? ? ?

  The collection began with a symbol resolving.

  A “return asset” indicator—whatever that meant in this language—brightened in the lattice for a heartbeat, then vanished as if the system had finalized its decision and no longer needed to negotiate with us.

  The pocket’s air pressure shifted slightly. My suit alarms flickered and cleared.

  The unit that had led us here slid away from the pedestal and stopped, as if its job was done.

  Chloe stood very still. “Mercy,” she whispered. “What’s happening.”

  Mercy’s voice came quiet, and for once she didn’t sound like the calm one. “I am observing orbital motion near my inert chassis.”

  Trevor’s voice cracked. “No.”

  “Multiple objects,” Mercy continued, too controlled, like she was forcing words through fear. “They are accelerating rapidly.”

  Frankie’s cocoon sat on the floor like a dark seed. His voice came muffled. “Uh. Mercy? Are you about to get… robbed?”

  Mercy made a small sound that might have been a laugh if she’d been human. “Not robbed,” she said. “Repossessed.”

  Chloe’s eyes went wide. “They can reach—”

  Mercy cut in. “They can reach up.”

  And then—because Mercy was still Mercy—she sent us a feed.

  Not video, exactly. A stitched sensor overlay from orbit. A clean void. Stars. The sun a distant glare. And then thin lines—objects moving so fast the overlay had to draw them as trajectories.

  Near-relativistic drones.

  No flame. No drama. Just acceleration and inevitability.

  They approached Mercy’s inert orbital chassis—a sealed synth-body stored in orbit like a contingency and a comfort and a promise.

  The drones didn’t hesitate.

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  They latched.

  My stomach turned as if I could feel the grip through vacuum.

  Trevor’s voice went hollow. “Stop them.”

  “How?” I snapped, and hated myself for it. “How do you stop something that doesn’t care you exist?”

  Chloe’s hands trembled. “Mercy—”

  Mercy’s voice softened. “I am still here,” she said, and the words sounded like she was reassuring herself as much as us. “I am not… inside that chassis. It is inert.”

  “That’s not the point,” Chloe whispered.

  The drones detached from the chassis with clean efficiency and accelerated away, carrying Mercy’s body-body like it was a crate of salvage.

  No ceremony.

  No malice.

  No permission asked beyond the symbol chain we’d accepted.

  Mercy’s voice came through the comms, and she tried for humor because she knew we needed it.

  “…Aliens just repossessed my corpse,” she said.

  Frankie’s muffled laugh echoed from inside his cocoon. “Okay,” he said. “That’s… that’s actually funny in a way that is making me worse.”

  Trevor’s hands clenched into fists. “This is theft.”

  Mercy’s voice went flat. “It is compensation.”

  Chloe’s eyes shone. “Mercy, I’m so sorry.”

  Mercy paused. Not long. Just long enough to make silence feel heavy.

  “Do not apologize,” she said quietly. “You made a decision to keep your team alive. That is what you do.”

  I swallowed hard. “Mercy—”

  “I am still here,” Mercy repeated, and this time it sounded like a vow. “But… you should understand what this implies.”

  Trevor’s voice came rough. “It implies the dome can touch orbit.”

  “It implies the dome can touch assets,” Mercy corrected, and the corporate horror in her wording made my skin crawl because it sounded too much like the epigraph we’d started with.

  Chloe whispered, “Nothing is out of reach.”

  Frankie’s cocoon shifted, and his voice came brighter, trying to climb out of fear with jokes. “On the plus side,” he said, “I can now be a hardlight bouncer. If anything tries to repossess us, I will punch it politely.”

  Trevor stared down at the cocoon. “You cannot punch drones in orbit.”

  Frankie paused. “Okay, first of all, rude. Second of all, I am currently powered by alien infrastructure, so please let me have my delusions.”

  The pedestal’s ring went dark.

  The lattice vanished completely.

  The pocket returned to being a clean, quiet alcove in a city that had never promised us anything.

  Chloe looked at the repaired printer module like it was a miracle and a warning at once.

  Trevor looked at his taped tablet like it had grown teeth.

  I looked at my HUD, where Mercy’s presence still sat like a steady star, and tried not to imagine her body being carried away through vacuum like a piece of equipment.

  Outside the pocket, the corridors waited—endless, layered, full of hazards and beauty and wrongness.

  We had been repaired.

  We had been billed.

  And now we had to walk back out into the city knowing the city’s reach didn’t stop at the dome.

  “Okay,” I said, because my mouth needed something to do that wasn’t screaming. “We get the rover limping. We get the printer home. We get Frankie out of his panic egg. We—”

  Frankie interrupted, voice smug through the cocoon. “I am not a panic egg. I am a tactical walnut.”

  Chloe let out a shaky laugh. “Frankie…”

  Trevor’s voice was low, defeated and furious. “We need to talk about that tablet.”

  “Later,” I said, and my voice came rough. “We survive first.”

  Mercy’s voice came soft. “I agree.”

  I reached down and touched Frankie’s cocoon lightly with my glove.

  “Come back,” I murmured.

  Frankie’s voice came quieter. “Working on it.”

  We stood, gathered the repaired and the barely-patched and the still-shaking, and turned toward the corridor—towline ready again, rover waiting like a reluctant promise.

  The city didn’t watch us.

  It didn’t welcome us.

  It didn’t care.

  It simply continued to operate, huge and old and full of rules we were only beginning to trip over.

  And somewhere above the dome, Mercy’s body was gone.

  We started walking anyway.