow platform of pristine composite plates, a portable console station, and a sealed crate with consortium markings.

Someone had been working here recently.

Human hands.

Clean habits.

And next to the console station: a small light source that wasn’t red beacon strip, but warm white—personal.

Raven saw it too. “That’s not scavenger behavior,” she murmured.

Yara’s voice was tight. “That’s someone’s office.”

The Doctor’s face went still. “Yes,” he said. “And it means we’re not alone.”

As if the nest heard the thought, the tapping in the walls increased—faster now, more coordinated, like a wave of tiny bodies responding to a shared signal.

Raven’s stance shifted—slightly closer to the Doctor’s flank. Not fear. Partnership. A silent agreement: I’m here. I’m watching. You’re not doing this alone.

Yara lifted her coolant canister. “If anything comes out, I freeze it.”

The Doctor nodded once. “Low and wide,” he said. “Floor seams and wall seams. Keep it slick.”

Yara’s mouth tightened. “You sound like a marshal.”

The Doctor’s eyes flicked to her. “You sound like one too,” he said.

They moved into the chamber.

The relay hearts’ pulse patterns flickered brighter as they approached, as if their proximity altered something—heat, electromagnetic noise, simple attention.

MINO warned quietly. “Handshake spike probability increasing. Avoid touching active consoles. Passive capture only.”

The Doctor held up a small polymer capture puck—non-metallic, low emission. He crouched near the edge of the relay lattice and placed it gently against a conduit housing.

The puck blinked once—listening.

A tremor ran through the bio-composite filaments, subtle, like muscle flexing in sleep.

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “It felt that.”

“Yes,” the Doctor murmured. “This place is… sensitive.”

Yara’s voice was low. “That’s a polite word.”

The tapping increased again, and this time it wasn’t only in the walls.

Something moved above them.

A soft scrape across a beam.

Raven angled her lamp upward.

Clusters of pale jointed shapes clung to the overhead scaffold—dozens, maybe more—like barnacles with limbs. They were mostly still, but some shifted, testing, feeling the air.

They weren’t metal, but they weren’t fully organic either: composite-bone limbs with thin membranes that glistened faintly. Their heads—if you could call them that—were small, blunt, and equipped with specialized mouthparts designed to bite insulation, wiring, and maybe soft tissue if it was warm enough.

Yara whispered, “How many?”

MINO replied, “Estimated: several hundred within immediate chamber. Potentially thousands within full structure.”

Raven’s voice was quiet, controlled. “And they’re watching us.”

The Doctor didn’t deny it. “They respond to signal,” he said. “To heat. To vibration.”

Yara’s jaw clenched. “So we don’t give them any.”

The Doctor nodded. “Exactly.”

They edged toward the clean platform—the human workspace.

As they approached, the Doctor saw a fresh data slate on the console stand, its screen still faintly active. It displayed a schedule—token issuance windows, destination nodes, and a repeating label:

CORMORANT / DEPLOYMENT PHASE III

Below it, a line item that made the Doctor’s blood cool.

BIO-GUARD MATURATION: SUCCESSFUL

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “Bio-guard,” she murmured. “So it’s intentional.”

The Doctor’s voice went cold. “Yes,” he said. “They’re growing them.”

Yara’s face tightened. “To keep people out,” she said.

“Or to keep people in,” Raven added quietly.

The tapping became a soft, continuous rustle now, like dry leaves in wind.

The Doctor didn’t touch the slate. He pointed MINO’s passive lens toward it and let the watch record.

MINO confirmed. “Captured. Data copied visually. No authentication handshake triggered.”

Yara exhaled sharply. “Good. Now we destroy it.”

The Doctor shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “We still don’t know who is upstream. We need the human.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “You think they’re here now.”

The Doctor looked at the warm white personal light—still on, still steady. “Yes,” he said. “Someone doesn’t leave a light on in a nest unless they think they’re safe.”

Yara’s mouth curled with contempt. “Let’s make them unsafe.”

The Doctor’s tone stayed controlled. “We don’t rush,” he said. “We move where they can’t predict.”

He stepped back from the platform and scanned the chamber’s edges. There—behind a relay coil scaffold—was a maintenance hatch that led deeper into the nest, away from the main cluster.

A path.

A throat.

The Doctor looked at Raven. “With me,” he said softly.

Raven’s response was immediate and quiet. “Always,” she said.

They moved toward the hatch.

Yara followed, tight and silent, her eyes never leaving the overhead clusters.

They reached the hatch. The Doctor inspected it—mechanical latch, no fancy locks. Old-school.

He eased it open.

The passage beyond was narrower, darker, and the air was warmer—as if deeper inside the nest there was a heat source feeding the ecosystem.

A soft chitter echoed faintly from within.

Raven’s voice was low. “This is where they live.”

The Doctor nodded. “And where the human thinks they’re protected by them,” he said.

MINO pulsed. “Advisory: heat signature detected deeper within passage. Human-scale. Additionally: intermittent electromagnetic spike consistent with active token generation.”

Yara’s eyes flashed. “So they’re here,” she said.

The Doctor’s voice went very quiet. “Yes,” he replied.

He paused at the threshold, not for fear, but for intention.

Then he turned his head slightly toward Raven, close enough that only she could hear his next words without comms.

“If this goes badly,” he murmured, “don’t try to save me by dying.”

Raven’s gaze didn’t flinch. “I won’t,” she said. “I’ll save you by living. Same as always.”

His throat tightened. Love wasn’t softness in this ship. Love was a rule.

He nodded once. “I love you,” he said, barely audible.

Raven’s reply was immediate, steady as the hum of the TARDIS behind them. “Still here,” she whispered.

“Still here,” he echoed.

Yara watched them, expression hard but not mocking. “If you two are done,” she muttered, “I’d like to meet the person who thought it was clever to grow wall-biting guards.”

The Doctor almost smiled—almost.

Then he stepped into the passage.

The darkness swallowed their lamps.

And somewhere deeper in CORMORANT’s nest, something warm and human was working—confident in the belief that no one would ever walk this far off the ledgers to interrupt the machinery of profit.

They were about to learn what a mistake that was.

///

Chapter 21 — The Human in the Throat

The passage narrowed as it went, funneling them inward like the nest wanted to swallow them in stages.

Their lamps cut thin tunnels through the dark. The walls were close enough that Yara’s shoulder brushed bio-composite filaments in places—slick, tendon-like strands that flexed faintly under touch as if the structure could feel it.

“Don’t,” Raven murmured, and it wasn’t a scold so much as a warning offered too late.

Yara pulled away, jaw tight. “I didn’t mean to.”

The Doctor said nothing. He was counting the soundscape: the hum of relay coils behind them fading; the warmer, denser buzz ahead; the soft intermittent chitter—no longer random now, but responsive.

MINO pulsed in their ears. “Heat signature ahead: one human-size. Vital signs: present. Activity: seated, manual manipulation of console. Distance: 32 meters. Additional motion signatures: multiple bio-guards in duct lattice above and along side seams.”

Yara’s voice was low. “So we’re walking into a room where the walls bite.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said quietly. “So we don’t give them a reason.”

Raven’s hand hovered near her coolant canister. Her movements were controlled—no wasted motion, no dramatic breath. Her calm was its own weapon.

They reached a final bend and stopped.

Ahead, the passage opened into a compact control chamber—an old service bay that had been scrubbed clean in a way that felt obscene in this place. Portable composite flooring had been laid down. A small white work lamp glowed warmly. A console station sat at the center, wired into the nest’s relay lattice by grafted cabling.

And sitting at the console was a person in a consortium uniform.

Not a foreman. Not a worker.

A security-grade technician—dark collar insignia, neat hair, boots polished even here.

They were mid-motion, fingers on keys, eyes on a small display that showed token issuance windows and destination nodes. The screen flashed:

PHASE III — CONFIRMATION / Kharon Spire / COMPLETE

The technician froze as the Doctor’s lamp fell across them.

For a beat, nobody moved.

Then the technician’s eyes narrowed in an assessing way that made the Doctor’s stomach tighten. No surprise. No panic. Just calculation.

“You’re far off route,” the technician said calmly.

Yara’s voice cut through, flat and furious. “So are you.”

The technician’s gaze flicked to Yara, then to Raven, then back to the Doctor. “I didn’t authorize visitors,” they said.

The Doctor’s voice was quiet. “You authorized a beacon wake that killed two workers,” he replied. “And nearly seeded a trade lane with a swarm.”

The technician’s mouth tightened faintly. “Kharon Spire was a controlled activation,” they said. “Foreman Kells failed to manage it.”

Raven’s eyes went ice. “He didn’t fail,” she said. “He did what your incentives trained him to do.”

The technician leaned back slightly in their chair, still calm. “You’re emotional,” they observed.

Yara laughed once, bitter. “Yes,” she said. “Because we’re alive.”

The Doctor stepped forward one pace—just one. “Who are you?” he asked.

The technician’s gaze stayed on his face. “You already have my designation,” they said.

“CORMORANT is not a person,” the Doctor replied.

The technician’s mouth twitched faintly. “Correct,” they said. “It’s a protocol.”

The Doctor nodded slowly. “A protocol for waking old machinery, shifting blame to local management, and extracting output under crisis pressure,” he said.

The technician shrugged—small, elegant. “Crisis increases compliance,” they said, as if stating physics.

Yara’s fists clenched. “You’re sick.”

The technician’s eyes flicked to her hands. “You’re predictable,” they said.

Raven’s voice was low. “Stop talking,” she said. “You’ve had your turn.”

The technician’s gaze shifted to Raven, and for the first time their calm wavered—not fear, but irritation. “And you are…?”

Raven didn’t give a name. “The person you’re not going to manipulate,” she said.

The Doctor felt it then—why this person could do what they did. Not madness. Not cruelty for sport. A belief system: people were inputs, death was noise, output was morality.

Old evil. Tangible evil. Spreadsheet evil.

The Doctor’s voice went very quiet. “You grew bio-guards,” he said. “You put them in relay walls.”

The technician nodded. “Adaptive deterrents,” they said. “Theft prevention. Sabotage prevention.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “And if a scavenger is eaten?”

The technician’s shoulders lifted. “Then fewer scavengers,” they said.

Yara took a sharp step forward.

Raven’s hand shot out, stopping her—not forcefully, just enough to remind her: don’t feed the nest your heat.

Yara’s jaw trembled with contained rage.

MINO pulsed a warning. “Bio-guard agitation increasing. Motion signatures accelerating in duct lattice. Emotional vocal amplitude correlates with increased activity.”

The Doctor spoke softly into comms. “Quiet,” he said to both Raven and Yara. “We do this clean.”

He looked back at the technician. “You issued the token,” he said. “You’re the upstream hand. Which means you have upstream authorization.”

The technician’s eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to map hierarchy,” they said.

The Doctor nodded. “Yes,” he replied. “Because this isn’t a one-person operation. Who else knows? Who funds this? Who benefits?”

The technician’s smile returned, thin. “Everyone benefits,” they said. “The route stays fed. The contracts hold. Consumers receive goods.”

Yara’s voice was a hiss. “Workers die.”

The technician’s gaze flicked to her. “Workers are replaced,” they said.

The words hung in the chamber like a toxin.

The Doctor felt Raven shift beside him, a subtle tremor of fury under her steadiness. She kept her voice flat.

“You’re not leaving this chamber,” Raven said.

The technician’s eyes didn’t widen. They simply glanced upward—barely perceptible.

And the tapping in the walls became a coordinated rustle.

Yara whispered, “They’re listening to you.”

The technician’s voice stayed calm. “They respond to frequency,” they said. “And to heat.”

The Doctor didn’t move fast. He moved decisively.

He lifted the polymer snare launcher and fired—not at the technician, but at the console station.

The net blossomed—clear polymer strands, cold-resistant—slamming over the console, tangling keys and cables, pinning the technician’s hands away from the controls.

The technician jerked back in surprise—finally, real surprise.

Raven moved simultaneously, blasting a wide fan of coolant mist across the floor seams and up the lower walls, frosting the bio-composite filaments and making the chamber slick and cold.

Yara followed her lead instantly—low, wide spray, wall seams, floor seams—turning the chamber into a cold trap.

The rustle above them turned into frantic chittering as the bio-guards reacted—limbs shifting, testing, searching for dry traction.

The technician snarled, voice sharp now. “You don’t understand what you’re interfering with!”

The Doctor’s gaze stayed steady. “I understand exactly,” he said. “A system that eats people and calls it stability.”

The technician struggled against the polymer netting. Their uniform tore slightly at the shoulder.

“Let me go,” they hissed. “You’ll destabilize the route.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “Good,” she said. “Maybe the route should feel what it costs.”

The technician’s eyes flashed with anger. “You think you’re moral,” they spat. “You’re just disruptive.”

The Doctor stepped closer, keeping his boots on the dry edge of the frost field Raven had laid down.

“I’m not moral,” he said softly. “I’m responsible.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small polymer capture drive—already blinking with the relay logs MINO had been collecting. He held it up.

“I have your schedule,” he said. “Your token issuance records. Your bio-guard maturation logs. Your destination list.”

The technician’s face tightened. “That data is meaningless without context,” they snapped.

Yara’s voice was flat. “Context is: you killed people,” she said.

MINO pulsed. “Additional data: console contains a local uplink queue. If accessed, may reveal upstream recipients. However, activation may trigger nest-wide alert.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. Upstream recipients. That was the last piece.

He looked at Raven.

Raven’s gaze met his, steady. No romance in it now. Pure coordination.

“You can do it,” Raven murmured.

He nodded once.

“Yara,” the Doctor said quietly, “keep the frost field maintained. Do not let the floor warm. If those things drop, you want them slipping.”

Yara nodded sharply, jaw clenched. “Got it.”

The Doctor moved toward the console—carefully, avoiding the thickest netting. He didn’t touch the keys. He didn’t authenticate. He slid a passive tap—a polymer ear—into the console’s side port where the grafted wiring entered.

MINO counted down. “Handshake trough now. Safe window: eight seconds.”

The Doctor’s fingers were fast.

The passive tap blinked—listening, copying, siphoning the uplink queue without sending anything back.

The technician thrashed. “Stop!” they barked. “You’ll—”

“—expose you,” Raven finished coolly.

The duct lattice above trembled, chittering rising. A pale limb emerged briefly from a seam, then recoiled as Raven’s cold mist hit it.

The Doctor held the tap steady until MINO’s count hit zero.

“Window closing,” MINO warned.

The Doctor withdrew the tap.

The device blinked green.

He exhaled. “We have the recipients,” he murmured.

The technician went still for half a second—true fear now, finally.

“Those names,” they said, voice low, “are protected.”

Raven’s eyes were ice. “So were Perrin and Sato,” she said. “And look how that went.”

Yara’s voice was a rasp. “What do we do with them?”

The Doctor stared at the technician.

He could hear Tala’s voice in memory: Tell me before you burn anything.

He could also hear the moon screaming, the sound of metal teeth chewing. He could see Jun’s face. Could feel the weight of those who didn’t get to walk into a TARDIS and leave.

He made a decision that felt like a boundary.

“We don’t kill,” he said quietly. “We extract and contain.”

Yara glared. “They deserve—”

Raven cut in, calm but firm. “They deserve consequences that stick,” she said. “Death is an exit.”

Yara’s jaw worked, angry, but she didn’t argue further.

The Doctor looked at the technician. “You’re coming with us,” he said.

The technician’s eyes widened. “No,” they snapped. “You can’t—”

The Doctor’s voice was flat. “I can,” he said. “Because you built a nest that bites. And I’m not leaving you here to do it again.”

MINO pulsed. “Warning: nest-wide alert probability increasing. Bio-guard agitation rising. Recommend immediate withdrawal to TARDIS within four minutes.”

Raven nodded once. “Time,” she said.

The Doctor reached for a restraint strip—polymer, non-metal—and bound the technician’s wrists properly, securing them in a way that didn’t rely on metal clasps.

The technician struggled, but the Doctor’s hands were efficient.

Yara kept spraying cold, maintaining the slick field as the rustle above grew louder—impatient, hungry, confused by the sudden drop in warmth and traction.

They moved.

The Doctor hauled the technician to their feet.

Raven led, sweeping cold across seams and corners as they backed out of the chamber.

Yara followed last, weaponizing frost and anger.

As they entered the passage again, the chittering intensified, and a cluster of pale limbs dropped from a ceiling seam—slamming into the slick floor and skittering uselessly, unable to find adhesion.

Yara’s breath hitched, but she didn’t run.

She sprayed the cluster hard.

They convulsed, recoiling, limbs snapping back toward seams.

Raven’s voice was low. “Keep moving,” she ordered.

They kept moving.

Behind them, the nest’s relay hum rose—handshake spikes intensifying as if the structure itself was trying to scream into the void: Intruder. Intruder.

The Doctor didn’t look back. He kept his grip on the technician and his focus on the corridor’s mouth where the TARDIS waited.

Because this was the wrap-up now—the book closing around the upstream thread. They had the proof. They had the human hand.

And next chapter, the final one, would be where consequences were delivered—without mirrors, without memory tricks, without any soft mythology.

Just an old, hard truth:

If you build a system that eats people, someone eventually arrives to make you swallow it.

///

Chapter 22 — Still Here

They made it back to the TARDIS with seconds to spare—not because a clock told them so, but because the nest’s sound changed.

It stopped being a rustle.

It became a chorus.

Chittering rose through the walls like a tide finding a crack, relay hums spiking in frantic bursts as CORMORANT tried to light every old lung it had—every antenna, every coil, every salvaged rod—broadcasting distress into the dark.

Raven kept the corridor cold as they moved, spraying low and wide, sealing their path with slick frost that turned the nest’s living guards into flailing, useless limbs. Yara stayed behind them like a closing door, her face hard, her canister never wavering.

The technician—CORMORANT’s human hand—struggled and swore and then went quiet when they realized the TARDIS doors were open.

They saw the interior.

They understood, all at once, what kind of problem they were now part of.

The Doctor hauled them across the threshold and into the console room.

Raven stepped in immediately behind, and the air inside the ship—warm, tea-scented, real—hit them like a bruise you didn’t notice until you got home.

Yara entered last, snapping her helmet off and sucking air as if she’d been holding her breath for hours.

The Doctor didn’t let the technician look around. He guided them straight to the lower step by the console dais and pushed them down, not roughly—efficiently. The polymer restraints held.

The technician’s eyes flicked up, taking in the Doctor’s face, Raven’s stillness, Yara’s anger.

“You can’t keep me,” they said, trying for calm and failing. “You don’t understand what you’ve taken.”

The Doctor stood over them, quiet.

“I understand what you built,” he said. “A relay hub off-ledger. A token engine. A bio-guard colony. A system for waking old machinery where no one’s watching.”

The technician’s mouth tightened. “It worked,” they said.

Raven’s voice cut in, flat. “Two workers died,” she said. “And that was just the beginning.”

The technician’s eyes flicked to Raven. “Collateral,” they said.

Yara made a sound in her throat like she was swallowing glass. “Say that again,” she hissed.

The Doctor lifted a hand slightly—just enough to keep Yara from stepping closer.

“MINO,” he said calmly, “lock doors. Silent running. Full shielding.”

MINO pulsed. “Confirmed. Doors sealed. External emissions minimal. Nest signal no longer receiving handshake from TARDIS. Detection probability decreasing.”

On the external view, CORMORANT’s nest churned with frantic pulses—lights blinking irregularly as if it was having a seizure. A few hybrid drones emerged from its hangar mouth, sweeping the darkness, searching.

They found nothing.

The TARDIS was a ghost now.

Raven watched the drones for a moment, then looked at the Doctor. “We have what we need?” she asked.

The Doctor nodded. “We have the recipients,” he said. “We have the schedule. We have evidence of deliberate activation.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “Names,” she said.

The Doctor glanced at MINO’s projection—an encrypted list pulled from the console uplink queue. He didn’t read it aloud. Names were knives; you didn’t wave them around unless you were ready to cut.

He looked down at the technician.

“You’re not the top,” he said quietly.

The technician’s jaw tightened. “Hierarchy is irrelevant,” they snapped. “The system is what matters.”

The Doctor’s voice went colder. “Then the system will be seen,” he said.

The technician swallowed. “Seen by who?”

The Doctor didn’t answer immediately. He turned toward the console and opened a comms interface—one he hadn’t used since leaving Kharon Spire, one he’d kept clean and silent until now.

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “You’re going to broadcast.”

The Doctor nodded. “Selective,” he said. “Targeted. Not public theater.”

Yara leaned forward, voice hard. “To Tala.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “First Tala. Then route buyers. Then—if needed—consortium oversight forces who actually care about lane stability.”

The technician barked a short laugh. “Oversight cares about stability,” they said. “Not morality.”

The Doctor’s eyes flicked down. “Good,” he said. “Because stability is what you threatened.”

MINO pulsed. “Advisory: sending from Lattice-Edge Sector may be traceable if repeated. Recommendation: single burst transmission via multi-hop relay masking.”

The Doctor nodded. “Do it,” he said.

MINO replied, “Executing.”

A small indicator blinked.

One burst.

Encrypted packet.

No flourish.

No speech.

Just data: logs, schedules, graft designs, bio-guard maturation notes, destination lists, and the recipients—coded, but enough for Tala to match to her own route contacts and the consortium’s internal chain.

The Doctor didn’t watch the confirmation light for long. He didn’t need to. He felt the moral gravity of the act like a shift in his spine: once sent, it couldn’t be unsent.

He turned back to the technician.

“You’ve been pulling levers in the dark,” he said quietly. “That’s over.”

The technician’s eyes flashed with anger. “You think exposing us changes anything?” they spat. “The route will still demand product. The contracts will still grind. Someone else will replace me.”

The Doctor crouched slightly, bringing his face closer—not threatening, just present.

“Maybe,” he said. “But replacing you takes time. And time is where people live.”

Raven’s voice, steady. “And now people know what to look for,” she added. “Legacy handshakes. Decommissioned relays that aren’t dead. ‘Accidents’ that smell like procurement.”

Yara’s tone was flat and brutal. “And now your bosses know you failed,” she said. “That’s going to hurt you more than anything we could do.”

The technician went pale at that—because it was true. The system didn’t forgive failure. It consumed it.

They swallowed hard. “You don’t know what you’ve started,” they whispered.

The Doctor stood again.

“I do,” he said. “A cleanup.”

He looked at Raven.

She met his gaze, unflinching. “What do you want to do with them?” she asked quietly.

The Doctor looked down at the technician, then at Yara—anger like a blade.

He made the decision he’d already been circling since the control chamber.

“We don’t kill,” he said. “We don’t let them vanish into the nest. We don’t hand them back to the consortium quietly.”

Yara’s jaw clenched. “So what?”

“We deliver them,” the Doctor said, “to someone who will keep them alive long enough to testify.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Tala,” she said.

“Yes,” the Doctor replied. “Tala has local authority and a moon full of witnesses. And now, thanks to this,” he gestured at MINO’s data, “she has leverage.”

Yara’s expression didn’t soften, but it steadied. “Good,” she said. “Let the moon see them.”

The technician’s eyes widened. “You can’t take me back there,” they snapped. “They’ll—”

“They’ll look at you,” Yara said quietly. “That’s the point.”

The Doctor moved to the console. “MINO,” he said, “plot return to Kharon Spire. Quiet approach. Bring us in behind their sensor arcs. No announcements until we’re docked.”

MINO pulsed. “Confirmed. Course plotted. Estimated transit: four hours. Advisory: CORMORANT nest remains active and may attempt pursuit with drones. Probability low. Recommended evasive drift.”

The TARDIS began to move, the time rotor rising with a new cadence—no longer exploratory, but closing.

Raven leaned against the console rail, watching the external view as the nest receded into distance—its frantic pulses diminishing, its drones sweeping uselessly through dust.

“Do you think it’ll stay there?” she asked.

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “No,” he said. “It’ll adapt. It’ll hide deeper. It’ll rebuild.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “So we didn’t finish it.”

The Doctor glanced at her. “We finished this chapter,” he said. “We didn’t pretend the universe is tidy.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “And that leaves room,” she said.

“For another chronicle,” Yara finished, surprising herself slightly.

The Doctor’s mouth twitched faintly. “Yes,” he said. “Another time. Another place. Same upstream teeth.”

He moved away from the console for a moment, tension finally leaking from his shoulders.

Raven followed him—not crowding, just close.

In the quieter corner of the console room, under the soft glow of the ship’s internal lights, she reached up and touched his face—thumb along his cheek, a grounding point.

“You’re shaking,” she said softly.

He exhaled. “Adrenaline,” he admitted. “And… anger.”

Raven’s eyes held his. “Good,” she said. “Anger kept you awake.”

He leaned into her hand for a heartbeat.

“I love you,” he murmured.

Raven’s voice was immediate, low. “I love you,” she replied. “Still here.”

He smiled faintly—small, real.

“Still here,” he echoed.

Yara watched them from the console step, expression unreadable. Then she looked away deliberately, as if giving them privacy by force of will.

“I’m going to make tea,” she muttered. “Because apparently that’s how you people cope.”

Raven’s mouth tightened faintly. “Black,” she called after her.

Yara didn’t answer, but the sound of her boots down the corridor was less sharp than before.

The technician sat bound, silent now, watching the ship with the eyes of someone who finally understood they’d stepped into a story that didn’t end when a contract did.

Hours later, Kharon Spire’s bay lights appeared again on the external view—industrial glow in dark space, familiar and stubborn.

The TARDIS slid in behind composite bulkheads, silent as a held breath, and docked.

Tala was waiting.

Not with ceremony.

With guards, composite restraints, and a face carved from exhaustion and fury.

When the TARDIS doors opened, cold air from the bay hit them. The smell of metal and coolant and recycled water returned—home for the moon, but not for the Doctor.

Tala’s eyes went straight to the bound technician.

For a long beat, she didn’t speak.

Then she stepped forward and looked at the insignia on their collar.

Her voice was very quiet.

“So,” she said. “This is what an ‘accident’ looks like.”

The technician tried to lift their chin. “You don’t understand—”

Tala cut them off with a look that made words die.

“Oh, I understand,” she said. “I understand you thought we were a place you could squeeze until something broke. You broke people.”

She turned to the Doctor. “You sent the packet,” she said.

The Doctor nodded. “You’ll have responses soon,” he replied. “Buyers don’t like risk.”

Tala’s mouth tightened. “Good,” she said. Then her eyes flicked to Raven, softer by a fraction. “You’re both leaving.”

“Yes,” Raven said.

Tala nodded once. “Then listen,” she said. “This moon will hold. Jun will teach. Yara will have to answer for leaving.”

Yara stepped forward, face hard. “I will,” she said. “But I’m not leaving you empty-handed.”

Tala’s gaze held hers for a moment—two hard women measuring each other.

Then Tala nodded, sharp. “Fine,” she said. “Go. And when this upstream thing crawls out somewhere else, you remember Kharon Spire.”

The Doctor’s voice was quiet. “I will,” he said.

Tala gestured to her guards. They took the technician—alive, bound, watched—into the composite corridors toward a holding cell that wasn’t clean-room sterile. A place where the walls didn’t erase consequences.

The bay grew quieter.

Raven stood close to the Doctor, her hand finding his for a brief squeeze.

“You did it,” she murmured.

He shook his head slightly. “We did what we could,” he said. “We pulled the thread tight enough that it snapped in someone’s hands.”

Raven’s gaze softened. “That’s what you do,” she said. “You make hidden things visible.”

Yara looked at the TARDIS doors, then at Tala’s retreating silhouette, then back at the Doctor and Raven.

“So that’s it,” she said. “We leave a moon with scars and go chase a bigger shadow.”

The Doctor nodded. “That’s it,” he said.

Raven’s voice was calm. “And we come back,” she added—not to Kharon Spire necessarily, but to the idea: consequences are revisited. Threats don’t die just because you won one fight.

Yara exhaled. “Alright,” she said.

They stepped back into the TARDIS.

The doors closed.

Inside, the ship hummed with quiet readiness. The time rotor rose slowly, as if even the TARDIS understood that endings weren’t neat.

The Doctor rested his hand on the console, feeling the warmth through his palm.

Raven stood at his side, steady as ever.

Yara stood a little behind them, still new, still sharp, but now part of the ship’s rhythm.

MINO pulsed softly. “Kharon Spire status: stabilized. Threat actor exposure: successful. Recurrence probability: high. Recommendation: maintain readiness.”

The Doctor nodded once.

“Always,” he said quietly.

Raven’s voice was softer, just for him. “Still here,” she murmured.

He glanced at her—love and exhaustion braided together.

“Still here,” he replied.

And the TARDIS moved—leaving behind a moon that had learned to stand, carrying forward a team that had learned to hold steady, and keeping a thread alive for the day they would return to cut CORMORANT down properly.

Not today.

But soon enough.

Because the Doctor was still here.