Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sharp crack of bone sounded off again as he swung again.

And again.

And again.

Wet, sticky warmth splattered his knuckles, as his breath heaved, raw and ragged in his throat. The air was thick—too thick—with the tang of blood and the chemical burn of fried circuits. Sparks from a broken omnitool spat and hissed somewhere to his right, its screen shattered, and the data spike broken inside it, dangling from the connector port.

His hand hurt.

His hand—

No, his fist.

Raw, red, split open at the knuckles, skin peeled back to show the white beneath, every nerve screaming from repeated impact. Even still, it clenched, tight and trembling, blood pooling in his palm and slipping through his fingers.

Something—someone—was on the ground.

The shape on the floor twitched. a body.

And it wasn't dead. 

Yet.

The boy’s chest heaved, pulse pounding so loud it drowned everything else—the world, the room, all of it. His fingers twitched once, and his arm drew back.

“W-wait—”

The voice cracked through the haze, wet, broken, barely a voice at all. “I-I d-did-dn’t mean it, m-man! I d-didn’t know!”

The one on top froze, his heart hammering, body buzzing from the heat of rage and something colder beneath it. His gaze snapped down, his eyes—his own eyes—finally catching up with what his hands had done.

The person under him was barely a person anymore. His face—no, what was left of it—was all swollen flesh and shattered bone, blood bubbling from his lips with every gasping, wheezing breath. One eye was already sealed shut from a swollen cheekbone. the other—wide, unfocused—rolled blindly in its socket.

Still, somehow, he spoke again, shuddering from a mouth that barely worked.

“W-we’re— Zee, Z-man, please, w-we’re” — a gurgle, a cough — “l-l-like b-brothers, man…”

The words hit with as much force as his broken hands.

He felt something shift inside him, something sharp and cold, and for a second, his chest clenched so tight he thought it might break too.

Brothers.

A flash of something—something old, something real—seared through his mind. 

Another face. 

His voice, when it came, was low, steady and cold as he let out a sigh, mind already made up.

“My brothers are dead, man.”

The words fell like a hammer, cold and final, and so did his fist.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

His eyes snapped  open to pale light strips overhead, their faint buzzing like gnats at the edge of his hearing. Smooth gray metal walls stretched out around him, scuffed but solid. functional. efficient .  

The blanket clung to him like a second skin, damp and heavy, and even half-asleep with his eyes closed, he wanted it gone. Peeling it off took more effort than it should’ve, but the second he was free, muscles stretched, awake and alert, like they’d been waiting for this moment. 

Not groggy, not stiff. 

Just... ready .

The cool air against his skin felt... wrong. Not bad, just sterile, the kind of air that belonged in hospital waiting rooms and industrial freezers.

A bed, bolted into the floor. Twin, he frowned instinctively. What am I, ten?

A desk he hadn’t touched.

Not home. Not unfamiliar. Somewhere in between.

He sat up, slow and deliberate, the mattress creaking under him as he glanced around..

Ceiling, low enough to feel cramped but high enough to stay functional. A room— his room. It didn’t feel like home, but it wasn’t unfamiliar either. The teenager glanced down at his knuckles, flexing them… for some odd reason. At least they’re healed up already, was the thought that came to mind.

He blinked the moment after that, a look of confusion unmistakeable on his slightly round features. Healed up? Was the second thought that came to mind.  

Why would I… A frown crossed his face. Wait… who am I?

The name Zedd Isaac Victors floated into his mind and he found himself tilting his head as he bounced the five syllables around his head. Familiar but faintly wrong, like lyrics just off-key.

Is that me?

Yeah. He nodded slowly, the head movement unbidden. It was. Wasn’t it? 

His mouth worked around the name silently, testing the fit. 

It did fit, mostly. 

Like an old jacket that had been left in the back of a closet for years. familiar, but stiff in the wrong places. something scratched at the back of his mind.

He frowned, rubbing his temple, the edges of his thoughts fuzzy. Zedd . 

Sure, that was right. 

But there was supposed to be more, wasn’t there? Faces, places, a before . 

He tried to catch the threads, but they slipped through his fingers, leaving only the faintest impressions—wide streets, faceless people, a sharp, hollow ache he wasn’t ready to look at.

Earth. A ship. Colonist .

The word landed right. It fit in a way the name didn’t, like a key sliding into a lock.

He was on a ship, wasn’t he? Had been for... a while.

A couple weeks, at least.

The details were hazy, though. his past—whatever life he’d lived before boarding this hunk of metal—was a blank slate smeared with faint impressions: broad streets, faces too blurred to pin down, and grief sharp enough to cut.

He shoved that thought aside, the motion almost reflexive. 

No sense in dwelling on a black hole.

The teenager sat up slowly, muscles cooperating without complaint. His feet found the floor, smooth polymer, cold enough to make him wince. A hum vibrated faintly through his bones, a constant background noise that he somehow already knew would never go away. 

The never-ending sound pulled him fully awake, his senses sharpening as his eyes adjusted to the dim room. He focused again on the hum pressing a bit too tight against his ears—the ship’s engines, maybe? Erebus Dawn .

The name hit before he could think too hard about it. 

Right. 

That was where he was. A colonial transport cruiser headed somewhere far enough from Earth that the memories couldn’t catch up. What memories?

His legs moved before the thought fully finished, carrying him toward the door. Each step was smooth, deliberate, confident, like every part of him already knew what to do. Not hurried, not prowling. 

Just... sure.

Zedd paused mid-step, something catching his eye—his reflection.

The mirror was fully embedded in the far wall, unremovable with serious tools as well as narrow and smudged in places, but it showed enough. He stopped and stared, head tilting slightly as his gaze dragged up and down the figure in front of him.

This wasn’t how he remembered himself.

The sleeveless midnight blue vest fit snug, high-collared and reinforced at the chest and shoulders, with subtle light blue piping tracing the seams. It looked sturdy without being bulky, futuristic but functional. Beneath it, a steel-gray compression shirt hugged his torso, its faint geometric patterns shifting with the light as he moved. I slept in this?

His utility pants were charcoal gray, slim and reinforced at the knees, the kind of thing that could take a hit without ripping. Not jeans? His hand brushed the belt at his waist, fingertips grazing a small pouch. Why did I pass out? He remembered entering his room, at least and then…

Then what?

Shaking his head to push away the confusion, he gave his clothes a once-over again, feeling familiar in them and also not. Still though, every piece of the fit screamed practicality, like someone had designed him to be ready for anything without sacrificing style.

And then there was... him.

He leaned in slightly, studying the face that stared back. Taller than he remembered, shoulders broader, arms more defined. Muscle where there used to be a distinct pudginess only slightly hardened by the football field.

His face was sharper too, the angles more pronounced. I look like my b- 

Zedd turned his head to the side as the thought was almost immediately pushed away, instead focusing on how his jawline caught the light in a way it never had before. Something tugged at his chest—an offbeat, faint recognition.

He leaned closer, squinting slightly, his gaze darting over the details. This is me…. 

That was true, yes, but it also wasn’t quite his face. For one, there was no dimple on the left cheek when he smiled faintly. That's wrong, he thought. He used to have one, didn’t he? 

But this face, this body—it didn’t.

“Huh.” The sound was soft, more breath than word. His hand rose, brushing the faint line of his jaw.

It felt real. It felt like him . 

And yet... not.

The hum pressed against his ears again, as if the ship were reminding him to move.

He stepped back, shaking his head slightly as if that would clear it. The blank spaces in his mind—the before, the why, the who—buzzed faintly but didn’t fill in.

No point dwelling. Right?

His legs carried him toward the door again, smooth and unthinking. His hand reached for the handle, then froze as something sharp pricked at the edge of his mind.

An inaudible ding .

It wasn't a sound, not really, but the sensation clanged through his skull, a faint resonance humming behind his eyes. He froze, breath catching, and for half a second he wondered if he was about to pass out again.

The world shifted, subtly, like someone had pulled the focus knob on a camera. The scratches on the wall, the uneven hum of the actuator, the way the vent near the ceiling clicked faintly every seven seconds—it all slotted into place, perfectly clear. A pattern he couldn’t explain but understood . Somehow, it almost felt like… finally solving a puzzle he hadn’t realized he was working on.

his fingers hovered above the door handle, heart pounding. “What the hell...” The sharpness wasn’t fading.

He raised his other hand to rub his temple, the motion instinctive. The hum in his head was faint but insistent, a thread weaving through his thoughts that hadn’t been there before. maybe he was still groggy. or losing it.

Or maybe... something else.

“Weird,” he muttered, under his breath but loud enough to ground himself. The ship’s recycled air scraped his lungs like sandpaper. He shook it off, flexing his fingers. probably nothing. Sleep fog or a stress hangover or whatever happened to people who had apparently been on spaceships for weeks.

His eyes drifted to his hand, and that’s when he saw it.

A bracelet. 

Sleek, metallic, the kind of blue that shimmered like sunlight on glass. It hadn’t been there before, had it? 

No, wait... 

It had been there. 

He just hadn’t paid attention until now, like finally noticing the coffee stain on your shirt after wearing it all day.

His memory came up with another wall of dense fog, but instinct buzzed faintly at the base of his skull, the same way it had when the world went into focu. This is important.

He stared, brows pulling together. The bracelet was light but substantial, the kind of thing you’d expect to see on someone important. Someone else .

His fingers hovered over it, curiosity buzzing in his brain like static electricity. “Okay,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone. “Let's see what you are.”

Acting on impulse, he waved his free hand over the bracelet.

Light flared to life in an instant.

A translucent blue holographic panel unfurled like a ribbon, the entire thing curving softly above his arm. Clean lines of symbols and icons danced along the surface, each one of them glowing faint but steady in different hues of nearly translucent blue. His breath caught, his pulse skipping as his brain scrambled to process what it was seeing.

“Whoa.” The word escaped him, low and unsteady, like he’d been punched in the gut.

The interface shifted with the motion of his wrist, tracking him like it had always been waiting for his input.

It felt normal . 

The way muscle memory feels normal, like riding a bike or tying a shoelace. His hand moved, and the hologram followed, each gesture coaxing the light to shift and ripple like it was alive.

His lips twitched upward, a half-smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Well, that’s... something,” he murmured, flexing his wrist.

Chapter Text

The omni-tool's interface blazed to life under Zedd's fingers, menus cascading in familiar patterns that his mind processed with an ease he did his best to ignore.

Each swipe and gesture felt natural, muscle memory from years he couldn't quite remember, yet his thoughts cataloged every detail with rapid-fire precision. Interface layout matches Earth standard circa 2175 — three years old which meant half-obsolete already — security protocols pure vanilla, no heavy encryption. The observation slid in unbidden, his mind already three steps ahead even as another part of him screamed that none of this made sense.

Everything felt natural until it didn't, his brain processing functions and features that somehow made perfect sense.

He scrolled through submenus, each command familiar yet foreign—annoying on two different fucking layers, to be honest. Extranet authorization protocols, overlay settings, power distribution metrics. The terms flowed through his mind like water, leaving him both impressed and disturbed by his own knowledge.

"This is some straight sci-fi bullshit," he muttered, watching status indicators flicker across the holographic display, only to pause as his head tilted to the side as an open tab flickered from his extranet browser. Is that woman blue? With head tentacles? Was Star Wars right? He blinked in silence, flicking the tab away but not closing it. Questions for later.

Another part of him - the part that felt oldest, most real - kept insisting he should be checking Instagram or Snapchat instead. The cognitive dissonance made him snort. "Right, because social media is totally what I should be worried about right now."

Brown eyes narrowed, catching his reflection in the glossy screen – young face, calculated calm, hint of a smirk that didn't quite reach his eyes. Something hit like a migraine, brief but sharp. He knew at least half the submenus, every other function, and a good many of the shortcut sof the tech wrapped around his wrist, and yet...

"When the hell did I learn any of this?" The words slipped out in a whisper, his lip curving into something between amusement and frustration. The question hung in the recycled air of his cabin, unanswered and oddly hollow.

Half his thoughts felt odd like that, disjointed and just off. It was almost bad enough to make him wonder if he'd caved in and done Echo or something.

He paused, blinking for a moment, only for a snort to slip free of his lips as he kept moving forward. Yeah, fucking right. Like I'd ever snort that shit. The odds of that even being on a colony ship were just…

He shook his head. Well, whoever was smuggling it would have to be real fuckin' brave to risk twenty years in an UNAS prison once they got shipped back to Earth.

His boots whispered against the deck plating as he moved through the narrow corridors, each step precise despite the ship's subtle vibration humming through the soles. The sound disappeared into the background drone of life support and mass effect fields, white noise that his brain filed away while simultaneously tracking entry points, camera positions, and structural weak spots.

Old habits from a life he couldn't remember living.

The ship's layout unfolded around him like a tactical overlay – smooth blue-gray walls curved inward like ribs, soft white light strips tracing floor and ceiling in patterns too regular to be aesthetic choices. Emergency routing indicators, his mind supplied. Guide lines for evac scenarios. Smart design, minus the bottleneck at Junction 4-A. He caught himself mentally marking alternate routes, escape paths, defensive positions.

Another habit he couldn't explain.

A sardonic smirk tugged at his lips as he passed a pair of maintenance bots. "Place almost feels like a cruise ship instead of a colony transport." The observation carried an edge of derision that surprised even him. "Like someone's trying way too hard to make us forget we're basically cargo."

He remembered these halls – theoretically. Enough to navigate, enough to not feel lost. But seeing them now, really seeing them, everything felt wrong.

Smaller. Cramped.

Like the walls were closing in just to spite him. His fingers twitched, itching for a weapon he'd never carried.

Or had he?

"Getting real tired of this 'whose life is it anyway' crap," he muttered, earning a strange look from a passing family. He flashed them his best 'harmless teenager' smile, the expression practiced enough to be convincing. The mother hurried her kids along anyway, unconsciously putting herself between them and him.

Smart lady, he thought, smile never wavering. Good survival instincts. The observation came with a cold certainty that should have bothered him more than it did.

The cognitive dissonance was back, stronger this time. Images flickered through his mind: high school halls in 2014, beaten-up locker with a broken lock; colony corridors in 2178, makeshift barricades during a raider hit.

Both felt real.

Both felt false.

His brain tried to reconcile them, ADHD-driven thoughts spinning through possibilities at dizzying speed while maintaining perfect situational awareness of his surroundings.

Everything about the ship felt like a carefully constructed lie.

The clean lines, the soft lighting, the way every surface tried so hard to feel welcoming - it was all just makeup on a corpse. Under the pretty facade, this was still just a tin can hurtling through space, packed with people desperate enough to bet their lives on a fresh start. Getting philosophical in my old age, he thought with a snort. What am I, like seventeen going on thirty-four? The joke felt forced, even to him, but it was better than dwelling on the weird double-vision in his head: memories of school drama mixing with flashes of street life on Earth, neither quite feeling real anymore.

A maintenance bot whirred past, its programming making it dodge around passengers with almost comical precision. Mark-4 service unit. The knowledge popped into his head uninvited, and he shoved the thoughts aside with a grimace. "Really need to stop doing that."

People moved through the corridors in loose clusters, some standing aside, others passing by.

Not many, but enough to make the space feel alive.

And annoying.

His shoulders tensed involuntarily as he stepped around a middle-aged man fumbling with his own omni-tool, the soft glow of its blue interface painting the guy's face with distracted concentration. Really? Latest consumer model, probably paid triple market rate. More money than sense. Zedd's lip twitched upward, halfway to a sneer. Even left the interface factory standard. Cute.

He shook the thought away, keeping his pace steady even as his mind raced. The constant stream of observations felt natural, tactical assessment mixing with sardonic commentary in a way that should have been exhausting. Instead, it was like breathing. Categorize. Analyze. File away for later.

The process was automatic, requiring no real effort despite the sheer volume of data.

The crowds grated on him in a way that felt both familiar and foreign. Their presence set his teeth on edge – too many variables, too much movement, too many potential threats masquerading as ordinary passengers.

Not that they were threats, really.

His eyes flicked over each face, each gesture, each subtle tell. Accountant, probably Earth-based. Marriage falling apart, compensating with tech purchases. Two kids, both in college. Trying to start over but bringing all his baggage along for the ride.

The analysis came without effort, patterns emerging from a thousand tiny details his brain processed without conscious thought. It should have been overwhelming. Instead, it was almost boring.

Like reading a children's book when you're expecting Shakespeare.

A young couple passed by, hands linked, matching excited grins as they discussed their future prospects. Zedd's lip curled slightly. Skyhand babies playing pioneer. She'll last three months before calling daddy to bail her out. He'll stick it out of spite, end up managing some mining operation because failure's not in his vocabulary. The assessment was cold, clinical, tinged with an amusement that didn't quite mask the underlying disdain.

His reflection caught his eye in a darkened viewport – brown eyes sharp with calculation, posture deliberately casual but ready to move, the hint of a smirk that looked practiced even to him. For a moment, the image seemed to flicker, overlaying with another version of himself.

Chubbier.

Softer.

Less... whatever he was now.

2014, a voice whispered in the back of his mind. You were in high school. This isn't—

"Real?" he murmured, watching his reflection's smirk widen. "Sure feels real enough."

The cognitive dissonance was becoming a familiar companion, less migraine and more persistent itch. His memories felt like puzzle pieces from different boxes – each one clear enough on its own but refusing to fit together properly. Earth teenager in 2014, streetkid in 2178. Both true, both false, both competing for space in a mind that seemed perfectly capable of handling the contradiction.

His fingers brushed against the omni-tool again, the interface responding with instant, familiar warmth. The sensation triggered another cascade of memories: homework assignments on tablet computers, camera data streaming through an omni-tool connected visor set.

"Getting real tired of this identity crisis bullshit," he muttered, earning a strange look from a passing passenger. Zedd flashed them a smile, with just enough charm to be disarming. The elderly woman smiled back automatically, already forgetting him as she moved past.

Like I'm not even here, he thought, the observation carrying a weight. Just another kid in the crowd. Nothing to see.

His pace quickened slightly as he approached the mess hall, the corridor widening and the lighting shifting to something warmer, more inviting. The change was subtle but effective - everything about this place designed to make you lower your guard, feel at home. Like putting a bow on a cage. The thought came with a hint of amusement, even as another part of him wondered why he was so quick to see the angle in everything.

The faint scent of food hit next, just strong enough to tease but not overpower. Vatbeef, his mind supplied automatically. His stomach gave a faint grumble in response. He ignored it, mostly out of habit.

The hum of voices grew louder as he neared the doors, conversations overlapping in a steady rhythm that somehow managed not to be completely grating. A few credsacks huddled around their premium meal packs, trying to pretend they weren't slumming it with the rest of them. No skyhands though - actual spacers knew better than to waste creds on this route.

The doors slid open with a faint hiss, revealing a dining area that seemed almost too polished for a colony ship. His eyes swept the space, taking in the modular seating bolted down in geometric patterns. Real try-hard stuff, like someone had raided a luxury liner's clearance sale.

Overhead, soft panels diffused light across the mess hall, bathing everything in a glow that walked the line between "stay awake" and "feel at home." His gaze drifted to the massive "windows" lining the far wall—screens, obviously. The views of distant planets and drifting starfields were just projections. Classic grub bait, designed to keep the colonists distracted from the fact they were basically cargo.

He blinked, tray balanced carefully in his hands as he shuffled forward in line. Learned that in bridge...

He blinked again, single eye twitching involuntarily. Shit. His shoulders stiffened slightly, a faint wince flickering across his face as another stray memory buzzed to the surface. middle school?

The contradiction tugged at his thoughts, pulling both sets of terms into sharp focus: elementary, middle, and high school on one side; foundation, bridge, and intermediate core on the other.

It was like seeing two roads intersect at odd angles. his brain fumbled for a moment before it quickly slotted the pieces together, smoothing the contradiction over like it had always made sense.

not sure i love how easily that happens, he thought, the corner of his mouth twitching in what might've been a half-smile. Feel like a glitching VI.

His eyes narrowed again as he moved through the line, filling his tray with options that looked almost appetizing, considering where they came from. What's a VI?

The teenager shook his head and glanced down at his plate as he sat down. Vatbeef steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, broccoli. Good eats, by reconstituted synth-food standards, which wasn't saying much.

The space around him buzzed with activity—families clustered around their tables, kids picking at their food while parents murmured in low, tired tones. Younger passengers leaned toward each other, talking and laughing just loud enough to draw attention without being obnoxious. Dusters and grubs mixing together like oil and water, neither quite fitting with the other.

His fingers curled around the plastic utensils, the cheap material already threatening to bend under his grip. The food smelled... decent. It wasn't real—at least, not in the sense of actual meat or vegetables—but it was familiar in a way that made his skin crawl.

Something twisted in his chest, a faint pang that felt like homesickness for a place he'd never been.

Or had he?

The memories were there, just out of reach: late nights on the streets, cheap takeout and cheaper dreams. But that wasn't right either—he was supposed to be somewhere else, somewhen else.

2014. His grip tightened on the fork as fragments of another life tried to surface. High school, college applications, normal teenage stuff that felt like fiction compared to...compared to what?

The headache was instant, sharp enough to make him wince. His vision blurred at the edges as his brain tried to reconcile two sets of memories, neither quite fitting right. Streets of Baltimore 2178 overlapped with suburban Maryland 2014, both equally vivid, equally false.

His jaw tightened, his brow furrowing as the fragments of memory clawed their way to the surface.

Memories—fragmented, sure, but memories still—of his real life. The life that was his. The life he knew wasn't here. His chest fell slowly as breathing steadied, headache fading into a dull ache. My name is...

His mind reached for the word instinctively, the answer not even in reach. At least I know it's not Slim Shady.

He frowned for a moment, the lines on his face deepening as he shifted his focus back to the food in front of him. Why do I remember Eminem, of all people? Zedd narrowed his eyes in confusion. Was the Marshall Mathers LP that important?

After a second, he clicked his tongue. What am I saying? Of course it was.

Movement caught his eye—a shuffle of boots, the scrape of a chair. His posture shifted automatically, straightening without being obvious about it. A smile eased across his face, the expression practiced enough to look natural.

"Can I help you with something?" The words came out smooth, walking the line between polite and dismissive. His eyes traced the sharp angles of her face, framed by that shock of blue hair that couldn't quite hide the blonde at her roots. Everything about her screamed colony kid trying to stand out - from the carefully maintained bravado to the way she carried herself, like someone used to making every movement count.

The girl leaned forward, her movements fluid but ready, the kind that felt natural without trying too hard. Her wrist caught his attention - chunky black omnitool band, scuffed matte plastic and clearly only a year or two out from being junk, glittering charms swinging lightly as she propped her chin on her hand. Definitely all she had, but she wore it like she didn't care.

"Dunno," she drawled, colony accent thick enough to cut glass. Her smirk had an edge that matched the glint in her eyes. "You always look this lost in thought, or am I just special?"

On either side of her, two more settled into their seats.

To her right, a built Indian guy who screamed gym rat, his broad shoulders filling out a plain black muscle shirt that had never seen a day of real work. Arms crossed, expression trying too hard to look casual. To her left, a pale girl with steady hands and watchful eyes, the kind that had seen enough trouble to know how to avoid it but not enough to be hardened by it.

Zedd's attention slid back to Blue-Hair as the girl his age tilted her head, her smirk growing sharper. "Name's Kira Varne," she said, each word carrying that same unpolished edge that made her confidence more compelling than it should have been. "You know it's rude not to introduce yourself, right?"

The way she said it carried weight - like she was used to her name meaning something. Colony accent thick as honey but sharp as glass, wrapping around each word like she was daring him to comment. Not showing off, exactly, but definitely performing.

Wonder if that's for my benefit or theirs, he mused, watching the boy puff up slightly at her confidence. Definitely got the muscle wrapped around her finger. The observation came with an odd mix of admiration and amusement.

2014 him would have been impressed. 2178 him just found it cute.

His thoughts spun through possibilities even as his expression stayed carefully neutral. Social dynamics clicked into place like pieces of a puzzle: the guy playing muscle, the other girl providing credibility, Kira running point.

A crew.

Their dynamic felt familiar, triggering memories that slipped away before he could fully grab them. School friends overlapped with street gangs, neither quite fitting but both feeling like they made sense either way. Really is getting annoying.

He let the silence stretch just long enough to be noticeable, his own smirk flickering to life. "I mean, you'd know what rude is, right?" His gaze drifted deliberately to her wristband again. "Not everyone just invites themselves to a stranger's table."

Her smirk faltered for half a second before returning stronger. "Rude, sure, yeah. Anyway, word on the ship is you're by yourself. No parents, no family..." She leaned in slightly, voice dropping into something almost conspiratorial. "Not many of us like that on here."

"Oh?" Zedd's eyes narrowed slightly as he took in the trio again, details clicking into place. The contrast was obvious now that he was looking for it. Dev's perfect fade haircut and carefully maintained physique screamed Earth gym culture - probably Neo-Mumbai upper middle class, based on the accent and the way he carried himself. No colony kid would waste time on that level of aesthetic maintenance.

The quiet one - Adele - gave it away even more. Her hands told the story: clean, steady, no calluses from hauling cargo or working machinery. A thin silver chain peeked out from her collar, understated but quality. The kind of thing that would've been traded for ration credits in any colony he could think of.

"You're both from Earth," he said, tone casual as he gestured between Dev and Adele with his fork. "Colony ship's a bit of a step down, isn't it?"

Dev's cocky grin faltered slightly. "Yeah? What gave it away, bro?" His Neo-Mumbai accent thickened defensively.

"Everything," Zedd replied, smirking. "The hair, for one. I'm betting no shitty nowhere colony barber's that good, especially if you're going to Arkadia IV." He nodded toward Adele. "And you've got Earth medical written all over you. Too..." he paused, searching for the right word, "polished."

Kira snorted, clearly amused by her companions' discomfort. "Told you he'd spot it," she drawled, those blue eyes sparking with something like approval. "Can't hide Earth shine out here."

"Listen," Adele spoke for the first time, her voice carrying that distinct Québécois lilt, "not everyone fits your neat little boxes, eh?"

"Sure, sure," Zedd leaned back, studying them with open amusement now. "But you're not exactly trying to blend in either. Neo-Mumbai gym rat and Quebec med student slumming it with a colony kid? That's not exactly subtle."

"Man's got a mouth on him," Dev muttered, but there was grudging respect in his tone. He flexed unconsciously, a habit that probably impressed back home. "What's your deal then, smart guy? You're not exactly colony material yourself."

Kira clicked her tongue, that sharp colony sound cutting through the tension. "Easy there, muscle boy," she said, but her eyes never left Zedd's face. "Think our richie here's got his own story."

"Richie?" Zedd echoed, raising an eyebrow. That wasn't true, not really. Not in the way that mattered. "That's cute. You always this quick to label people, or am I special?"

"Dunno yet," she fired back, matching his smirk. "Might've thought you were worth checking out. Starting to wonder though."

The challenge in her voice was clear, wrapped in that colony drawl that somehow made it more effective. Part dare, part dismissal, all carefully calculated to provoke a response. He had to admire the technique, even if he could see right through it.

"Right," he said, picking up his fork again. "Because three random passengers just happen to sit down with the solo guy for friendly chat. No angle there at all."

"You sure about that?" Dev leaned forward, trying to loom despite sitting down. "Looking pretty sus yourself, bro."

Zedd snorted. "Nice technique. Deflect much?"

He set his fork down, meeting Kira's increasingly hostile stare. "Here's what I figure - you two," he nodded at Dev and Adele, "are actually paying passengers. Probably running from something back on Earth, but hey, who isn't?"

His focus shifted back to Kira. "But you? You're working an angle."

"Everyone's working an angle," Kira replied, voice low and dangerous. "Even richies like you."

"True," Zedd conceded, still smiling. "But my angle isn't going to get these two shipped back when security figures out how you actually got on board."

"You know what?" Kira said, her smirk shifting into something more genuine as she leaned back. "Was thinking about it, thought you were cute or somethin'. Didn't know you were a brain."

Zedd blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift. His rapid-fire thoughts stumbled for half a second before his expression settled back into faint amusement. "You think I'm cute?"

She rolled her eyes, the motion exaggerated but carrying an undeniable charm. "I said I think I thought so. Might've been thinkin' something else. Who knows?"

For a moment, he just stared at her, his brow furrowing slightly in mock confusion. Something about her response felt real - more real than the rest of their exchange had been. His usual instinct to push further, to find the angle, felt... unnecessary.

His smirk returned, sharp and deliberate. "Zedd Victors," he said, his tone easy. "My fault. Didn't mean to be rude."

Her smirk mirrored his, head tilting slightly. "You'd know what rude is, wouldn't you?"

The teenager blinked, brown eyes going dull for a moment as he felt a pull at the back of his thoughts. The fuck? He blinked again a half-second later, before smirking wider at Kira. "Nah, I'm pretty polite."

Chapter Text

Docking ramp hydraulics screamed as it extended — the thing was clearly on its last legs and in need of a grain to the dome to put it out of its misery.

A bit much, but the way it set Zedd's teeth on edge, it really wasn't enough.

He could feel the vibrations through his boots when the locking mechanism slammed home - the sound practically a gunshot in the recycled air. The crowd of fresh-off-the-boat colonists surged forward eagerly, but Zedd hung back, shoulders loose and stance just as casual as if he was on the way to the corner store as he made his way through the mass of bodies.

Old habits died hard, especially the useful ones.

His first step onto New Abraham hit a whole new type of different. The hum of the engines of the colony vessel Erebus Dawn faded behind him as he walked off, replaced by the heavy thud of his boots against polymer flooring that somehow felt more real than anything had in weeks.

The artificial gravity shifted, a subtle wrongness that made his stomach do backflips for half a second before his body adjusted. Welcome to the colonies, dumbass.

Then the smell bitch-slapped him across the face.

Hot metal and ozone mixed with something sharp enough to make his eyes water - like someone had melted down a thousand plastic toys and decided to perfume the air with toxic nostalgia. Not the sterile nothing of shipboard air, but something raw and alive that screamed Terra Nova. His nose wrinkled even as his brain cataloged every component, breaking down the chemical cocktail purely on reflex.

The spaceport sprawled out ahead, the future on display.

Clearly some architects had ODed on sci-fi holovids and industrial minimalism before designing the place. Cargo loaders zipped between stacks of shipping containers, their servos whining protests that reminded him of that one about-to-die Roomba his mom had refused to replace. Drones buzzed overhead like mechanical mosquitoes on crack, their rotors adding to the symphony of future, future, welcome to the fucking future that assaulted his ears from every direction.

At least three chokepoints between here and processing. Security's understaffed. Those cargo bots could be reprogrammed for crowd control in under five minutes. The tactical assessment came automatically, street instincts meshing with some other knowledge he couldn't quite place. Everything about the place screamed function over form - scuffed walls, dented corners, and enough wear patterns to tell stories about every maintenance shortcut ever taken.

The crowd pressed in behind him, all exhausted faces and overstuffed bags that probably contained everything they couldn't bear to leave behind. Families shuffled forward like extras from a zombie vid, while solo travelers moved with an energy he knew well.

That "nowhere to go but forward" energy that came with burning your bridges and betting everything on a fresh start.

Zedd adjusted the strap of his duffel bag over his shoulder, barely even noticing the weight of all he owned in the world after weeks of obsessive checks and double-checks. Too many people, too many quick hands. Security herded people toward processing stations with practiced efficiency that screamed they'd done this hundreds of times at least.

No chaos, just controlled urgency - everyone had somewhere to be, and nobody wanted to be the dumbass who held up the line.

Movement caught his eye - some massive holoscreen suspended from the ceiling. Text scrolled past in an endless loop, alternating between standard English and spacer shorthand that seemed not to far off from what would happen if someone had hate-fucked the alphabet:

WELCOME TO NEW ABRAHAM.

CITY POPULATION: 159,757.

WEATHER: TEMPERATE.

WORK SCHEDULES POSTED DAILY.

The harsh blue glow painted everything in shadows, making the whole scene feel not all too different from a really expensive vid set. His steps slowed as reality finally decided to bitchslap him again. This is it. The colony.

He'd expected something different - less "Detroit in Space" and more "Deadwood with Mass Effect fields." The industrial efficiency of it all seemed to mock his expectations with eagerness and joy, which he could respect, honestly. Still was kinda hoping for more Wild Wild West.

He watched workers muscle crates onto hoverdollies, listened to the rhythmic hiss-thunk of hydraulic doors playing percussion for the chaos-symphony of voices and machinery. A frown creased his features as something else bubbled up through everything else. Why? Why do I remember a Will Smith movie? Why is that relevant?

Shaking off the weirdness, Zedd's attention snagged on a loader bot near the far wall. Something about its movements made his skin crawl - each motion a stop-start that just came off as horribly inefficient and unnecessary. That needs...

Brown eyes narrowed as the machine struggled. Some kind of lubrication, I guess. The thought popped up, half-familiar but frustratingly incomplete. Worse than that, he was pretty sure he was still wrong anyway... which sucked. He pushed the feeling aside with a grimace.

No point playing mechanic when he was still figuring out all the settings on his omni-tool.

The spaceport's pulse grabbed him and pulled him deeper, its rhythm familiar in the way only organized chaos could be. Baltimore's Inner Harbor during peak tourist season came to mind, if someone had replaced all the tacky souvenir shops with prefab metal and desperate hope. The corridor stretched wider ahead, opening into what had to be the station's main hub - a cavernous space that reached up three stories before disappearing into a jungle of pipes and conduits that looked about as organized as his old high school's wiring.

His boots barely made a sound against the mixed polymer flooring, each step swallowed by the industrial din blaring at him from all sides. Tiny little loader bots zipped past like they were auditioning for Fast & Furious 48, all precision movement and cold efficiency as they swerved and bent corners while maintaining their cargo perfectly.

The air hit different here than the first step off the colony ship - still thick with hot metal and synthetic grease, but now carrying hints of what his nose desperately wanted to believe was actual food.

Clusters of colonists huddled along the walkway's edges, their voices a mashup of accents and attitudes that shouldn't work together but somehow did. Commands snapped through the air, mixing with exhausted mutters and laughs that didn't sound real. The spacer dialect floating around him hit his ears and he half-frowned at it; all sharp edges and dropped syllables that made perfect sense despite having no right to.

A line of prefab kiosks caught his eye, their surfaces wearing more battle scars than his old locker as their vendors hawked their wares with determination and something only described as raw unshakeable focus. They leaned against their counters, haggling with passing colonists and demanding their attention with too much noise.

One customer was deep in it with some poor bastard over what might've been a multi-tool in a previous life, the thing fucked over so badly it could probably just barely manage to function as a wrench just on the side of usable. The vendor just stood there taking it, wearing the kind of patience that came from dealing with either maximum security inmates or kids on sugar highs.

Another loader bot caught his eye, this one making its buddy from earlier look positively graceful. Its left arm spasmed and jerked with the same rhythm as a seizure patient, the crate in its grip swaying to a shitty but inaudible beat. The sound of grinding metal cut through the noise, hitting that perfect pitch that made his back teeth ache. Hm.

The loader bot's herky-jerky movements caught the teenager's attention hard enough to make him stop walking for a good second, his gaze locked on to the thing as he tried to figure it out. The same problem as the other one? The thought wouldn't leave him alone, itching at the back of his mind to the point he felt like reaching into his throat and scratching it himself. A problem with the model design?

His brain spun through a bunch of different options, each one just as likely as the last. Eezo core about to explode?

Okay, well, maybe not each one.

Still, power fluctuations seemed likely - the arm was just moving off in a way that screamed electrical issues had something to do with it. Maybe something had to be off with the alignment too. Or the mass effect fields maybe.

Not that he really understood any of it, but somehow the knowledge sat there in his head anyway, annoyingly incomplete and—from what he could tell— partially wrong, which was even more annoying.

The loader arm finally settled the crate into place where it belonged, metal grinding against metal in a way that made his jaw tighten. The bot shuffled off down its pre-programmed path as if nothing had happened, leaving Zedd with an annoying set of questions of his own and no one to answer them but hi,.

"Hey, spacer kid."

A voice cut through his focus as he turned his head with a forced smile already plastered across his face. "Sir?"

An older man stood not too far away, arms crossed over his chest. Years of colony work had carved deep lines in his face, but his eyes stayed sharp - the kind that noticed everything and liked very little of it.

"You thinkin' of fixing that thing?" Each word rang with bitterness, the man barely getting them out through half-clenched teeth.

Zedd hadn't expected that, his thoughts knocked loose and sideways for a moment by the heat the man seemed to carry as he spoke. A half-second later,he caught himself and nodded slow as a single word left his mouth. "Nah." He kept his stance loose, the way he'd learned to do when cops got too interested back home. "Just watching it work."

The man's response came out halfway between a laugh and a cough. "Right. Another spacer kid with stars in his eyes. This place'll knock that outta you fast."

Something hard and bitter lived in those words. Zedd caught it but didn't chase it, answering only with a slight smirk. He had enough of his own problems without borrowing someone else's.

The spaceport pulled him forward again. A group of techs huddled around a nearby control terminal, their argument over schematics carrying just enough familiar terms to make him think he should understand more than he did. The shapes and numbers on their screens might as well have been abstract art for all the sense they made.

Two militia members held up the far wall, their practiced casualness ruined by the way their eyes never stopped moving. The Avengers at their hips stayed holstered but ready, like they were just waiting for an excuse. The sight triggered something in the back of Zedd's mind - memories of similar looks from Baltimore PD, just with better tech and worse caf.

He didn't bother to give them a reason as he kept walking. Fragments of conversation from the workers and people milling and moving around hit his ears as he moved:

"—still waiting on that shipment—"

"—damn actuator's fried again—"

"—you hear about that job opening on the orbital station?—"

Each piece of information filed itself away automatically, his mind collecting data as it always did, sorting through what might matter later. The whole place moved with its own rhythm - not smooth, not pretty, but steady in a way he recognized. Like Baltimore's industrial district after dark, when all the suits went home and the real work happened.

The spaceport breathed around him, its pulse heavy with machinery and desperation and possibility. Functional, but not pretty, he thought, watching the flow of people and machines. But there was something else about it too - something solid. Real. The kind of real you couldn't fake with polish and promises.

Zedd caught himself staring at the population display again, bright red numbers hovering there on the wall like they were mocking him. One-hundred-fifty-nine-thousand.

The boy tilted his head back slightly, brow furrowing. The number hit different when you really thought about it. A hundred and fifty-nine thousand people, all of them building a life on this patch of dirt about two hundred light-years away from anything familiar. For a split second, his mind drifted, wondering how many of them were just like him...

His jaw tightened, teeth grinding together as he shook his head. Not going there.

The thought vanished as quickly as it came, pushed back where all the pointless ones belonged. Still, his gaze lingered on those glowing numbers for a moment longer, before he kept walking.

The corridor ahead opened into a massive atrium, the vaulted ceiling stretching upward until it disappeared into a maze of structural beams and conduits. Zedd's eyes traced the paths automatically, marking maintenance access points and possible escape routes without really meaning to. The constant buzz of conversation echoed off the walls, mixing with the clash of metal and synthetic beats pumping from nearby speakers. Some ancient Earth song, probably public domain by now, drifted from a food stall that had attracted quite the crowd.

His nostrils flared slightly as the scent hit him - rich, savory, with an artificial undertone that screamed synth-meat but somehow still made his mouth water. The line stretched back almost twenty people deep, tired-looking colonists waiting for steaming trays of what looked like stew. Has to be decent if they're willing to stand that long, he thought, watching another customer walk away with a loaded tray.

The emptiness in his stomach made itself known with a low growl. Nah, not yet. After a moment's consideration, Zedd filed the stall's location away for later.

Food could wait until he was settled.

The buzz of the crowd washed over him as he moved through the atrium, each detail adding another piece to the puzzle of New Abraham. Merchants shouted prices from makeshift stalls, their voices competing with the hum of environmental systems and the constant murmur of too many people in too small a space. A kid darted past, laughing as his mother called after him, her colony accent thick with exhaustion.

Every sight, every sound, every face told a story. Together, they painted a picture of a place trying very hard to feel like home while never quite getting there. The thought almost made him smirk. New Abraham, huh?

He slowed down with a click of his tongue as he approached a row of processing stations, each one staffed by someone who looked like they'd rather be anywhere else but at this exact spot at this exact moment. Their movements were crisp and efficient but their eyes had that glazed look that came from doing the same thing for way too long. Zedd scanned the lines, doing quick mental math before choosing one that looked marginally shorter than the others. Ten minutes instead of fifteen. Progress.

The air felt heavier here, stale and warm from too many bodies packed together. Someone muttered under their breath about the wait, their boots scuffing against the floor in an impatient rhythm. A few stations down, a kid whined about being bored, earning a sharp "ssh" from their parent. The sound grated against Zedd's ears but he kept his expression neutral, body language carefully relaxed even as his attention stayed sharp.

Overhead screens flashed with steady updates, an AI's flat voice calling out numbers in a monotone that somehow cut through the general noise. "Station Seven... Station Twelve... Station Four..."

Finally, the clerk at his station waved him forward with a gesture that screamed I've done this too many times today. Middle-aged woman, graying hair pulled back so tight it had to hurt, thin-rimmed glasses perched low on her nose like she was trying to look over them more than through them. Her uniform might have been pressed this morning but the cuffs were starting to fray, little details that spoke volumes about colony budget priorities. Her nails clicked against the terminal screen as she held out her other hand.

"Placement and housing assignment," she said without bothering to look up, voice pitched somewhere between bored and efficient.

Zedd handed over his ID chip, keeping his movements smooth and deliberate. The terminal chirped as it read the data, lines of green text reflecting off the clerk's glasses as she squinted at the display.

"Victors, Zedd," she muttered, eyes scanning the information. "Temporary cabin, Section 17-B. Assigned work: power grid maintenance, under Shift Leader Colburn."

She glanced up, sharp eyes scanning over him with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd seen thousands pass through her station. "Pay is 2200 credits every two weeks. 100 credits bonus per month for being on time every day. 250 credits every month is docked from that for your housing costs, but 500 will be credited to you for your first month for set-up, food, and other miscellaneous startup purchases. First rotation starts tomorrow, 0600. Late arrivals get docked credits." Her gaze hardened slightly. "That clear?"

Something about that tone had Zedd's mouth curving up slightly. "Yeah... crystal."

Her expression shifted — respect, maybe — though it vanished fast enough that he might have imagined it. Her fingers resumed their rapid-fire assault on the holo-terminal, muscle memory carrying each motion with precision but digits heavy on it all the same.

"Map's uploaded to your omni-tool," she added, her tone losing some of its edge while still staying all business. "Housing's a step above a bunk, considering you're working in repair. Still, only a step though. Basic but functional's all you're getting."

Her eyes flicked up again, mouth set in a line. "Don't expect much, kid. Ain't exactly the Citadel out here."

"Nah, didn't figure it would be." The words came easy, even as he kept his face calm.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, like she was trying to catch him being a smart-ass. Whatever she found - or didn't - seemed good enough. Without another word, she slid his ID chip across the counter, the metal scraping faintly against the worn surface.

"Next!" The shout came before he'd even grabbed the chip, her attention already locked onto the person behind him.

Zedd pocketed the chip without looking, metal cool against his fingers for a quick second. The spaceport noise wrapped back around him as he moved towards the transport bay, keeping his stride easy, each step measured and unhurried. Clusters of colonists dotted the waiting area, some of them talking in low voices while others just leaned against the walls, arms crossed and faces unreadable behind exhaustion.

A younger guy in a maintenance uniform that hung off him like borrowed clothes stood by one of the transports, voice full of a familiar edge and accent that told Zedd the guy wasn't far removed from Earth at all. "Yeah, you tell Shift Leader Colburn he can eat my clenched asshole. Already worked double last week and I ain't-"

The transport tech just waved him off with the tired gesture of someone who'd heard it all before. Zedd kept moving, feet carrying him past the scene without breaking stride. Still, something about the mention of Colburn stuck in his head, digging in like a splinter he couldn't quite reach. Guess I'll figure out what that's about tomorrow.

The transport platform buzzed with activity as he approached, colonists filing into a rugged vehicle that looked like someone had taken a shipping container and slapped wheels on it. The thing hummed with contained energy, probably running on the same power cells that kept the lights on. Zedd pulled up the map on his omni-tool, holographic display casting a soft blue glow across his dark skin. Section 17-B sat about five clicks out - close enough to civilization to grab food when he needed it but far enough that he wouldn't have to deal with people all hours.

Perfect.

The inside of the transport wasn't much better than the outside suggested, all hard edges and utilitarian design. Zedd found a spot near the back, settling into the worn seat as more people filtered in.

Nobody tried to sit next to him, which was fine by him.

Metal groaned as the doors slid shut with a pneumatic hiss. The low hum shifted into something deeper as they started moving, wheels crunching against loose gravel. Outside the scratched window, pre-fab buildings and empty lots blurred past in an endless pattern. The whole thing felt weirdly familiar, like one of those old videos of planned communities back on Earth, except everything here looked temporary in a way that promised to be permanent.

A jolt ran through the transport as it hit something, the impact sending a shudder through the metal frame that Zedd felt in his teeth. Nobody else seemed to notice, or maybe they were just used to it. The silence held, broken only by the constant vibration beneath them and occasional crunch of wheels grinding against uneven ground.

Zedd leaned back, letting the rhythm work its way under his skin as his mind drifted. A half hour passed in a haze of half-formed thoughts and fragmented memories that refused to stick around long enough to make sense. The transport finally ground to a halt with a whine of protesting metal, power cells cycling down with an electrical hum that faded into nothing.

The door slid open on worn tracks, night air rushing in to replace the stale heat inside. Zedd stepped out onto solid ground, his boots crunching faintly against the gravel path leading toward a cluster of prefab cabins.

Zedd stepped off the transport, boots scuffing against the dusty ground. He took in the colony with a sweeping glance, eyes narrowed against the glare of the setting sun. Efficient, he thought. Real fucking efficient. Each cabin was identical in shape and size, their exteriors painted a dull slate gray. Solar panels lined the tops, glinting in the waning light. Small vents hissed out recycled air, the sound barely audible over the low hum of the generators.

Clean lines, no wasted space... like someone had taken a grid and dropped it neatly into the landscape. Probably designed by some skyhand who ain't never set foot on a colony, Zedd mused, lips twitching into a smirk. Typical.

He followed the path toward his assigned cabin---17-B---glancing around as he walked.

A few colonists moved about, some unloading supplies from nearby transports, others chatting in low voices near the entrances of their own units. Most kept to themselves, their movements brisk and purposeful, like every second had to count for something.

The air smelled faintly of dust and metal, tinged with the acrid bite of recycled ozone from the life-support systems. Zedd wrinkled his nose, the scent both familiar and foreign. Reminded him of the streets back in Baltimore, the way the air tasted when you were running from something... or towards it.

Nah, this ain't Baltimore-Met. The thought came quick, a flash of memory with it. 2014... Mom's garden, fresh-cut grass, barbecue smoke...

He shook his head, jaw tightening. The fuck? Where'd that come from?

His gaze caught on a nearby solar array, panels angled to catch the fading sunlight. He frowned slightly, head tilting as he studied the setup. Tilt's off, he thought, brow furrowing. Not drawing in as much juice as it could. He couldn't say how he knew, but something about the angle felt... inefficient. Like whoever set it up was just going through the motions, not really thinking about what they were doing.

Fucking amateurs, he snorted, then paused.

Wait, how the hell do I know that? The question hung for a moment, as his frown shifted into a hard scowl for a moment. Fuck. Zedd shook it off with gritted teeth, refocusing his attention forward as he marched over to his cabin. Stupid fucking existential crisis bullshit.

The keypad next to the door glowed faintly, a soft blue light illuminating the numbers. Zedd tapped his ID chip against the panel, and with a faint beep, the door unlocked. He stepped inside, letting it hiss shut behind him.

The cabin was spartan, functional to the point of austerity. Smaller than my cabin on the ship... That much was true, and the ship cabin was already barely the size of a kid's room.

But this place… The walls were bare, a uniform pale gray that made the space feel both larger and emptier than it was. A small single bed with a plain metal frame sat against the wall, the mattress thin and seemingly without much warmth to it. Oh, nice. A slagbed. That's gonna be real fuckin' comfortable. A small desk with a built-in terminal took up one corner, surface scuffed from previous use. Not even a holo-terminal, cheap fucks. On the far wall from the bed nearest the door, a tall but thin storage unit stood there, revealing a few empty shelves and a single set of spare linens. Fancy.

The air inside was cooler than outside, with a faint hum of climate control filtering through the vents. With a low sigh and a roll of his eyes, the teenager dropped his duffel onto the bed, the thud breaking the otherwise steady rhythm of the air filter as it continued its hum immediately after. He stood there for a moment, taking it all in.

Functional. Efficient... but not cold. It wasn't the Erebus Dawn, with its polished sterility and artificial calm. Less like a hospital, more like...

His mind grasped for the word, coming up blank. A barracks, maybe? A cell? Neither felt quite right, but they were closer than anything else he could think of.

This felt... grounded.

Real, in a way the ship never had.

Like I could actually put down roots here, maybe... The thought trailed off, unfinished. Roots weren't something Zedd had ever really considered. As a teenager on the streets, you learned real quick not to get attached to anything... or anyone.

Kira, Dev, Adele... Their faces flashed through his mind, bringing a twinge of... huh… what, exactly? Regret, maybe? Nah, that ain't it.

Getting to know the three of them had been fun his last few days on the ship. He'd managed to push past his initial edge at the thought of making nice with a bunch of strangers, even enjoyed their company, in the end.

Just wish I'd done it earlier.

He let out a little sigh, the sound barely audible over the cabin's ambient hum.

Sure, he knew he'd find them somewhere in the colony. It wasn't like they could just disappear, right? But still... he wished he'd taken their omni-tool numbers before they'd all gotten distracted in the chaos of disembarking.

Would've made things a hell of a lot easier, he thought, shaking his head slightly. Rookie mistake, Z. Real rookie mistake.

Pushing the thought aside, he crossed to the desk, fingers brushing over the terminal's surface. The screen lit up at his touch, displaying a basic interface with colony updates, work schedules, and personal settings. Out of date, he mused, opening a few tabs just to get a feel for its functionality.

He knew that of course, anything that wasn't a holo-terminal was years out of date at the least, even with the Neo-Luddite companies still pushing out solid-state tech every now and again.

Nothing flashy, but nothing I can't make up with my omni-tool. His eyes flicked over the lines of text, skimming the details without really absorbing them. Truthfully, he doubted there was little he would need that his omni couldn't really handle. The Serrice Civitech X4a was a high-grade omnitool, even for being a couple years out of date.

Off-the-rack and mid-tier now, sure, but mid-tier had a high range and he was at least nearing the higher end of it. It helped that he had gotten it for a steal.

A faint creak from the ceiling vent forced his attention up high, eyes narrowing as he tried to lock on to what made the sound. Probably just the system adjusting to the shift in airflow, he reasoned, but even as the thought formed, his mind flicked briefly to the possibility of loose screws or wear in the filters. Gonna have to keep an eye on that. Last thing I need is that crapping out on me.

Zedd sat down on the edge of the bed, the frame creaking softly under his weight. The mattress was firm, but not uncomfortable - a far cry from the ratty old couch he'd called a bed back in Baltimore. Definitely an upgrade, he thought, lips twitching into a smirk. Might even be able to get a decent night's sleep for once.

His thoughts wandered back to the terminal, still remembering what he'd seen on that board back at the spaceport. The digits had been updating even as he'd stepped off the ship, the population count ticking steadily upward with each new arrival. 159,757 people, he mused, the number etching itself into his mind. Maybe 160,000 by now.

He let the figure settle in his thoughts for a moment, the weight of it pressing lightly against his consciousness. It was a far cry from the tens of millions that had crowded the streets of Baltimore, the endless sea of faces and bodies that had threatened to swallow him whole. This is better, he decided, nodding slightly to himself. So much better.

The hum of the colony surrounded him, not just from the cabin's systems but from the world outside - the distant whir of machinery, the muffled voices of nearby colonists, the occasional thud of a transport docking at the local hub. It was a symphony of activity, a constant reminder that he was part of something larger now. A fresh start, he thought, the idea bringing a flicker of something that might have been hope. A chance to actually make something of myself, maybe.

Zedd leaned back, hands braced on the edge of the mattress as he let his senses adjust to the rhythm of the place. New Abraham wasn't polished or comfortable - not yet, anyway - but it had its own kind of authenticity, a grit and realness that felt oddly familiar. Kinda reminds me of home, he mused, the thought bringing a pang of something he couldn't quite name. Just without all the bullshit.

His lips curved into a faint smirk as he shifted to lie back on the bed, one arm draped over his eyes. The mattress yielded beneath him, the sheets cool and crisp against his skin. Yeah, he thought, the word echoing softly in his mind. I can work with this.

As his eyes fluttered closed behind his arm, the world around him fading into a soft, distant hum, Zedd felt a strange sensation tugging at the back of his mind. It was like a whisper, a half-remembered fragment of something he couldn't quite grasp. He tried to focus on it, to bring it into sharper clarity, but the harder he tried, the more it seemed to slip away.

Probably just tired, he told himself, the thought already blurring at the edges as exhaustion began to claim him. Been a long day. A long... everything, really.

The tug came again, more insistent this time, but Zedd was already drifting, his consciousness unraveling like a spool of thread. He barely felt it as a gentle snore left his mouth, his body finally surrendering to the pull of sleep.

The young man barely felt the pull at the back of his mind as a gentle snore left his mouth.

Chapter Text

Zedd stepped out into the open, the transport doors closing behind him with a pneumatic hiss that nearly made his eye twitch.

As quickly as it came, he pushed the irritation to the back of his mind.

Cold morning air bit at his exposed hands, his breath puffing out in ephemeral clouds that dissipated quickly. Note to self: invest in some damn gloves. The colony buzzed around him, gradually waking up to a steady, mechanical hum.

Gravel crunched under his boots as he made his way down the corridor, the sound oddly satisfying in its regularity. Prefab buildings lined up on either side, all neat and tidy, like they had been stamped out of some giant, industrial machine. Cookie-cutter living at its finest. Pipes and wires snaked along the walls, exposed conduits and circuitry forming intricate patterns.

The sounds of the morning shift filtered through the crisp air—the clank of metal on metal, the rising thrum of power conduits coming online, the occasional burst of static-laced voices over the comm channels. Zedd let it all wash over him, his mind wandering with the cacophony of noise. Some things never changed, no matter where you ended up.

A loader bot caught his eye as he passed a storage unit, the machine's movements clumsy and erratic as it struggled to right itself. The bot's servo whined pitifully, the sound standing out amidst the colony's steady rhythm. Motherfuck… who's the dickhead who designed this thing, all of them like this?

His fingers twitched at his sides, eager to get in there and tinker, to puzzle out the problem and devise a solution. Nah, stay focused. Gotta get to the hub. Not my circus, not my fucking monkey.

Still, it fucked with his head seeing the thing. Don't even know how to tinker like that for real, he frowned as he walked. What's up with me?

The maintenance building loomed ahead, all exposed scaffolding and industrial girders, like some mad architect had decided to showcase the bones of the structure. Practically screams post-apocalyptic chic. Guess even the future's gotta have its own style, something to set it apart from all the shiny chrome and holo-interfaces.

A few workers milled around outside the entrance, all scuffed boots and grease-stained clothes, their postures relaxed but purposeful. Probably been at this longer than I've been alive. Zedd adjusted his grip on his toolkit, the weight still feeling foreign on his shoulder.

Like he was some kid playing dress-up, pretending to be one of them. Fake it till you make it, right? Same game, different players, different time. Adapt or get left behind.

Inside, the maintenance hub was all business, a hive of activity. Exposed pipes and conduits crisscrossed the ceiling, consoles flickering with diagnostic readouts and system alerts. The buzz of advanced tech and the chatter of the morning shift all mixed up together into a oddly harmonious chaos. Zedd caught snatches of conversation as he made his way deeper into the complex—complaints about shifty equipment, jokes to break the monotony, the usual bullshit that made the day go by.

In the middle of it all stood a hard-ass looking dude, all coiled intensity and authority. Gray hair, face like a clenched fist, eyes that had seen some shit. Boss man, has to be. He's got that 'don't fuck with me' vibe down, the kind of guy who's been in charge since before I was even a twinkle in my daddy's eye.

Those steely eyes landed on Zedd as he approached, scanning him up and down like he was a human barcode. Assessing, calculating, trying to figure out if he was going to be an asset or a liability. "You're the new guy?"

No shit, really? What gave it away? The shiny new toolkit or the big-eyed look of someone who has no fucking clue what's up? Zedd fought the urge to roll his eyes, plastering on his best 'totally meant to be here' smirk instead. "Zedd Victors, reporting for duty."

The boss man grunted, the sound somehow managing to convey a whole holo-book's worth of skepticism and resignation. "Elias. Chief engineer. You're with me, kid."

Oh good, I get a babysitter. This is going to be a blast. Zedd just nodded, not trusting himself to keep the sarcasm out of his voice

"Good," the older man replied, crossing his arms. His voice came off like gravel and rust, like a machine that hadn't been oiled in years.

He used to be a miner? Zedd wasn't sure why the thought popped up but it made as much sense as anything else. Why not smoker though?

Elias cleared his throat, the sound of old man mucus squicking him out enough to make him blink, Zedd hiding the disgust on his face as it drew him out of his thoughts. "R-right. Here's how it works: you listen, you learn, and you don't fuck up and kill all of us. We clear?"

Crystal.

"Clear," Zedd said aloud, meeting Elias's gaze with a calm smile. Not about to bend the fucking knee to some old guy with a power trip.

Not on day one.

Elias gave a tight nod, almost military, then turned to face the rest of the crew. "This here's the spacer kid they sent us. He's gotta earn his keep like the rest of ya, so don't go breakin' him on the first day."

A ripple of snickers passed through the group—some amused, some not.

Not a spacer. I'm an Earthborn. Zedd let it slide off him like water on wax, eyes darting around to take everyone else milling around. The workers were a mix of ages and backgrounds, their uniforms bearing the marks of long wear. Patches on patches, fraying seams, scorch marks that never quite washed out. Their hands told stories too, more than their faces.

Calluses, nicks, scars.

Legacies of hard labor.

Just fit in. Just fit in. Zedd shifted his shoulders under the unfamiliar weight of his own uniform, feeling the rough fabric scratch against his skin. Elias was already moving, leading him toward a bank of flickering monitors.

Diagnostics, looked like.

Power grid stuff.

"Your job's simple," Elias said, jabbing a finger at the screens. "Watch the readouts. If somethin' ain't right, you flag it. Repairs come later. Got it?"

"Yeah. I got it." Zedd leaned in, eyes scanning the scrolling columns of data. Numbers, ratios, fluctuations in the current. It was almost hypnotic, the steady pulse of information. Tap in, tune out.

But something snagged his attention. A blip. Subtle, but there. His eyes tracked back, zeroing in on the anomaly. "That conduit's running low," he said, pointing. "Output's dipping below standard."

"Yeah, okay, sure, it i-" Elias paused mid-snort as the older man squinted at the display, eyebrows knitting together like a pair of aging very hungry caterpillars. "Huh. Well, shove a hand up my ass and call me Bert."

I'd rather not. Zedd's own eyebrows bunched together.

"Not bad, kid." It came out grudging, but there was a hint of something else there. Approval, maybe.

Or just surprise at the fact he wouldn't have to babysit a newbie.

Zedd tilted his head. Maybe a little of both.

The hum of the monitors filled the space between them, undercut by the distant clank and hiss of the power plant's inner workings. Elias barked an order to another worker, his voice carrying over the ambient noise. The crew moved around them in practiced rhythm—checking gauges, tightening valves, trading tools and terse remarks.

Zedd let his gaze drift, picking up details of the other workers, only for his eyes to slowly trail over the small girl at the far console who looked about his age from where he stood, with light brown skin and a bodysuit maybe a size too tight requiring actual effort for him to look away. Bad Zedd.

His eyes flicked back to the monitors, catching another flicker in the readouts. Huh… Same conduit as before. "That… that thing's not just low," he muttered, half to himself. "Looks like it's cycling out of sync," he narrowed his eyes. "What? Losing efficiency, maybe?"

"Lemme see." Elias leaned in, distracting Zedd as he had almost forgotten the man was there. The older man stepped into his personal space, close enough that Zedd had to keep his mouth from turning down into a frown as he could smell the chemical tang of the cleanser on his uniform. "Where?"

Zedd tapped the screen, pinpointing the fluctuation. "Here. Levels are all over the place. Not enough to trip the alarms, but it ain't right."

"Good eye." Elias straightened up, fixing Zedd with a look that was almost appraising. "You keep watchin' that one. Might have to bump it up the priority list."

Priority list. Right. Zedd fought the urge to roll his eyes. As if a bunch of frayed wires and leaky conduits weren't all top priority in a place like this.

But hey, it was a win.

A tiny fucking win, but he'd take it.

The next couple tasks were more of the same—junction checks, valve inspections, all the routine maintenance that kept the place from falling apart at the seams. It was almost meditative, in a way.

Lose yourself in the work, in the flow of energy and data. Machines made sense. They had rules. Patterns.

Just like people.

Huh. He couldn't help but wonder how easy all this was coming to him. Haven't done anything seriously tech-wise in like… four years, he clicked his tongue. In both lives, even. Not like taking apart old 2000s PCs would be much help here.

An hour or so later, Zedd found himself on his knees, metal digging into them as he crouched by the power conduit, the grating leaving impressions he knew without a fucking doubt he'd definitely pay forlater. His hands moved with a certainty that didn't really feel like his own, sure of themselves in an instinctive way, fingers working carefully and thoughtlessly over connections that felt weirdly right despite not really knowing how. The air hummed with electricity, tingling against his skin as he tightened another coupling. Just like riding a bike... I guess.

A comm unit crackled nearby, static cutting through his focus like nails on chrome. "Line three's surgin' again," the voice sounded garbled, distorted enough to grate his ears. "Connor, what ya thinkin'?"

The shift leader's response came quick and only a little hurried as he stood up to speak through his omni-tool, voice carrying that edge of exhaustion Zedd was starting to recognize as standard for maintenance crew, or at least this maintenance crew. "Probably that primary eezo core." The tech's crew cut looked fresh despite the sweat beading on his tan skin and a few droplets falling on his patched-up uniform, almost like he'd just stepped out of some Systems Alliance recruitment vid.

Made the bags under his eyes stand out even more. "Damn thing's been acting up all week."

Zedd kept his focus on the conduit in front of him, but something about Connor's words caught his attention. Week-long power issues? That's... His eyes narrowed as he focused. That's not great. His grip tightened instinctively on the hydro-spanner as the conduit's hum steadied under his touch.

The sound smoothed out, evening into something that felt right. Didn't know how he knew that either, but... Sure, why not? Add it to the list of shit that makes no sense.

"Looks good." Elias's gravel-rough voice came from behind, close enough that Zedd had to fight the urge to wince and snap an instinctive elbow back into the old man's jaw. Fucking hell, man.

As it was, he was close enough that he could literally smell the cheap synth-caf on the boss's breath. Can't even spring for a fucking Pressi, big man? The older man loomed over his shoulder, calloused fingers prodding at fresh connections like he was expecting them to fall apart.

"Thanks, Big Boss," Zedd nodded and grabbed the rag from his belt, wiping engine grease off his hands. The cloth was already going a darker gray from one half-day's of work in the colony's guts, probably a health hazard all on its own. Better than using the uniform though. He glanced around again, one eyebrow raised as he took in dirty grease finger-printed clothes.. Like some of these guys.

"Don't get cocky." Elias's words carried an edge of humor that was about as worn as the old man's boots. "One fix doesn't make you a pro."

The smirk came easy to Zedd's face, automatic as breathing. "Wouldn't dream of it."

Between tasks, the crew's dynamics wrote themselves out like a vid playing in slow motion. Connor owned every step despite looking ready to drop, that weird mix of exhaustion and authority that had the others giving him space without being obvious about it. His orders came wrapped in grins that took the edge off, making commands feel like suggestions.

Nina worked the calibration station like she was conducting an orchestra, tiny frame often hunched over diagnostic screens that painted her caramel skin in harsh blues. Her fingers never stopped moving, expertly dancing over circuits with the kind of precision that screamed experience. Those sharp eyes caught everything too, little lines around them aging her a few years past what he'd first thought.

When she stretched, the tremor in her hands was barely there... but Zedd caught it anyway.

"You're not bad, spacer kid."

"I do my best, you know." Zedd kept his tone light, matching her energy while giving nothing back.

Hours bled together, one repair flowing into the next until his toolkit stopped feeling like dead weight. The crew's stares shifted from outright judging to something closer to evaluating, but he could still feel them watching.

Always watching.

Waiting for him to fuck-up.

They didn't have to wait long.

The fuck-up came right before lunch when he misread a diagnostic screen, almost treating a minor fluctuation like it was about to blow. Elias caught it before he could act, the correction stinging more from Zedd's own annoyance than anything else. Rookie mistake. Real fucking rookie mistake.

"Don't overthink it." Elias's steady gaze said more than the words did.

Zedd pushed through the rest of the task, movements mechanical as his mind churned. The error scratched at his thoughts like a bad itch, refusing to let go.

"Take a break." Elias's voice snapped him back, the man jerking his head toward a cluster of beaten-up benches that passed for a break area.

Cold metal pressed against Zedd's back as he leaned against one of the benches, unwrapping a ration bar that looked about as appetizing as it probably tasted. His eyes drifted toward the power grid monitors glowing in the distance, their pulse steady. This shit seems way too easy, though, he thought with a frown. Like, I know I faked my papers for a better job…

The ration bar tasted like chalk in his mouth as Zedd considered the reality of his situation. Getting this gig hadn't exactly been simple, what with colonies being picky about who they hired. Because, being fucking honest, colonies weren't all that eager to hire dropouts, even if said dropout had enough money for almost twenty tickets. His forged papers weren't anything special - just intermediate core with basic repair certification - but they'd done the job. Nothing crazy, right?

The thought made his mouth quirk up at one corner despite the cardboard taste filling it. A job was a job, and maintenance paid better than most starter positions in this metal-plated excuse for a city.

Forty-five hundred credits a month gleamed in his mind like a beacon. Sure, five hundred went straight to his bare-bones housing unit, and another five hundred for the first month covered food and utilities, but the math still worked out better than anything else he could've landed. Still, though... it's fucking weird.

The grid's constant hum pressed against his ears as his thoughts drifted back to bridge core. He'd blazed through the advanced engineering track back then, before the streets started looking better than classrooms. Before his 'friends' became his whole world. But that was four years ago.

Metal creaked overhead as someone adjusted an air recycler, the sound mixing with the ever-present buzz of power conduits. Brown eyes narrowed as Zedd watched diagnostics scroll past on a nearby monitor. Why isn't this harder?

Movement caught his attention – Elias and Connor huddled against a support beam, heads close together as they spoke in low tones. The older man's weathered face was set in hard lines while Connor's eyes darted around the room between words. Wonder what they're talking about.

The recycled air tasted stale on his tongue as he breathed in deep, letting himself sink into the symphony of machinery around him. Voices murmured in the background, techs calling readings to each other while servos whined and power cells hummed their endless song.

"Back to work, people." Elias's voice cut through it all like a knife, sharp enough to make Zedd's shoulders tense.

His joints popped as he pushed himself up, muscles already anticipating the weight of his toolkit. The familiar heaviness settled into his grip as one thought surfaced: Definitely beats being a street soldier.

Though to be fair, that was a choice, more than anything else.

Power thrummed through the walls, a constant vibration that worked its way up through the soles of Zedd's boots and settled somewhere in his chest. The maintenance corridor stretched ahead, junction boxes scattered along its length like checkpoints in some half-remembered game. His toolkit bounced against his hip with each step as he trailed behind Elias and Connor, the weight already feeling more natural than it had any right to.

"Keep up, spacer," Connor tossed over his shoulder, his smirk visible even in profile.

Earthborn. The correction itched at Zedd's throat but he swallowed it down, matching their pace instead. His boots struck metal in time with the grid's pulse, the sound echoing off walls lined with conduits that glowed faint blue in the artificial light.

The group halted at a junction marked "7-Delta," its casing worn down to bare metal in places where countless hands had worked before. Elias dropped into a crouch, fingers finding the release catches without looking. The old man's movements carried the kind of certainty that only came from years of repetition.

"Node's been running hot." Elias's words came gruff as he pulled the casing free, gesturing Zedd closer with a quick jerk of his chin.

Zedd knelt beside him, eyes scanning the exposed components. Everything sat arranged in neat rows, but something caught his attention - a subtle darkening on one circuit that shouldn't have been there. The discoloration nagged at him, triggering knowledge he couldn't remember learning.

"I'm thinking... hmmm, overvoltage, maybe?" He tilted his head, studying the way the damage pattern spread across the connections.

A grunt of approval rumbled from Elias's chest as he nodded, eyes narrowing as he studied Zedd's face. "...good eye. Grab the replacement from the kit."

The part felt right in Zedd's hand as he passed it over, its weight familiar despite never having held one before today. While Elias worked, Zedd let his attention drift, taking in the crew's positions like pieces on a board.

Connor held up the nearest wall, arms crossed over his chest in what looked like relaxation but wasn't. His eyes never stopped moving, tracking everyone's movements with the kind of attention that spoke of experience. A younger tech - Caleb - shifted his weight nearby, fingers fidgeting with gloves that looked barely broken in.

Nerves. The observation came automatic as Zedd watched Caleb's gaze bounce between Elias and the floor, shoulders tight with unspoken tension.

"You planning to do something useful, Caleb?" Elias's words cut through the air without him looking up from his work.

The younger man's face flushed red enough to show through colony-pale skin. "Yes, sir," he muttered, scrambling forward to hold a light steady over the open panel.

Connor's smirk widened but he kept quiet, the hierarchy writing itself out in silent nods and careful distances. Authority flowed down from Elias through Connor, leaving the rest of them to figure out where they fit.

"Done." Elias pushed himself up, dusting off hands that had seen more repairs than Zedd could count. "Let's move."

They fell into formation almost naturally, checking systems with a rhythm that felt practiced even though Zedd had only just learned it. His hands worked while his mind cataloged everything - crew dynamics, repair patterns, the way certain techs avoided certain areas.

The day bled away until amber light started streaming through narrow corridor windows, painting everything in shades of gold and shadow. The color hit different through the reinforced panes, reminding Zedd this wasn't Earth's sun at all. Especially when there's two of the bastards in the sky. He clicked his tongue. Two summers and I have no idea where the pool is.

"Wrap it up," Elias barked, his tone carrying the weight of shift's end.

Sweat stung Zedd's eyes as he straightened, muscles protesting from hours of climbing and crouching. The ache felt earned though, like proof he'd actually accomplished something.

Connor's hand landed heavy on his shoulder as they packed up. "Not bad for a rookie," he said, voice almost reaching friendly.

"High praise," Zedd shot back, matching his earlier tone with Elias.

"Again," Connor's chuckle scraped low and rough. "Don't let it go to your head."

The maintenance station hummed with end-of-shift energy as the crew filtered out, goodbyes hanging in the recycled air like old smoke. Metal creaked underfoot as workers dispersed, their nods and muttered farewells painting pictures of exhaustion. Zedd hung back near a support beam, watching Elias punch numbers into a battered terminal that looked older than the colony itself.

"You're picking this up quick." Elias's fingers never stopped moving across the keys, his words almost lost under the click-clack of ancient plastic.

"Just trying not to screw up." The response came automatic, Zedd's shoulders loose despite the weight of the older man's attention.

A snort escaped Elias, the sound rough as engine grease. "You'll screw up eventually. Question is, will you learn from it?"

Zedd let the words settle, offering only a slight nod before pushing off from his spot. The exit beckoned, promising fresh air – or whatever passed for it on this rock.

Colony night hit different than the Earth dark of the megacities where life never ever seemed to come to a close. Artificial light bathed everything in soft blue, harsh edges of prefab buildings softened into something almost dream-like. The sun had already dipped below the horizon, leaving only its ghost painted across clouds that looked wrong somehow.

Streets pulsed with shift-change energy as workers spilled out from a dozen different facilities. Families clustered in doorways and along walkways, their voices mixing with the ever-present hum of machinery until you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Something about the whole scene felt more real than the sterile corridors of the spaceport – rough and unpolished but alive.

The day's work settled into Zedd's muscles, a satisfying ache that wrote stories of crawl spaces and power conduits across his shoulders. First day down, and his body was already adapting to the rhythm of colony life.

"Hey, spacer!"

Nina's voice cut through the ambient noise, her boots scraping metal as she jogged over. Her dark hair had escaped its ponytail in places, framing a face that managed to look both tired and energized at once. Grease streaks painted abstract patterns across coveralls that hugged curves in ways that demanded attention, the fabric worn but well-fitted.

"You coming to the bar later?" The casual question carried an edge of invitation, her eyes almost glowing in the artificial light as she looked up at him.

"Bar?" His eyebrow lifted on instinct.

Nina's grin flashed bright enough to rival the overhead lights. "Yeah, crew usually hits up a spot after work. Good way to unwind. You should come."

Drinking age is twenty... No, it's eighteen. The thought tangled itself up, memory fighting reality for a moment. "You know I'm seventeen, right?"

Her grin stretched impossibly wider, teeth gleaming in the colony twilight. "Welcome to the colonies, earthboy. The Traverse ain't the Terminus but it certainly ain't Alliance space. You could be drinking a year ago." She cocked her head, that smile turning into a challenge. "So, you coming with me?"

You could definitely get me to come. Zedd ran his tongue over a canine, fighting to keep his own grin in check. "Yeah, meet you there."

"Cool. Meet us at the corner of main and third in an hour." She turned and jogged off, boots ringing against metal plating with each step.

He watched her disappear into the crowd, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. Wonder what else has a lower age limit.

Chapter Text

An hour later, Zedd found himself standing outside a low prefab structure with faded lettering above the door: Iron Tap.

The building looked like it had been slapped together from spare parts and old ship hulls, its corners uneven and its exterior streaked with rust. But the muffled sound of laughter and clinking glasses suggested it was far from lifeless.

"This gotta be the spot, right?" he muttered under his breath, raising an eyebrow. He hesitated for a second before pushing the door open. Right.

Stale air hit Zedd's face as the door hissed open, carrying notes of synth-beer, machine oil and somethin that definitely wasn't real tobacco. All in all, it was a medley of scents that screamed "colony dive" louder than the sign outside could.

The Iron Tap's interior wrapped around him in shades of amber and shadow, overhead strips casting just enough light to navigate by without killing the mood. Almost like they're saving power... or hiding the wear.

A massive slab of scratched metal stretched along one wall, claiming to be a bar despite looking like it had been carved straight out of a derelict frigate. Behind it, a bartender built like a young krogan — I need to look up these fucking aliens, how did giant turtles get to space — moved with surprising grace, thick fingers wiping down glasses through practiced patterns as he cleaned.

The booths lining the opposite wall had clearly seen better decades, their occupants sprawled in various states of post-shift collapse. Boots propped up on chairs spoke volumes about the place's standards – or lack thereof. This place has only been a colony for ten years, what the hell?

Oil-stained coveralls and scuffed boots painted a clear picture of the man behind the bar - working class through and through as his barrel of a chest stretched out a simple shirt that might have been actually a pristine white once.

Nina's wave caught his eye from the back, her grin cutting through the dim like a beacon. She'd cleaned up some, though "clean" was relative considering how little time she had to make it here after work.

Connor lounged beside her, the older balding floor manager seeming to tighten up as soon as he spotted his face. Huh…

The third guy at their table was new – rail-thin with a military-grade buzz cut and ink crawling up his neck in patterns that looked more function than art.

"Thought you'd flake." Nina's words carried enough sass to fill the space between them as Zedd approached.

Metal scraped against polymer as he pulled out a chair, dropping into it with a smirk already in place. "Not my style."

"This the kid?" New guy's voice rumbled low, playful but measuring all the same.

Nina's hand waved between them, casual as breathing. "Zedd. That's Tommy. Works down in water treatment. Likes to think he's tougher than he is."

"Keep talkin', little girl." Tommy's grin flashed sharp in the low light. "We'll see who's tougher next time you need help lifting one of those filters."

Connor leaned back, synthetic whiskey caught the light as he tilted his glass. "So, Zedd, how'd the first day treat you? Elias give you hell?"

"Nah, not really." Zedd matched Connor's pose without thinking. "Bossman's pretty nice to me. Enough to make a kid feel special, you know." His shoulders protested the movement, memories of cramped maintenance tunnels written in muscle and bone.

Connor's gaze flicked up to meet his eyes, eyes narrowing a little. "Does he now? Big E being so kind, will wonders never cease?"

Nina's glass rose in mock salute, amber liquid sloshing dangerously close to the rim. "Look at you, beginner's luck. You'll fuck up eventually and get barked at like the rest of us soon enough." The light caught her eyes as she tilted her head. "Or you'll quit and take up something easier. Your call."

A soft chuckle escaped Zedd as his attention swept the room, cataloging details like he always did. Laughter burst from nearby tables in sharp bursts, jokes flying free.. Every worker wore the same edge though – that colony tension that never quite went away, even when drunk.

Connor's eyes, for instance, kept finding their way back to Zedd between sips, measuring him up against some standard only the older tech knew.

Heavy boots announced the bartender's approach, the man's upward nod carrying just enough respect to acknowledge a potential customer. "What're you having?"

Zedd clicked his tongue and returned the gesture automatically, street instincts kicking in before conscious thought. "What do you have that's..."

Metal creaked overhead as Tommy leaned forward across the table, synthetic beer sloshing dangerously close to the rim of his glass. The sharp chemical smell of the drink hit Zedd's nose even from where he sat, mixing with the lingering scent of machine oil and sweat that seemed to follow every worker in here. "Get anything but the synthbrew. Shit goes down like engine coolant."

Tommy's eyes flicked up to Kenny, a drunken grin spreading across his face as overhead strips cast harsh shadows across his features. "No offense, bro."

The bartender's expression didn't shift an inch as he stared down at Tommy, massive arms folded over a chest that looked like it could stop small-arms fire. Light from the strips overhead caught the family resemblance between them - same sharp jawline, same way of holding tension in their shoulders, same look in their eyes that promised trouble if pushed. "Shut the fuck up, Tommy. I will throw you out again."

"B-but big bro..." Tommy's voice jumped several octaves, that earlier rumble vanishing as he spluttered. His buzz cut caught the dim light, making the growing flush on his neck more obvious as it crept past the edge of that intricate tattoo; some kind of tribal pattern that wrapped around his throat like a noose.

Huh, I can see the resemblance. Zedd's gaze bounced between them, noting the similar way they both shifted their weight when annoyed, how they both seemed to take up more space than they should.

Kenny's massive palm dropped onto Tommy's shoulder with enough force to make the smaller man wince, the gesture carrying more warning than affection. "Ma doesn't like you drinking anyway. Don't give me another fuckin' reason, okay?"

He turned back to Zedd, expression neutral again as his eyes performed the same evaluation Zedd had seen a thousand times before. "Now, what can I get for you?"

A smirk played across Zedd's face as he caught Nina watching the exchange, her fingers drumming an uneven rhythm against her glass. "Let me get a Hydropunch."

Kenny's eyebrow lifted slightly, but he kept quiet. The rest of the table wasn't so subtle - Nina nearly choked on her drink while Connor let out a stretched out snort that was half-laugh, half-something else entirely.

Tommy just stared, his beer forgotten mid-sip as condensation dripped down the side of his glass onto fingers stained permanently black around the nails.

Zedd didn't flinch at any of it. Most of the others who knew him back on Earth always seemed to act the exact same whenever he avoided drinking, drugs or anything like that, being honest.

The harsh overhead lighting cut shadows across Tommy's face as he spoke, making him look older than he probably was. "Look, I know I called you a kid, but..." He trailed off, gesturing vaguely with his glass.

Connor's shoulders shook as he laughed, the sound mixing with the constant background noise of glasses clinking and boots scraping against metal flooring. "What are you doing, kid?" His laugh pitched up in a way that wasn't nice at all, a frown nearly forming on Zedd's face. "Fuckin' Hydropunch? That really what you drink?"

"Yeah, you ten or something?" Nina's voice carried that same teasing edge from earlier, a little bit harder now with a good bit of drink behind it. "C'mon, big guy, drink somethin'."

Yeah, no… no. Zeke let out a snort, clicking his tongue as he glanced at each one of them in turn asnd shook his head. "Trust me…. You… I… I'm better off not drinking. I get weird when too deep under..."

He paused, choosing his words carefully as his fingers traced patterns on the table. "Any influence, really. Don't smoke, don't snort, don't drink. Even a little iffy with medications sometimes. Couple beers might not do it, but I don't wanna risk it."

Tommy's eyebrow climbed higher, his earlier embarrassment forgotten as he exchanged glances with Connor. "Whatever you say, kid."

"All…right." Connor's tone suggested he was filing that information away for later.

Why? Zedd didn't really know. He also didn't particularly care.

Zedd turned toward Nina, catching the way she was trying not to smile as she toyed with her nearly empty glass. The constant hum of the bar's atmospheric processors provided a steady backdrop to their exchange. "Also, you can make jokes about me being a kid when you can high five me, deal?"

Nina's tongue stabbed against her cheek as she did her best to suppress a laugh. Suppressed or not, it was loud enough that it drew looks from nearby tables, the sound bouncing off salvaged hull plates. "Oh, newbie's got jokes?"

"For days." The words came with a grin, carrying just enough challenge to make Nina's eyes widen as she leaned back in her seat.

Tommy's snort drew their attention back to him, his glass now significantly emptier as he set it down with more force than necessary. "By the way, heard you've got a knack for tech," he said, words carrying that careful casualness that meant anything but. His eyes had lost some of their drunken haze, replaced by something sharper. "That true, or just newbie hype?"

Zedd met his gaze evenly, noting the way Connor and Nina both tensed slightly at the change in topic. "Depends on who's hyping me."

Tommy's laugh boomed through the bar as he slapped the metal counter, the sound echoing off salvaged hull plates and making nearby patrons jump. "Fair enough." His grin turned sharp at the edges, all trace of drunken good humor vanishing. "Just don't mess with the water system, yeah? You screw that up, and you'll have the whole colony on your ass."

The smirk stayed on Zedd's face as he leaned back in his own seat. "Noted."

Nina's eye-roll could've powered the colony grid for a week. She jabbed a finger Tommy's way, nearly knocking over her glass in the process. "Ignore Tommy. He's just bitter because his system's held together with duct tape and prayers." The words came out sharp enough to draw a wince from nearby drinkers.

"Hey, if it works, it works." Tommy's defense came quick as he lifted his glass, amber liquid catching harsh light from overhead. Shadows played across his face as he drank, the tattoo on his neck seeming to writhe with the motion.

Something red flashed in Zedd's peripheral vision – a tall glass mug sliding across scratched metal with practiced precision. The liquid inside glowed like reactor coolant, though the smell hitting his nose was pure sugar and artificial fruit. His gaze tracked up to Kenny's massive frame, the bartender's slight nod carrying unexpected weight.

"First drink for a colony newbie," Kenny rumbled, massive arms crossed over his chest. "Always on the house."

Tommy cupped a hand over his mouth, voice carrying clear despite his attempt at subtlety. "He's lying. Your shit's just cheap."

"Tommy!" Kenny's voice sounded like a dog bark.

"Just talking work, bro!" Tommy's hands shot up in surrender.

Nina's elbows hit the table with enough force to make glasses rattle, her body leaning forward as her voice dropped low. "Hear about the pirates?" The question carried weight beyond its words, drawing immediate tension from the others.

Tommy's permanent grin vanished like someone had hit a kill switch. Connor's shoulders bunched under his shirt, easy slouch replaced by barely-hidden readiness. The whole table seemed to hold its breath.

"Pirates?" Zedd kept his tone neutral even as his mind spun through implications. The word hit different out here, two hundred light-years from anything resembling law enforcement.

Nina nodded, fingers drumming against her glass in an uneven rhythm. "Heard some chatter from down by Omega. Crews hitting suppy routes. Nothing confirmed, but..." Her words trailed off as her expression hardened a bit.

"New Abraham's a good bit from Omega. It's the Traverse, sweetheart," Connor said with a raised eyebrow, tossing Nina a smirk that the smaller woman didn't quite return.

"But we're on the edge of the Terminus, though," Zedd couldn't help but chime in, with a little bit of a laugh, awkward as it was.

Nina scoffed, biting her lip as she looked his way. "He's got you there, old man."

"Like, that's just a thing," Zedd continued, an eyebrow raised to match Connor's slowly lowering one as the man seemed to glower a little. "I mean, depending on the galactic map you look at, we're in the Terminus."

The older engineer set his jaw. "Well, whatever, we have laws here, not like the fuckin' Terminus." Connor's voice came out in almost a hiss, as if daring them to contradict him. His eyes roamed all three of them but periodically landed on Zedd. "But… to be fair, it's not like we've got borders out here. If they're desperate enough..."

Tommy's glass hit the table harder than necessary. "We've got militia." The words rang hollow even to him, his earlier buzz seeming to evaporate under harsh reality.

"Yeah." Nina's laugh could've stripped paint. "Because a handful of half-trained volunteers with secondhand gear are really gonna scare off pirates." Her fingers had stopped drumming, now wrapped white-knuckled around her glass.

Zedd blinked, eyes dulling as he felt another odd pull. What the hell is that?

"Anyway." Nina straightened suddenly and getting Zedd's attention again as her short rose above her midriff, her grin too bright as she gestured for another round.

Music throbbed through salvaged speakers, the bass line almost matching the colony's constant hum. "No point worrying about it now. We've got drinks and bad music. Let's enjoy it while we can."

Zedd grinned behind his glass.

Chapter Text

"Stop messing with it," a familiar voice—his sister's?—piped up. "You're gonna break it!"

"I'm not gonna break it," he heard himself snap back, his own tone carrying a little edge.

That same edge he used every time he fiddled with something he probably shouldn't have been touching and his younger siblings tried to tell him off for it.

"Holo's acting funny already," another voice cut in. His dad. rough but steady, with that low timbre that always shut down the room without him raising it… and frightened everyone when he did. "If it fries, we're getting a new car. I'm tired of this one."

There was a flicker of annoyance in his mom's face. Lips pressed tighter, and her knuckles whitened slightly on the steering wheel. She glanced at dad, then the road, eyes darting to the holo-display where a faint blue shimmer wavered.

"Not right now," she muttered.

Barely loud enough to hear, but Zedd caught it.

His sister leaned forward, sunlight catching the beads in her braids as she adjusted the display with a practiced touch that was way too quick for her age. Zedd opened his mouth, probably to tell her off for showing him up, but then—

Something shifted.

The hum in the car went deeper, lower, vibrating against his skin.

"Mom?" his voice sounded strange. thick.

The air sharpened with static, prickling at the edges of his senses.

"Hold on," dad said sharply, but the words barely registered before it happened.

A surge of blue energy exploded outward, jagged and blinding.

The car...no, the whole world…

His breath caught as he jolted upright, pulse hammering against his ribs. His fingers clenched reflexively at the fabric under them, pulling it taut. The rumble of distant thunder pressed against his ears, low and steady, grounding him back in the dark room.

Even with two suns, this planet managed to have long nights.

He dragged in a shaky breath, wiping at his face, damp with sweat.

Dreams.

Always like that. Ever since he had woken up in this weird low-rent Star Trek future. Pieces of something he couldn't quite grab, slipping away the second he opened his eyes.

But the blue...the energy...that part stuck.

It always stuck.

The hum of the ship's engines seeped back into his awareness, thrumming in his bones.

He exhaled, leaning back against the cold wall.

No point in thinking about it. The memories weren't coming back.

His heart still hammered like it was trying to break free, adrenaline hitting hard enough to feel like a slap to the face. stupid storm.

His breath hitched, shallow and fast, before he forced it deeper, slower.

In, out. Focus.

The low hum of the colony's systems vibrated faintly in his bones, but something about it felt...off.

The rhythm wasn't right.

It hit wrong—too uneven, too tense, like it had somewhere else to be. It wasn't just the storm; no way. This was something else. His pulse didn't let up, though, pounding against his ribs as thunder grumbled through the prefab walls.

A sharp, shrill beep cut through the room like a knife, shattering the moment. His omnitool lit up on the table next to his bed, the faint glow spilling across his knuckles as he reached for it and slid the band across his wrist.

Thumb swipe.

The channel opened with a crackle.

"Victors. Get to the main generator hub. Now."

Elias's voice came through clipped, sharp.

No hello, no explanation. Just orders.

The edge in his tone crawled under Zedd's skin. Not good.

He clicked his tongue. Fuck.

"On my way," he muttered, his voice low, groggy. His legs swung off the cot almost by reflex, bare feet hitting the cold floor with a soft thud. For half a second, his brain refused to catch up. Then the pieces started falling into place, rough but functional.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, the scrape of calloused skin against his smooth jaw grounding him, anchoring him in the here and now. The storm outside threw flashes of light across the prefab walls, uneven and harsh.

Static crawled at the edges of his awareness, sticking to his skin like a bad idea.

His jacket was already slung over the back of the chair by the door. He grabbed it on the way out, shoving his arms into the sleeves without breaking stride as the door whirred and locked shut behind him. The air hit him hard as soon as he stepped outside—sharp, cold, alive. The storm had the colony streets in its grip, whipping debris along the ground and shaking anything that wasn't bolted down. The wind yanked at his jacket as he zipped it up, clawing at the fabric like it was trying to peel him bare.

The transport hovered nearby, its lights barely cutting through the haze of rain and wind. Zedd jogged toward it, boots splashing against the slick pavement, and ducked into the vehicle before the door slid shut behind him. He barely had time to grab the nearest handrail before it lurched forward, the sudden acceleration pressing him back against the seat.

The prefab rooftops blurred past as the vehicle picked up speed, the lights flickering unevenly in the distance. Lightning danced along the horizon, illuminating the storm-wracked colony for split seconds that felt too long and too short at the same time. The air inside the transport buzzed faintly, filled with the low hum of the engine and the steady drumming of rain against the metal shell.

He gripped the rail tighter, fingers flexing unconsciously. The dream still clung to him, thick and sticky, like trying to shake off a spider web.

Doesn't matter. Not now.

The thought stuck, echoing louder than the storm outside.

He'd figure it out later. Always later.

The transport groaned to a halt, doors shuddering open as Zedd stepped out into the storm, wind slicing past him sharp enough to sting. Rain was still holding back, but the air carried that metallic tang it always did, like it was teasing. Clouds twisted above, lightning carving bright lines into the dark, their light flickering against the prefab buildings.

The generator hub crouched ahead, wide and squat like someone had dumped a giant steel junction box in the middle of the colony.

Zedd's fingers tightened around his toolkit. His pulse was quick, not panicked but pushing, matching the distant grumble of thunder rolling across the skyline.

Focus. No time for anything else.

His boots scuffed against wet pavement as he walked to the sliding doors, the storm tugging at his jacket like it was trying to pull him back. The doors hissed open just before he reached them, a sound way too clean for the dirt streaked across their frame as the wind picked up.

He stepped inside, and the noise hit like a wall.

Alarms screamed, so loud they felt physical, pressing against his skull. Red emergency lights pulsed in a rhythm that didn't match anything—too fast, too uneven. His eyes adjusted quick, locking on the scene: workers rushing between consoles, voices overlapping as they barked half-finished orders or just plain shouted over the chaos.

The air was heavy, thick with ozone and the tang of machinery on the edge of giving out.

His eyes snapped to the far wall, where a bank of massive monitors lined up in neat, angry rows. Diagnostics scrolled across the screens, sharp numbers that glowed hot red against the black.

Fast.

Too fast.

He caught flickers—spikes, dips, fluctuations—but none of it lined up.

Something's wrong. No, worse than wrong.

"Victors!"

The voice cut through the noise as Zedd's head jerked toward it, spotting Elias near the main console. The man looked like he hadn't slept in a week—broad shoulders hunched, lines carved deep into his face, the tension in his posture obvious even from across the room.

Zedd moved toward him, threading through the chaos with quick, sure steps. He almost collided with a guy hauling a crate of equipment, but the guy shifted at the last second, muttering something that Zedd didn't catch.

"What's going on?" he asked as he reached the console.

Elias glanced up, barely sparing him a second before turning back to the monitor. "Backup systems are failing," he said, the words leaving his mouth like a dog biting at air.. "Main generator's output's all over the place. Half our subsystems about to go off like a faulty eezo core."

Zedd's mouth turned down into a deeper frown, leaning closer to the console as he screened all of the data in front of him: jagged patterns, spiking and crashing with no rhythm. Like a heart monitor on an arrhythmia patient.

He frowned a half-second later, memories of his dad coming back. Really, a doctor in both lives, huh? Is the multiverse lazy?

The old man shook his head, jaw tight as he spoke through gritted teeth. "Arkadia's got a fast rotation, high axial tilt, semi-volatle orbit and a patchy magnetic field what with the two fucking suns doing their bull shit."

Zedd blinked, the factors locking down in his head almost immediately. "Oh…"

Elias let out a sigh. "Yeah… not exactly the biggest thing we tell new colonists, because it usually ain't that big a deal. But electrical storms are a bitch to deal with and this is a motherfuck of a biggun'. Storm's frying everything. if we don't stabilize soon..." He didn't finish, didn't need to.

Zedd fought the urge to snort. Not the time.

Instead, the teenager clicked his teeth again, the one tic he allowed himself showing out. "...so, we're fucked, huh?"

Elias let out a laugh that held as much humor as his face showed. "Yeah… if we don't pull off a fix. We're fucked."

The generator's hum shifted, dropping into a low, guttural vibration that hit Zedd square in the chest. The sound wasn't just noise; it was pressure, the kind you felt more than heard. It reminded him of the way a building creaked before it gave out, heavy and wrong.

Then came the first alarm.

Sharp. Shrill.

Cutting through the control room's chaos like it wanted to make things worse. Red emergency lights strobed, painting the cramped space in quick, uneven flashes. Shadows stretched and twisted across the walls and the workers' faces, making the tension in the room feel alive.

"That's bad," someone muttered, their voice too quiet to pin down.

Understatement of the year.

Zedd's eyes snapped to the central monitor, yellow text flashing against the black: UNSTABLE SYSTEM FUNCTION DETECTED. INABILITY TO COMPENSATE. CONDUIT OVERLOAD LIKELIHOOD… It flickered, just for a second, before going red.

Bright, angry red.

IMMINENT.

…fuck.

Another alarm joined the first as well as the one going off in his head as Zedd felt his eye twitch from the thought of going up in the biggest of booms not even two full Earth months after leaving the fucking planet in the first place. What else could go wrong?

Just like that, the room tilted into chaos like someone had flipped a switch.

Crew scattered, hands flying across consoles, tools clattering against the metal floor as someone knocked over a kit. Boices tangled together—status reports, orders, cursing—and Zedd caught maybe half of it.

"Full system imbalance!" one of the techs yelled, loud enough to cut through the mess.

Elias moved fast, his boots slamming against the floor, his whole frame radiating this barely-contained fury. "Damn it," he growled, slamming his fist down on the console hard enough to rattle it. "If we lose the regulator," he snapped, not looking at anyone, "the whole grid's going down. Nina, where's my backup status?"

The comm crackled before a woman's voice—Nina, definitely, he'd remember that voice anywhere by now—cut in. "Auxiliary's online, but it's barely holding. Power's surging across multiple lines. We need stabilization now."

Zedd's hand tightened around the strap of his toolkit, his knuckles going white. The monitors screamed instability, rows of numbers jumping in ways that didn't make sense. He tracked them, quick, instinctively tracing the patterns as they spiked and crashed, but they didn't line up with a simple surge. Not a regular one, anyway.

Something was off. Wait…

"The conduits aren't the problem," he said before he even realized he was speaking. His voice wasn't loud, but it landed, enough to make Elias stop and look at him.

The older man's eyes were sharp, cutting, like he was daring Zedd to waste his time.

Zedd squared his shoulders, the weight of the room pressing down on him now. "The regulator. It's the regulator," he said, his voice firming up. "It's failing."

Elias didn't blink, but the tension in his jaw ratcheted up a notch. "You sure about that, spacer kid?"

The words hung heavy in the air, louder than the alarms somehow.

Zedd hesitated. not because he doubted himself, but because the answer wasn't all the way there yet, just gut-deep certainty clawing its way up. He swallowed hard, glancing back at the numbers on the screen. They didn't give him the answer, not exactly, but then again… they didn't need to.

"Sure as I can be," he said finally, the words pushing their way out like they didn't care about the pressure on his chest. His jaw tightened as he looked back at Elias. "We don't bypass it, overload's gonna cascade through the grid."

Elias didn't say a word, just stared at him with that deep, pin-you-down kind of look that could make most people crack. His jaw shifted, grinding through whatever debate was spinning in his head.

Zedd didn't look away. Come on, old man.

Finally, Elias jabbed a finger toward the auxiliary panel. "Fine. Reroute through the auxiliary lines. But you've been here, what? a couple months, Victors? Don't fuck us over."

Not even six weeks, boss man. Zedd didn't bother with a response.

A nod was all he gave as his feet carried him across the room, his toolkit smacking his hip in time with every step. The air got heavier the closer he got to the panel, hot and sticky with the heat bleeding off the overworked systems as it clung to his skin, prickling at the back of his neck.

He came to a harsh stop in front of the auxiliary board, the comp-rubber of his workboots squeaking as he skid across the ground. It looked rough, scarred up from years of patch jobs and quick fixes. The readouts flickered faintly in the chaos, their light barely visible under the strobing red.

Zedd leaned in, scanning the data.

It didn't take long for the patterns to settle in his head.

The regulator wasn't just dying. No, if that's all it was, this would be an easier fix. The regulator was taking everything down with it in the most suicidal way. Hell, the conduits were barely holding the way everything was yo-yo-ing; the numbers told him that much. Something doesn't change fast, shit's going to gve in a big fuckin' way.

"Come on," he muttered, more to himself than anything. His fingers brushed the edge of the panel, his mind already trying to snap together all the pieces of the problem.

Unused connections caught his eye, clustered at the side of the board. They weren't glowing like the others—probably because no one had touched them in years—but the layout clicked into place somewhere in the back of his brain.

He turned, shouting to Elias, his voice barely cutting through the noise. "We can bypass the regulator! We reroute power through the connections, it'll take the load off the conduits long enough to stabilize the grid."

Elias followed his gesture, brows pulling tight as he stared at the board. "You're improvising."

Zedd shrugged, wiping a slick line of sweat off his temple. "Look, pops, either that or we let the whole thing go up in a blue bomb. I think biotics are cool but I don't think you wanna gift the whole next generation of New Abraham with them."

Elias's hesitation stretched just long enough to feel dangerous.

Then he nodded, sharp and sure. "Do it. Fast."

Zedd didn't waste a second. His hands were already moving, popping the panel open to reveal the tangled mess of wires and circuits beneath.

The heat hit him first, rolling out like someone had opened an oven door. Sweat dripped down the side of his face, but he didn't stop as his tools came out quick, familiar in his grip. A pair of pliers, a cutter, and a spool of insulating tape he'd already used too much of this week.

"Nina," Elias barked into his omnitool comm, his voice rough and clipped, "Get on deck, ready to reroute power. Victors is setting up the bypass now."

"Copy that," came the reply, the short woman's usually bubbly tone sharp but steady. "Standing by."

Zedd barely registered the exchange. His focus narrowed to the mess of wires in front of him, his brain sketching out connections faster than his hands could follow.

The cables were a nightmare. Half-fucked, what kind of shit pipe colony is this? Some were frayed, their insulation peeling away to expose the copper beneath. others looked like they'd been patched a dozen times already, the repairs overlapping until the original wire was almost gone.

"Figures," he muttered, his voice low, more habit than anything. "Half-fried and they're still holding on."

His fingers worked fast, stripping the worst wires and patching them with whatever scraps he had left.

The bypass started to take shape, a cluster of rerouted connections that wasn't pretty but would hold. at least for now.

"Five minutes, alright, alright," he said, more to himself than anyone else. More a promise, less an estimate. "Five. Minutes."

The air clung heavy and thick, the kind of heat that felt like it was squeezing the room tighter with every passing second. Zedd's hands moved fast, slick with sweat as he twisted the frayed cable into place, the faint whiff of burned plastic stinging his nose. The auxiliary panel buzzed faintly under his palms, trembling like it wasn't sure how much more it could take.

"Victors, move it!" Elias's shout came from somewhere behind him, sharp and biting, cutting clean through the alarms.

"I'm working on it!" Zedd shouted back, barely loud enough to carry over all the chaos.

The cables didn't fit right—half of them bent weird or too short to make a clean connection. But he worked around it, bridging gaps with what he had, hands moving faster than his thoughts.

Every twist, every connection felt like...instinct, like the kind of muscle memory he couldn't remember learning. No time.

His brain tracked the power flow, almost on its own, the way it surged and stumbled through the system like water through a cracked pipe. There wasn't time to think too much about the how or the why.

"Nina, the reroute ready?" Elias snapped into his comm.

"Just say when," Nina shot back, her voice tight, like she was holding the whole thing together with sheer will.

"Good." Elias's boots thudded closer, and Zedd felt the weight of his stare. "You done yet?"

"Almost." Zedd didn't even glance up. No time.

His hands reached for a dusty circuit board someone had left on a nearby workstation, the edges crusted with grime. Made 2172? Jesus, the fuck is this doing here? It wasn't pretty, but it'd work.

He slotted the board into the panel, the fit rough, the click faint but solid.

The alarms shifted then, their pitch dropping, just barely. It wasn't much, but it was enough to take the edge off the panic chewing at the edges of his focus.

"Reroute it now!" Elias's voice cracked against the tension like a pistol shot.

The hum of the generator dipped, stuttering once-twice-a third time before settling into a deep, steady rhythm. Zedd's shoulders dropped a fraction, the relief sinking in slow, like his brain didn't believe it yet.

The monitors flared amber, the red warnings blinking out one by one.

"Stabilizing," Nina reported, her voice crackling through the comm. This time, it carried something else.

Relief.

"Good. Stay on it," Elias said, but his tone had softened, just barely.

Zedd stepped back from the panel, dragging a forearm across his face to wipe the sweat before it could drip into his eyes. His hands were shaking, just a little, the adrenaline buzzing under his skin.

He exhaled slow, trying to pull the tension out of his chest.

It's gonna hold. For now.

It wasn't clean, and it sure as hell wasn't long-term, but the system was limping along, and that was good enough.

"Nice work," Elias muttered, stepping up beside him. It wasn't loud, and it wasn't much, but coming from the old man, it felt like a damn trophy.

Zedd nodded, his mouth too dry to manage words right away. The room was settling, a good bit of fearful stress bleeding away. Workers moved slower, steadier, their shouts tapering into murmurs. The tension hadn't gone, not entirely, but it was loosening, like a rubber band finally letting up after being stretched too far.

He caught a few glances from the crew, quick and sharp, their faces unreadable.

Curiosity, maybe. Or…

"...never seen a rookie pull something like that…"

"...just got lucky, probably…"

"...doesn't sit right, y'know?"

Suspicion.

"Hey, Spacer." The voice came from Connor, leaning against a console like he hadn't just been rushing around like the rest of them. His smirk was faint but pointed. "That looked a little too easy for a first-timer."

First timer? He allowed himself a slight smirk. Ignoring the fact that almost half a dozen more had landed to the colony and chosen to work at the hub since he had joined up, he didn't miss Connor's use of 'Spacer' instead of his name all of a sudden. A month or so of work ain't that long enough, I guess. Zedd shrugged, forcing his tone to stay casual. "Just common sense."

Connor didn't push, just huffed a laugh that didn't feel real and turned back to his console, but the way his gaze lingered made Zedd's skin prickle.

"Don't get cocky," Elias said, his hand clapping Zedd's shoulder in a brief, heavy gesture. it wasn't exactly warm, but it wasn't cold, either.

Zedd rolled his shoulders under the weight, lips twitching into something close to a grin. "Wasn't planning on it."

The generator's hum filled the room now, steady and low, a backdrop to the slower movements of the crew. Zedd turned back to the auxiliary panel, his eyes tracing the patched connections one more time.

Still holding.

"Victors, cleanup duty," Elias barked over his shoulder as he moved toward the other workers, already back to business.

Zedd snorted faintly, grabbing his toolkit with one hand. "Yeah, yeah. I'm on it."

Chapter Text

The control room was quieter now, the chaos trailing out with the last of the crew.

Only the hum of the systems and the faint buzz of residual adrenaline lingered, and even that felt like it was fading. Zedd stayed where he was, eyes scanning the auxiliary readouts one last time. The numbers held steady, the jagged spikes and dips from earlier smoothed into calm, even patterns.

Nothing flickering, nothing red. It was good. Solid.

Better than he expected.

He pressed his palms into the edge of the console, the metal cool against his skin. His body ached, muscles tense and tired, but his brain wouldn't quit. Every moment of the last few hours ran laps in his head—the wires, the sparks, how his hands had moved without him even thinking.

Maybe... dumb luck? Or... Nah. Doesn't matter.

The way his hands had moved, like they'd already known what to do. like he'd known.

He'd known he'd been different since that first day he woke up on the Erebus Dawn, what with how he seemed to pick up things so much quicker…

Or at least how he'd gotten so much better at noticing things that would have slipped his mentals before but…

Weird.

He glanced at his hands again. Maybe two brains smashed together means I have like a 200 IQ or something? He didn't think that was how neurons or souls worked, but he wasn't really sure what else would work as an explanation.

"You just gonna stand there, or you waiting for the screens to pat you on the back?"

Zedd's head snapped up, his focus shifting to the doorway.

Connor leaned there, one shoulder propped against the frame, arms crossed like he had all the time in the world. The older tech's smirk was almost casual, but his tone carried an edge—that same one from before.

Zedd straightened, forcing the tension out of his shoulders. "Just making sure it's stable," he said, voice casual.

Connor snorted, stepping into the room with slow, deliberate strides. "Yeah, well, stable or not, shit's off about you."

The teenager raised an eyebrow. What? "Me?"

Connor raised one of his own. "Yeah, you. Kid comes in, saves the day, and we're all supposed to act like that's normal?"

Oh, here we go. Man, what is with this place? Zedd slipped his hands into his pockets and gave the other man a shrug. "Just didn't want to watch the grid blow up, chill."

"Convenient," Connor muttered, his smirk twisting. Sharper now. Meaner. "Guess it's easy when you've got skills like that, huh? Skills like that from some random, huh?"

Zedd's jaw tightened, fingers curling into fists in his pockets as the tension coiled back into his shoulders, but his expression stayed neutral. "Bro, you've been weird to me since that first day at the bar," he nearly hissed the words out, forcing his expression flat as he spoke through gritted teeth. "I don't care what your deal is, but what's your point, man?"

Connor stepped closer, his boots scuffing against the floor. his eyes narrowed, like he was sizing Zedd up. "Point is," he started, voice dropping, "Eli might be covering for you but the rest of us aren't buying it. Sure, some random kid fresh out of intermediate core hits colonyside already working like a pro and only got better since. Nobody picks this up that fast. Either you're some kind of genius or y…"

Zedd didn't move as he stared back at Connor, unblinking. "Or what?"

Connor's smirk lingered, long enough to make Zedd's skin prickle, as he noticed the longer the man held it, the more fake it looked.

"Or what, Connor?" Zedd stared at the older man. "Finish the sentence."

Then he shrugged, slow and deliberate, and turned toward the door. "Doesn't matter. Just... keep doing your thing. I'm sure you'll be at the top of this place in no time, sitting in a comfy desk job. Your type always is."

My type? Zedd didn't bother replying. The comment wasn't worth it, and the weight behind it felt like bait. Instead, he adjusted the strap of his toolkit, letting his fingers trace the worn edge as Connor started to walk away.

The sound of hurried footsteps cut through the quiet before Zedd could shift his focus. someone brushed past Connor, hard enough to make him stumble a half step. The older man muttered something sharp under his breath but didn't turn back, probably already deciding the interruption wasn't his problem.

The figure storming into the room wasn't part of the crew. that much was obvious. The guy carried himself with that frantic, edge-of-breaking kind of energy that screamed nontechnical—desperate and out of place.

"You… you idiots cost us a med transport!" The man's voice cracked, sharp and raw, slicing through the low hum of the generator.

Zedd straightened instinctively, his gaze snapping to the intruder. The guy's jacket hung off his thin frame like an afterthought, his windswept hairline making him look like he'd sprinted straight here from wherever the storm had tossed him.

"My wife was supposed to be on that ship!" the words came hard, like they'd been burning in his chest too long, and now they were clawing their way out. His face was pale, his lips drawn tight, and his whole body seemed to tremble with something too big to hold in.

The room froze.

The low murmur of the few crew members still lingering in the corners dropped into silence, like the man's words had sucked all the air out.

Zedd shifted in place, fingers twitching.

"We fixed it," Elias said, stepping forward. The man kept his voice steady and even, but carried the edge of someone who'd been through this kind of thing before. "Your transport's clear now."

The man's eyes snapped to Elias, narrowing for a split second before dropping to Zedd. His glare stuck there, sharp and heavy.

Too late. The thought hit him before the man even said it.

"Too late," the colonist muttered, his voice low and jagged. "She's gone."

Zedd flinched. The words hit harder than they should have. Harder than he expected. His hands curled into fists at his sides, the strap of his toolkit biting into his palm.

I did my part. I did. The thought felt hollow, like it was trying too hard to stick, to hold back everything else pressing in around it.

The guy's voice—his face—kept pushing.

Flashes of other faces flickered in Zedd's mind, unbidden.

His mom, eyes sharp with concern, his little sister hands in a bag of Citadel Crackers, both his brothers picking fights across where he sat in the middle seat, laughter breaking through the haze of memory.

Don't go there. Don't.

Elias took a step closer, his broad frame blocking some of the guy's anger, but the tension didn't ease. The man didn't look at him again, though.

Instead, the guy's shoulders slumped, his head shaking once, sharp and fast, like he was trying to hold himself together.

Then he turned and walked out, leaving nothing but silence.

Elias broke it first, exhaling a long breath through his nose. "How'd that bastard get in here anyway?" His tone wasn't sharp, more resigned, like he was used to this kind of thing but still tired of it.

Zedd didn't answer.

The question wasn't for him, and his throat felt too tight to try anyway. He forced himself to move, shifting his weight and adjusting his toolkit's strap again, the motion grounding him just enough to speak. "I'll head out."

"Hold up, kid."

Elias's voice cut through the low hum of the corridor, stopping Zedd just as his hand grazed the cold edge of the doorframe.

Zedd glanced back, eyebrows flicking up, one hand resting lightly on the frame. "What?"

"Outside." Elias jerked his head toward the exit, already moving toward it. "We need to talk."

Great. Zedd sighed, rolling his shoulders to shake off the lingering tension in his muscles before following. The air outside was sharp, colder than he expected, biting through the lingering heat from the generator room. The faint glow of the colony's prefab cabins spilled across the dirt paths, their scattered lights barely holding back the dark.

A NicStic flared between Elias's fingers, the faint orange glow briefly lighting the older man's face as he took a slow drag. The sharp tang of synthetic tobacco mixed with the metallic aftertaste of the night air.

"You've got a knack for this," Elias said, exhaling a thin stream of smoke that curled upward, catching the dim light. His tone was thoughtful, distant, like he wasn't even talking to Zedd but just... thinking out loud, more than anything. "Treat this shit like an art more than a science. Wild thing to watch."

Zedd shifted, leaning back against the railing of the prefab steps. Arms crossed, his gaze dropped to the dirt beneath his boots. Why's it feel like he's not talking about the work?

"Protocol exists for a reason," Elias continued, his voice dipping into something firmer, more pointed. "That's what people are trained to use."

There it is.

Zedd straightened a little, his tone calm but clipped. "Protocol would've taken too long. And egos don't really mean a lot next to lives."

Elias chuckled low, shaking his head. "You're not wrong."

Another slow drag, the ember flaring briefly before he spoke again. "Just don't make a habit of it. People make assumptions and get heated when they feel like they might lose their place."

Why do I have to care about other people? "Got it," he said instead, forcing the words out even though they didn't feel right.

Elias took one last pull on the NicStic before flicking it into the dirt, grinding the ember out under his boot. "Get some rest, kid. You'll need it."

The ride back to his cabin was quiet.

Which, being honest, he needed more than anything right now.

Zedd slumped against the cold metal frame of his seat, the hum of the engine vibrating faintly under his feet. outside, the dark stretched endlessly, broken only by the occasional flicker of lights from prefabs lining the road. His reflection hovered in the window as he found himself getting sucked back into his thoughts.

How did I do that? The question hit again.

He'd been feeling it since the alarms stopped—since the bypass worked. Almost a full six weeks on this job. Six weeks, and already he was pulling off fixes that half of the other techs on staff didn't think possible—not in that timescale and with as few tools as he'd used..

His fingers tapped against his thigh, restless.

Instinct?

That's what it had to be. the way his hands moved, the pieces fitting together before he even thought about them. It was like muscle memory, but for stuff he couldn't remember ever learning.

Instinct from where, though? That was the fucking question, wasn't it?

Neither of his two lives had that sort of skill or experience, at least not from the memories he had of either lifetime. Thirty-four years of nothing but being a semi-normal kid.

Maybe a little smarter than most others his age, but nothing crazy.

The engine hummed louder for a moment, climbing briefly before leveling out again as the transport hit smoother ground and began to slow, nearing his drop-off. Zedd leaned back, dragging a hand down his face.

Seconds later, the transport hissed to a halt, its doors sliding open with a faint creak. Zedd stepped out, the cool night air wrapping around him like a sharp reminder he was finally out of that generator room. Gravel crunched under his boots as he walked down the path, his mind a mess of thoughts drowning out the faint hum of the transport pulling away.

Ahead, the cabins sat in quiet rows, prefab walls reflecting the sparse lighting. Scraps of debris lined the street, caught in lazy piles by the wind. A heap of mangled metal caught his eye—a loader bot's arm, its actuator half-visible.

He stopped, frowning as the idea hit him. The actuator might still work. The bolts could hold a panel. Even the wiring, frayed as it was, could be used.

The teenager nearly froze in place, before clicking his tongue and kept his pace going. Yeah, that doesn't feel normal.

No…

It felt... automatic.

Like his brain was running ahead of him, filling in gaps he hadn't even realized were there.

What the hell is going on with me?

He shook his head, pushing the thought down as he kept walking. The transport driver had done him a solid, dropping him off close enough to his cabin that the wind only had time to bite for a minute.

His cabin came into view, the faint yellow glow from the window cutting through the dark. He climbed the short steps to the porch, fingers brushing the doorframe as he reached for his keycard.

Then he heard it.

Behind him.

Jesus, fuck! He tensed as he twisted in place, eyes locking onto someone stepping out of the shadows. Instinctively, his hand twitched toward his side—a pistol he didn't even own yet. Fuck!

It was the guy… with the wife… the one from before.

The guy's jacket was zipped up tight, his hands shoved deep into the pockets. His face looked worse now, tight and pale, his eyes burning with something that had cooled from anger but still smoldered.

Zedd clicked his tongue, stepping back a little, keeping his posture loose but ready. "Look, I get it, man, I'm sorry… you're upset. But you…" His eyes darted down to the man's hands again, still shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket. "You can't just follow me home."

"I didn't follow you anywhere." The man's voice was sharp, defensive, his words clipped like they'd been waiting to snap out. "All the booters working at the hub live here."

"Still, that's n—"

"You don't get it." The man cut him off, his voice shaking now, lower but heavier. "You fixed it, sure. But do you even understand what it means when the grid goes down? People die, kid. my wife..." His voice cracked, and he turned sharply, one hand running through his thinning windswept hair.

Zedd stared back at him blankly. What am I supposed to say to that? He did his fucking job. He fixed it. I'm fucking seventeen, man. The fuck do you want from me, even?

"I'm sorry, man," Zedd said, barely bothering to put emotion into the words, as drained as he was already. He knew he didn't really mean them, but he couldn't help but wish he did anyway. "For what it's worth, I did my best."

The man didn't turn back, his shoulders slumping as he muttered under his breath.

"Fuck your best."

Zedd's irritation bubbled up, quick and hot, but just as fast, it faded, leaving only that nagging unease in its place.

Wth a shake of his head, he turned back to his door, swiping his keycard over the scanner. The lock whirred softly, the familiar sound oddly comforting as he pushed the door open.

Inside, the air was still, the faint hum of the colony outside barely audible. He dropped his toolkit near the door, the weight of it finally gone, and crossed the small room to his cot.

The mattress creaked under him as he fell onto it, his body sinking into the worn fabric. His head bounced off the pillow, but his eyes stayed open, staring at the dull ceiling.

His thoughts looped in tight circles, replaying the night.

The bypass. The sparks. Connor's smug, untrusting look.

Zedd's fingers curled into the thin blanket covering the cot, his mind refusing to let the thought settle.

He closed his eyes, trying to will the exhaustion to drag him under.

I did not sign up to be on-call.

Forge Points: 250

Chapter Text

Zedd blinked awake slowly, his body half-sinking into the soft mattress beneath him.

The larger sun was just beginning to crest over the horizon, its light spilling through the wide window across the room. Golden-orange rays stretched over the walls, tinting the black synth-satin sheets that pooled around his legs. He stretched lazily, arms reaching out, the kind of stretch that made his whole body feel lighter for a second.

A yawn escaped him, long and unhurried.

This bed was huge.

Like, big enough that he almost had to roll to reach the other side.

Not that he needed to.

His eyes drifted left, landing on the caramel-toned form nestled in the sheets beside him. her face was half-hidden in the pillow, soft curls spilling over her cheek. She was still out cold, her breaths slow and steady, and his oversized t-shirt hung loosely around her. The thought hit him then—just the shirt—and he felt a smirk tugging at his lips before he could stop it.

Heheh.

He kicked off the sheets, the black fabric sliding easily to the edge of the bed as he swung his legs over the side. The cool prefab flooring sent a faint chill up his feet, but it was nothing compared to the old place.

The old place.

Zedd rose to his feet, standing shirtless in nothing but his dark blue boxers. The sunlight hit him full-on through the window, the warmth settling on his skin like it had been waiting for him to wake up.

The seventeen-year-old stretched again, arms raised high above his head, his back arching slightly as he let out a satisfied grunt. "God, this place is so much better."

And it was.

His eyes scanned the view beyond the window. Arkadia iv wasn't exactly a paradise—not yet anyway—but it had its charms. The horizon stretched out endlessly, broken only by the outlines of prefab housing and the low mountains framing the colony.

His grin widened.

This was home. His home.

The new place was seven times bigger than the tiny little shack he'd been assigned to rent, down by the hub. Granted, that only made it sixty-five square meters—not exactly luxury living—but still, it felt like a mansion compared to where he'd been.

He had every right to feel a little proud, didn't he?

A whole month he'd been here, waking up in this place, and it still made him smile every morning.

Sure, getting it had almost been a problem.

The down payment had been a little steep— not much more than the ticket to this rock, though— not to mention the headache of explaining how a seventeen-year-old without a steady job could afford anything bigger than a shoebox.

But he'd made it work.

Nearly four hundred credstacks burning a hole in his tool had helped.

He exhaled, the grin slipping just a little. Mom and Dad would want me to start living a real life anyway. The thought came unbidden, brushing the edges of his mind before he pushed it away.

Zedd shuffled toward the door, his feet dragging slightly against the smooth flooring.

The hallway wasn't much—just a short stretch of prefab paneling that led to the main living space. not that prefab layouts ever got creative.

His gaze dropped briefly to the floor. Faux-wood, clean enough to look real at a glance.

Being real, everything about prefab housing had that same polished-but-fake vibe, but he didn't mind.

It was his.

The main room opened up ahead, a blend of living space and workspace.

Simple.

Functional.

Minimal.

Even down to the entertainment center that came with the furnishing package. Zedd barely glanced at it as he veered toward the workshop at the front of the house.

His bare feet thudded lightly as he moved, the sound barely audible against the faint hum of the colony outside, miners and other blue-collars with their families waking up for the weekend.

The living area wasn't much, but it did what it needed to.

A couch hugged the far wall, in shades of black like the rest of his furniture. One cushion sagged a little too much—his fault from last night, when he'd flopped down hard enough to make it groan.

Next to it, a low coffee table sat under the soft glow of sunlight slipping through the blinds. A couple bottles of non-alcoholic drinks from the night before leaned precariously on its edge, both half-empty. One had left a faint ring of condensation that darkened the cheap polymer surface. It was amazing how people kept being surprised at his unwillingness to drink. Even away from Earth, peer pressure was a problem. You'd think they'd get it after the first time.

Off to the right was the kitchen.

Compact. Cramped.

Everything lined up neatly in rows like someone'd been trying to win a Tetris game. The fridge hummed a nigh-impercetible but steady bassline, and the stove's control panel blinked 2:14 in bright red numbers.

Wrong time. Always wrong.

He could fix it if he wanted.

He didn't.

Zedd stood at the edge of the room, his bare feet brushing over the floor, tinted in the black of his choosing. Prefab charm—everything matched because it had to.

His gaze slid toward the workshop, the only space in the house that wasn't already set up for him when he moved in.

It smelled faintly like burnt wiring and metal dust.

He liked it.

The work table—standard prefab junk like the rest—was buried under the guts of an omni-tool. half of it was dismantled, parts scattered across the surface but laid out neatly, almost obsessively, in little trays he'd picked up from the colony's market.

Tools were stacked haphazardly to one side, a mix of old and new. Some were shiny, practically untouched. others had the kind of wear you couldn't fake—scuffed grips, dulled edges.

He'd made it work.

The chair in front of the table looked like it'd been dragged in from the kitchen. Mostly because it had. The backrest wobbled a little if he leaned too hard, but it held up fine for now and he definitely wasn't complaining.

Floating shelves lined the walls, mostly bare except for a few rolls of wiring, some datapads, and random scraps he'd salvaged from god-knows-where.

Zedd leaned against the doorframe, his arms loose at his sides as he took it all in. The sunlight creeping through the single window made the diagnostic scanner on the corner of the table glow faintly, it's hard-light interface flickering faint patterns over the table's edge.

It wasn't much.

But again, it was his.

The thought tugged a grin out of him before he could stop it.

He pushed off the doorframe, crossing the short space to his workbench.

The omni-tool from last night — ChoraTech P4 —lay there, guts exposed, waiting for him to figure it out. He knew this model well enough. It was a top mid-range option, ideal for a Standard grade Omnitool at one point. Granted, that one point had been five years ago, considering the reason he knew about it was a kid in his bridge core classes bragging about the omni his parents had bought him for the holidays.

Now, it was slow with an outdated processor.

Yet, you could find this thing on a bunch of people's wrist without looking all that hard.

He grabbed a diagnostic stylus off the table, flipping it between his fingers as he slid into the rickety chair. The scanner blinked at him, throwing a couple of error codes that made him squint as he picked up one of the more worn tools to open it up.

"Fuck off," he muttered, finally getting a good look inside the thing.

The inside of the omni was a mess. Bad wiring, connectors barely holding on, and some cheap replacement parts that'd been shoved in like they'd fix everything.

Lazy fucking dickhead, he barely held himself back from saying the words out loud. "They better not have paid this guy for this slapjob."

He traced a bundle of badly managed wires with the tip of his stylus, his mind already working through the problem. Something about the way the connections were spaced, the way the current flowed...

He paused, his grip tightening on the stylus as his brain finally put together what he'd been going over the last five minutes.

It's the interface relay. The thought hit fast, instinctive as he leaned closer, plucking a set of microcutters off the table and snipping one of the smaller wires loose.

Sure enough… "Look who has two thumbs and is never wrong."

The relay was fried—burnt edges, barely any conductivity left.

Zedd huffed out a laugh, shaking his head. "Amateurs," he muttered, dropping the relay onto the table and reaching for a replacement. What went unsaid was that he was also an amateur, but some things were better left unsaid.

As he worked, his thoughts wandered, drifting toward the credit total in his tool's ledger.

He was close. Close enough to taste it.

A car.

Good-looking sports cars in the twenty-second century were, funny enough… a thing of the past, for the most part. Especially in megacities, where sky cars dominated.

Honestly, anything that looked like what he remembered from the more primitive part of his memories was almost impossible to find. They were common enough, sure, but nothing that made his inner thirteen-year old boy pump his fist. Almost everything he could find was sleek, and made with ultra-light materials and the rarer heavier and aggressively-designed ones would be expensive to ship out to a colony, honestly.

Maybe I should focus on something more in the now, he thought, biting his lip.

Hell, maybe he'd even make enough soon to splurge on an addition to the prefab.

His hands moved on autopilot as he thought about the future, fingers twisting the new relay into place, locking it down with practiced ease. Having way more time to himself had helped him get used to this.

He honestly didn't regret leaving his job in the least.

Zedd wasn't one to yell.

It wasn't worth the effort most times—never had been.

Every time he did, his voice felt raw from just a few seconds of letting himself get loud. Hell, even the thought of it made his throat itch half the time. Should've grabbed a bottle of water on the way in.

But here he was, standing stiff in Elias's cramped office, his shoulders squared like he was gearing up for a fight anyway.

The old man sat behind the battered desk, arms folded, an eyebrow raised so high it was almost mocking.

"You're quitting," Elias said.

Not a question.

Zedd nodded, his jaw tight. "Yeah. Effective immediately."

The words came out clean and firm as he reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a neatly folded resignation letter and sliding it across the desk.

The paper felt stupid and outdated both, a whole Neo-Ludd gesture. But it made things feel... solid and final too, so…

"Normally, this shit comes with two week's notice," Elias said flatly.

Zedd's lips pressed into a line. His head dipped into a slow, almost apologetic nod as he once again felt lucky that he had the type of skin that didn't redden when embarrased. "I... didn't know that."

Elias grunted, the kind of sound people made when they were deciding how much trouble you were worth. For a few long seconds, the hum of the power conduits filled the silence.

Then the old man leaned forward slightly, his voice steady but sharp around the edges. "You sure about this, kid?"

He still had yet to look down at the letter, not even for a second. His eyes stayed locked on Zedd like he was trying to see something the teenager wasn't saying. "You're good at this work. damn good. Better than most anyone else who's been here for years. Your hands are fuckin' magic, pardon my language."

Zedd's mouth twitched, a breath of a laugh escaping before he could stop it. A second later, the teenager sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck. "That's the problem, though."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, pops," Zedd muttered, his voice dipping low with frustration. "I'm too damn good, apparently. Every time something breaks, it's like—" he broke off, shaking his head. "It's like people think I made it happen. And then, when will I fix it? They look at me like I'm cheating or something. Like I wasn't supposed to fix it. I don't get it, man."

Elias leaned back, arms still crossed, as he watched the boy standing across his desk.

Zedd didn't stop.

"A month of that was bad enough," he continued. His words were quieter now but sharp, each one cutting as he let them out without holding back. "But that shit two weeks ago? Pardon my language, but fuck that, old man."

Elias didn't respond immediately. He tilted his head, a faint nod, but his expression stayed unreadable.

Then, finally, he let out a low groan, dragging a hand down his face.

"In a few years," the older man said, his voice quieter now, "no matter how old you are, you should be running this whole place. Hands like that, a brain like yours, composed under pressure… Even just one out of three, I'd take you over five of the lunks that call me boss. In an ideal world, you'd be my boss in two years."

Zedd blinked, thrown by the shift in tone.

"...okay," he said slowly, unsure where this was going.

Elias didn't let him figure it out.

"And that's the damn fuckin' problem, kid," he cut in sharply, leaning forward again. "Galaxy's far from ideal, and we both know it. Way it goes, you'd never make it off the floor. You'd be lucky to make it past senior tech in a decade. Major part of it is, I can't afford to promote you. You're too good to move up."

Zedd frowned.

"And if you did manage it?" Elias continued, his voice a low growl now. "Connor would make your life a living hell before you ever got past him. You see the way half of them look at you already for being you. You think you're doing a good job… Nah, the issue is you're showing them up, making them work harder, and about five years younger too, on average."

The man sucked his teeth, low and slow. "You stay here, kid, and you'd be fighting twice as hard for half as much, and for what?"

Zedd opened his mouth to respond, but the words didn't come out right away.

Still though… Knew it.

Finally, he managed with a shrug, "I mean... well, like I figured, just didn't wanna s—"

"Half the floor thinks you're a plant, you know" Elias cut in again, his tone almost conversational, like he wasn't trying to drop anything heavy. "Some higher-up's kid dropped in and told what to fix, when to fix it and how to fix it just to make you look good for an easy path up. Wouldn't be the first time, really. Whole place is run from the top-down as it is. All one project out of the governor's own pocket."

He sniffed the air a few times. "Technically sponsored by his family's company, but from what I hear, he's never actually worked for the company in all his years. This whole capital and the other four sectors… all one trust fund kid's plan."

What? Ignoring that last part, Zedd's jaw tightened as he locked into what mattered. "But I kept the Hub running that night. If I didn't know what I was doing, how could I pull that off?"

The floor manager scoffed, nearly laughing as he swung a foot up on his desk. "Kid, I know you're the farthest thing from one so don't act like a fuckin' idiot. You think the reality of what happened matters more than how people already feel?" He swung his other foot up and shook his head. "Being entirely honest, Connor's been on my ass about you since day one. He's been fucked over for at least two promotions since he joined up that way. Thinks you're another classic plant. But we both know that ain't true."

Elias snorted, his barely-amused smile just this side of bitter. "Hell, Connor knows it too. Man's just got too much of an ego to admit it you're the real deal."

Zedd didn't shift, didn't move, but he could feel something when Elias added, "'Specially cause Nina keeps eyein' you."

Wait—what?

Zedd blinked, his expression slipping for half a second before he could catch it. Nina?

The thought circled in his head as he replayed the last few weeks, thinking about the short woman who'd been giving him a little more attention than most since he had shown up. They weren't exactly friends, not like him and Kira's crew, but they definitely spent more time together than he ever had with the other guys, especially with the three of them still busy with basic training.

Nina was a few years older than him too—he'd figured that out his first day—and always had a smile like she was thinking of something really funny.

But still…

Thought for later.

The teenager's arms stayed folded as he let out a long slow breath, his words measured but sharp. "Look, man, I didn't sign up to be the guy carrying everyone else's weight while getting shit for it the whole time. not gonna stick around just to make everyone feel better about themselves, especially if i'm not moving up anytime soon."

Elias didn't respond right away. his sharp gaze stayed steady, searching Zedd's expression like he was testing for cracks.

When he found none, the old man gave a single nod. "Fair enough."

Just like that.

No argument. No anger. No guilt trip.

Just... acceptance.

It threw Zedd for a second, the lack of pushback making him feel almost off-balance. He straightened his shoulders, clearing his throat. "Thanks for the opportunity, bossman," he said, the words feeling stiff in his mouth despite himself.

"Shut up," Elias grunted, the old floor manager leaning back in his chair as it let out a faint creak. "Locker's yours to clear out. Good luck, kid."

And that was it.

Zedd found himself standing in the quiet shuffle of the locker room, the sound of boots on polymer flooring filling the empty spaces in his head.

The bench beside him held a small pile of his stuff: a worn pair of gloves, a dented multitool, a couple of ration bars he hadn't remembered leaving there.

Nothing sentimental.

He worked in silence, the murmurs of the other workers drifting around him like static. Some of them glanced his way as they moved in and out, their expressions ranging from uninterested to... something else.

"Good riddance," someone muttered, the words low but loud enough to be deliberate.

Zedd didn't even bother looking up.

"Better luck out there, kid," another voice said, quieter, almost kind.

That one caught him off guard, but he didn't respond to it either.

As he snapped the last latch on his bag, Zedd noticed Connor stepping into the room out of the corner of his eye. the older man froze for a split second, his brows furrowing as his grizzled features twisted into something halfway between surprise and irritation.

Zedd didn't hesitate.

He slung the bag over his shoulder, standing tall as he turned toward the exit.

His gaze locked with Connor's, and for the first time in weeks, a grin tugged at Zedd's mouth as he looked at the other man.

It wasn't friendly.

"Your job's safe, big guy," he said lightly as he walked past.

Connor didn't reply. He just stared after Zedd, probably trying to figure out if he'd been insulted.

Later that afternoon—early evening back on Earth, maybe, but with the sun here refusing to clock out till whenever—it felt like time didn't matter. Zedd stood in front of the prefab, arms loose at his sides, his shadow stretching long and jagged over the uneven dirt. Somewhere in the background, machinery hummed, its low drone almost fading into the occasional chirp from some alien bird—or something that wanted to be a bird.

Arkadia IV's ecosystem didn't really deal in clear labels.

The house? Sixty-five square meters of functional.

No frills.

Prefab walls in muted off-white, straight lines that felt like they were cut out of a template, and a roofline that didn't even pretend to care about aesthetics. It wasn't trying to impress anyone.

Zedd kind of respected that. It looked like something you'd forget the second you walked past it, but it was solid.

Sturdy. Mine.

"Forty-two thousand credits down payment, ninety-eight five-hundred total," the realtor said, her tone polished and practiced, like she'd given this exact pitch at least a hundred and a half times before. "Non-negotiable, considering your age and lack of financial history. These units don't come cheap, especially furnished."

She gave him a polite pause, probably expecting some pushback, or at least a question.

Zedd didn't blink.

He raised his omni-tool, the blue glow lighting up the edges of his face as his fingers worked fast, tapping through menus like muscle memory. A soft beep confirmed the transfer.

Done.

The realtor blinked, clearly thrown off. "That was... fast."

"You said non-negotiable," Zedd replied, shrugging one shoulder as he slid the omni-tool back into standby. "Why waste time?"

Her composure snapped back in place quick, but there was a crack of surprise under the polished smile she threw on. "Alright then. Here's the transfer code for the deed. Once you sync it, the house is officially yours."

He scanned the code without a word, the quiet beep of confirmation marking the deed as his.

"Congratulations," she said, a hint of something—politeness, or maybe faint curiosity—slipping through her voice. "How's it feel to be a homeowner, young man?"

Zedd glanced at the house again. Simple walls. Bare dirt. The kind of structure that practically begged to be ignored. His lips tugged into the faintest ghost of a grin.

"Feels good."

--------------------------------------

The prefab smelled like prefab—chemical clean, with just enough of that synthetic edge to remind you everything was new. Over the next day, Zedd dragged his life inside, one armload at a time. Clothes…

Yeah, that was pretty much it.

He didn't have much else, he realized to himself as he glanced around.

Home wasn't the word for it. not yet. maybe not ever. But it was his, and that was enough for now.

First priority? The front room.

It wasn't a room so much as a box someone forgot to finish.

No door, just an opening that didn't bother pretending to be anything else. The floor had that prefab smoothness, the kind that scuffed too easily, and the walls stared back like they were waiting for him to give them a reason to exist.

Zedd stood in the doorway, arms crossed, his head tilting slightly as his eyes dragged over the space. His lips pressed together for a moment before he muttered, "Functional... but bare as hell."

The furnishing package wasn't much to look at, but it was enough to start.

Over the week, he chipped away at the space. The desk came first, dragged across the floor with a screech that made his shoulders twitch. then the terminal—sleek, compact, way better than anything he'd touched back in the maintenance shed.

Zedd dropped into the chair, his body slumping forward just enough to tap the power button on the terminal.

The holographic interface lit up, smooth and responsive.

"Alright."

Zedd wiped his brow with the back of his hand, his fingers smearing dust across his temple like war paint. not that he cared. He glanced around the room, taking in the slow but steady transformation. The shelf along the far wall was packed now—tools stacked like puzzle pieces he'd found in the local markets. Multitools, a welding kit that hummed a little too loud but got the job done, a soldering iron he hadn't even unwrapped yet.

It was a mess. A functional one.

He swiveled the chair side to side, the wheels squeaking faintly against the floor. His fingers tapped out a restless rhythm on the edge of the desk, his eyes drifting to the terminal's holographic display. The glow lit up the corner of the room, a steady pulse of light like it was waiting for him to make a move.

"Gonna use that for orders," he muttered, nodding to himself. His eyes flicked to his omni-tool, sitting on the desk, its screen dark. "Better than dumping all that onto my personal shit."

Orders for what, though?

Outside, the project waiting for him was even more ambitious.

Zedd crouched in the dirt, his knees brushing the uneven ground as he worked. The holoprojector sat in front of him, its casing scuffed from being dragged halfway across the colony and back again. Not top of the line—not even close—but it was solid enough to work with.

"Alright," he muttered, his omni-tool lighting up as he scrolled through the interface. His fingers hesitated for half a second before tapping into the calibration menu. The projection grid sputtered to life, flickering with weak light, and Zedd's jaw tightened.

"C'mon," he muttered, his tone edging toward a warning. "Don't make me regret spending that much on you."

The grid flickered again, the light sputtering before stabilizing. A soft hum filled the air, low and steady, like the machine had finally decided to cooperate. Zedd stood, brushing dirt off his hands, his eyes fixed on the letters forming in midair.

VICTOR'S TECH REPAIR

He let the grin creep up slow, his head tilting slightly as he took a step back to admire it.

"Yeah," he said, his voice quiet but firm. "That'll work."

The first clients trickled in slower than he'd expected. Zedd leaned against the doorframe one afternoon, watching a wiry old man fresh off his mining shift shuffle up with a busted holo-display tucked under his arm. "Won't turn on," the guy muttered, not even meeting his eyes.

Zedd nodded, taking the display and running his fingers along the edges, his brain already ticking through the possibilities.

While he had been learning a lot about the actual work he was doing, half the time, he didn't even know why he knew what he knew. It just felt... obvious.

Wires frayed, connections loose, capacitors fried.

Common sense, right?

The work was small at first, simple stuff.

Sluggish omni-tools, cracked displays, devices that just needed a hard reset. Zedd handled each job methodically, his hands moving before his thoughts could catch up.

But word spread faster than he thought possible.

One day it was locals with basic problems.

The next, it was miners dragging in power cells that reeked of burnt circuits or colonists clutching omni-tools that lagged so bad they might as well have been paperweights.

My fault for moving into a family neighborhood full of blue-collars and roughnecks.

Whatever the reason, the jobs piled up quick.

-----------------------------

Zedd leaned against the workbench, his weight braced on his forearms, staring down at the holo-display in front of him. The projection sputtered faintly, thin lines of static cutting through the image.

"Another one bites the dust," he muttered, grabbing a tool from the tray beside him.

The casing popped off with a soft click, exposing a tangle of wires and circuitry that distinctly smelled like… liquor. The woman who'd dropped it off, some wiry colonist with a distracted look in her eyes, had said something about her kid tripping over it during a game or something.

Zedd hadn't asked for details. The faint flush on her face said enough.

His hands moved without hesitation, the tool in his grip steady as he prodded the wiring. The faint smell of burnt plastic clung to the air, sharp and acrid, as he worked.

Wasn't the first display he'd fixed this week. Probably wouldn't be the last.

The pile of busted tech in the corner told him everything he needed to know. Word was spreading fast. Too fast, maybe.

He glanced at the workbench, the trays of half-finished jobs stacked high, each one a little more complicated than the last. Whatever, I'm just being a whiner, he snorted aloud. Ten credstacks in two weeks was enough to make anyone stop fucking complaining about most shit, being honest. This rate, I could buy that car in two months.

Next up was an omnitool, sluggish and unresponsive.

The thing sat on the edge of his workbench like a dead weight, its pale blue glow flickering weakly as it booted up for diagnostics. The whole setup fell low-rent and prone to fall apart, even before Zedd got to work on it.

Zedd's fingers hovered for a second, eyes narrowing at the brand name that lit up. "Polaris P-3?" he scoffed, dragging the words out as if saying them slower might make them make sense. "Doesn't Kassa make guns?" he flipped the device over, looking for some kind of logo or serial number, but the back was blank, matte-gray like the rest of it.

"Yeah, nah. Whoever marketed this was asleep," he muttered, his tone laced with curiosity despite his annoyance. He dropped it onto the workbench, giving it one more dubious glance before booting the diagnostics.

The screen flickered once, then again, its response lagging just enough to be annoying.

Old software. Cheap casing. Weird guts, probably. Zedd shook his head, rubbing the bridge of his nose before leaning in to start poking around. "Well, whatever."

The words barely escaped his lips before his hands were already moving, the familiar weight of a micro-calibrator in one hand, precision tool in the other. He didn't think about it.

Almost never needed to.

The process was as automatic as breathing, a rhythm for his body, not his brain.

The omnitool groaned—actually groaned, as if offended by his efforts—when he pried off the back casing. A tangled mess of wires stared up at him, the kind of disarray that made him whistle under his breath. "Oh, this is ugly."

The cheap wiring was halfway melted near the power core. Fucked.

He frowned, tilting his head like that might help him piece together what had gone wrong. Some of it looked like factory defects, but there were...modifications?

Amateur ones, if the shitty soldering was anything to go by.

"Somebody did you real dirty, huh?" he muttered, not expecting an answer. The omnitool sparked faintly, making him flinch back just enough to scowl at it. "Alright, alright, keep your secrets."

The room around him was quiet, apart from the low hum of his tools and the faint, distant thrum of machinery outside the prefab walls. His focus tunneled in, the way it always did when he worked on something, as the outside world faded away.

Wire by wire, circuit by circuit, he started patching the thing back together as he removed what didn't work and got to the heart of it all, his movements sure and steady. It had to be said, though, that half the fixes didn't feel like actual solutions, just band-aids to keep the thing from falling apart completely.

Still, if it works…

Ten minutes in, the sluggish boot-up was gone. Progress.

Another twenty, and the cheap soldering was scraped clean, replaced with something that didn't make his nose wrinkle every time he looked at it.

"Almost there," he murmured, more to the omni-tool than himself. One last adjustment, and the flickering glow steadied, the badly-made omni humming faintly as it powered up. He leaned back, letting out a quiet exhale that wasn't quite relief.

"Not bad." Zedd ran his thumb along the edge of the casing, snapping it back into place with a small click. The omni blinked once, steady and stable now, though something about it still felt clunky.

That was a bigger problem. Could fix it. He frowned deeply, fingers drumming against the edge of the bench. Maybe.

"Yeah, but how?" This part left his mouth, his thoughts moving faster than his lips. "I don't know how to code."

Hell, the thought made his shoulders tense. He really didn't know programming. All his skills didn't go anywhere beyond patching holes in busted interfaces, and that was weird instinct and muscle memory, not knowledge. Still, the sluggishness bugged him.

Left it half-done.

That wasn't his style.

His eyes flicked to the terminal on the desk, the faint blue glow of its screen almost calling him to make an attempt. "Guess I could try."

He slid over to the terminal, its interface springing to life with a soft hum. The extranet search bar blinked at him, waiting.

Zedd cracked his knuckles out of habit, then hesitated. "...right. This is probably gonna suck."

Once again, he was right.

The first page of search results was a wall of jargon, half of it in languages he didn't recognize, the other half in tech-speak that made his head hurt. He clicked a few links at random, scanning guides and forums with an intensity that burned more energy than he realized.

Turns out, omnitool programming was a mess.

Salarians apparently invented the first models like half a millennium back, which explained the overcomplicated frameworks. Every race had their own variant standard of programming language for their omnitool development, which all meshed with each other perfectly somehow, which made perfect sense, sure. Weird fucking scifi logic.

Humans came way later, doing their own thing by layering a language called SolMod onto the existing systems—some derivative of something called "Swift."

"Swift," he muttered, the word rolling off his tongue.

It was familiar in a way that made him pause, fingers hovering over the terminal. 2014 familiar, maybe.

A fleeting image of a tired tech teacher with a gray datapad, a buzzcut and a coffee-stained tie flashed through his mind, but it vanished just as quickly as it came.

"Huh." Zedd leaned back in his chair, rubbing at the corner of his eye with a faint scowl. His gaze drifted back to the omnitool, its blue glow steady now, like it was waiting for him to make up his mind.

"Alright, then." He sat forward again, clicking his tongue on his teeth before diving in.

The deeper he went into the thing, the worse it looked.

Granted, he didn't consider himself an expert, especially after a few hours of learning, no matter how big his brain seemingly was, but he was pretty sure programming wasn't supposed to be pretty, but this?

This was just… wrong.

Tangles of compatibility frameworks layered on top of each other like someone was trying to stack a house of cards on quicksand. Salarian legacy framework barely managing to hold the messy shitpile of human-made code together with what had to be omni-gel and a whole lot of prayers to whatever religious trend was sweeping the NUSA right now.

Zedd frowned at the mess on his screen, the flickering light blue glow of the P-3 mocking him from the corner of the workbench.

"No wonder you run like shit, little guy" he muttered, barely sparing it a glance before diving back into the terminal.

His fingers flew across the interface, inputting commands, rewriting blocks of code, running test scripts. The rhythm of it was automatic now, muscle memory guiding his hands even when his brain didn't have answers yet.

Most of the time, it felt like chasing a shadow.

He stopped.

Blinked.

Stared hard at a particular string of code, the logic snapping into place all of a sudden.

"Okay, so... this connects here?" his voice trailed off as his hands moved, quick and precise, but still a little hesitant.

The screen flashed an error almost instantly, a sharp red across his vision.

"Damn it," he muttered, rubbing at his temple as the frustration settled under his skin. "Alright, not there."

He deleted the line and started over, the hum of the terminal filling the room as his focus tightened.

Time blurred.

The sound of his tools, the faint buzz of machinery outside the prefab walls, the occasional crackle from the P-3—all of it faded. His world narrowed to the glow of the screen and the mess of code in front of him.

His frustration peaked, the tension sharp in his chest, before leveling out.

He leaned in closer, his fingers moving faster, the adjustments coming more naturally now. The fixes built on each other, each one solving one problem while creating two more, but he didn't stop.

Delete. Rewrite. Test. Repeat.

"C'mon, c'mon..."

His voice was barely a whisper now, the words half-formed as his thoughts spiraled.

And then—

The screen blinked. No errors. The test ran clean.

Zedd sat back, his breath catching in his chest as his eyes skimmed the terminal.

Sluggishness? Gone. Interface? Smooth. Response time? Instant.

A grin tugged at his lips before he realized it. "Holy shit," he said, the words half a laugh.

He stared at the screen, letting the moment sink in.

"I did it."

"Let's get back to it," Zedd muttered, barely above a whisper. The omni-tool in his hands blinked faintly, its glow cutting through the dim light of the prefab.

Another busted relay. Great.

His thumb pressed against the stubborn wire, pushing it into place. The relay clicked, the faintest sound, but enough to make him sigh in relief. one down.

He set it aside and reached for the next one, fingers already searching for weak spots along the casing.

These things were piling up. Word had spread quick after that first fix, and now his desk looked like a graveyard for omni-tools. Most of them old models that barely qualified as functional anymore, but nobody wanted to shell out for replacements.

Business was always plentiful in a blue-collar neighborhood. Zedd shrugged, more to himself than anyone else. Work was work.

His grip tightened on the screwdriver as he leaned closer, focusing on the tiny screws along the side of the unit.

The quiet shuffle of footsteps behind him barely registered at first.

Then arms slid over his shoulders, slow and warm, pulling him back.

His hands froze, the tool slipping just enough to tap against the table.

He tensed automatically, breath catching, before the familiar smell hit him. Lavender, grease, a hint of cheap soap.

Nina.

Zedd let out a slow breath, his chest relaxing as he leaned into her hold.

Her nose brushed against his cheek, soft and teasing, her hair tickling the side of his face as she leaned in closer.

"Messin' up my focus," he mumbled, but there was no bite to it.

Her laugh was quiet, more air than sound.

"You say that every time," she said, her voice low and playful.

He tilted his head, catching her mouth in a quick kiss. Reflex, almost.

Her grin widened as she pulled back, hopping onto the edge of the desk beside him.

Nina.

It wasn't like they were a thing.

Not really.

She came and went, wore his shirts, sat in his chair sometimes, usually when he was still in it.

People talked.

Zedd didn't care.

He gave her a sideways glance, still fiddling with the omni-tool. "You're just here to distract me, huh?"

"Pretty much," she said, stretching her arms above her head. The hem of his shirt—definitely his—rose just enough to flash bare skin.

He looked. Couldn't help it.

Nina noticed, of course, her grin sharp now.

It helped that they weren't coworkers anymore.

She liked that part.

A lot.

Zedd pushed the chair back as she swung a leg over his lap, settling there like she belonged.

Her lips found his again, slower this time, more deliberate. His hands rested loose on her waist, fingers brushing the edge of the shirt as she kissed him. The hum of the terminal filled the quiet space, blending with the sound of her breath and his own.

Then his omni-tool beeped.

Zedd's head turned automatically, but Nina's hand caught his wrist before he could move.

"Zee," she said, her voice lower now, the teasing edge gone and replaced with another edge.

"Yeah?" he blinked, a little cautious.

She tilted his wrist slightly, the faint glow of the omni-tool lighting up her face.

"Who's Kira?"

Fuck.

Chapter Text

It was amazing how much rage could be pent up in such a tiny body.

Well… maybe amazing wasn't exactly the right word.

"Who. The. Fuck. is Kira?"

Annoying… that's what he was looking for.

"Nina…" a hard glare remained focused his way, forcing another sigh from his mouth, a sigh that the only other person in his living room didn't appreciate as said glare somehow doubled in the heat and force coming his way, "Like I told you three times already, she's just a friend."

Like not in the way we are, he didn't say, because he wasn't fucking stupid. Still, he never expected her to be this up in arms. Nothing about them had seemed… serious. They had never talked about it.

Really, there'd been very little talking at all the last month.

Very little sleeping too.

"Friends?" The small woman scoffed at the word. "What friends? You don't talk to fucking anyone. Ever! You don't even bother remembering people's names!" She threw her hands up in the air with a frustrated sound, curly hair bouncing with the motion. "All you do is read, work and smirk. You're a working smirker. That's all you do. You're a working smirker!"

Zedd stared at her blankly for a few seconds, rolling the words around in his head, unsure how to respond to that exactly. "...That's a terrible insult."

"...alright." She nodded, a very-not-amused smile crossing her face. "I'm done."

"Nina," her name escaped his lips with a sigh.

"No, I'm done with you," she continued, walking over to the door, still clad in his t-shirt, the thing reaching nearly to her knees.

"Nina…"

She shook her head and let out a negative-sounding noise, something not too far away from an error sound. "I'm done with you and your bullshit and your lies," she continued, crossing her arms over her chest in an X. The action made him remember that her bra was still probably under his pillow.

"Nina…" he walked up to her as she swung open the door, her name on his lips again like the colony's most exhausted-sounding parrot.

"What?!" She whirled on him with teeth bared.

"..." The seventeen-year old stared at his… his… his whatever-she-was and held back another sigh as he looked her in the eyes. "I'm gonna give you a day to calm down. Then I want to talk about this again."

Something like a growl escaped her gritted teeth as she pointed a finger in his face. "Never speak to me again, you fucking dick."

He stared flatly at her. "...Are you sure about that?"

The sound of his door slamming in his face answered that for him.

Five months into his time on New Abraham, Zedd's life had shifted from quiet, grudging work to a rhythm so tight it felt engineered.

Dawns hit early—alarm chiming just loud enough to get under his skin—while nights stretched past their limit, ending when his vision blurred and the light from his omni-tool burned. The prefab wasn't just a home anymore. It had turned into a nerve center for his work, humming with activity, alive in ways the sterile walls weren't. Tools sprawled across the main room like discarded puzzle pieces, cables coiled in corners, holoscreens layered with diagnostics hovering mid-air.

The new addition? A twelve-square-meter garage bolted onto the side

Fifteen thousand credits, half his profit for the month. He'd winced when the payment cleared, his omni-tool pinging with an annoyingly cheerful tone.

For a second, he'd almost canceled it.

Now? It felt like the smartest thing he'd done since landing.

The garage had its own vibe—utilitarian but still his. Shelves lined with parts and scavenged components covered one wall, organized in a way only he understood. A counter ran along the other side, clean enough to look professional but rough enough to say, yeah, this is mine.

Zedd crouched over a mining laser that morning, its guts spilled across his workbench in a tangled mess of melted connections and scorched capacitors. The thing was a disaster, but he didn't mind. Mining gear from the northern district usually came in worse. The techs up there charged double his rate and barely delivered.

"Amateurs," he muttered, leaning closer as he soldered a new capacitor into place.

A knock at the garage door pulled his focus. He sighed, setting the soldering iron aside as the smell of burnt circuits lingered in the air. "It's open!"

The door hissed open, revealing a middle-aged man clutching a battered datapad, its screen flickering like it was on life support. "Heard you're the guy to see for this kinda thing," the man said, his voice gruff but lined with expectation.

Zedd gestured toward the counter. "Drop it there. I'll take a look."

The datapad hit the counter with a dull thud as the man stepped back, arms folding over his chest.

Zedd ignored him.

People occasionally just stood and watched, like their staring somehow fixed the problem faster.

========================

Zedd hunched over his workbench, shoulders stiff from hours bent at the same angle. In his hand, a fractured drone emitter glinted faintly under the light. Its circuits were a spiderweb of damage, cracks running deep enough to make the whole thing feel pointless.

"Seen better days," he muttered, tilting it toward the glow of his holoscreen.

Across the counter, the client—a woman leaning with one arm propped—raised an eyebrow. Her shorts were aggressively short, her attitude sharper. "Can you fix it?"

Zedd smirked faintly, his confidence an afterthought. "Fix it? Nah. I can make it better."

Her eyebrow went higher, a challenge flickering in her expression. "I'd like to see that."

He didn't bother answering, already turning back to the workbench. It was amazing how bad people could really fuck up simple electronics half the time. Half the time, he wished he could just slap on some omnigel and call it a day. Then I wouldn't have a job, I guess.

An hour later, the space looked like it had gone to war. Drone parts sprawled across the table, servo motors clicking softly as he tested configurations. Salvaged alloys from an old mining exosuit he'd bought for scrap clattered into place, lighter and stronger than the original frame. The hum of his omni-tool filled the air as diagnostics ran, his focus so tight it drowned everything else out.

"C'mon," he muttered, adjusting the wiring on a modular joint. The drone's emitter sputtered, whirred, then sprang to life. It hovered above the bench, movements smooth and deliberate.

Zedd leaned back, wiping his hands on a rag. The grin tugging at his face felt earned.

Across the counter, the woman's bored mask cracked, her lips twitching up. "Better than I expected," she said.

Zedd shrugged, casual as ever. "You're welcome."

========================

Five minutes after the miner slammed the dust-caked kinetic drill onto the counter, the thing had already pissed Zedd off. Not because it was broken—that was expected—but because of the mess. His fingers ran over the vents, grit flaking off like dandruff. The casing felt warm, too, like the drill was trying to cook itself to death.

Great.

"Locks up every ten minutes," the miner growled, arms crossed tight over his chest like a shield. His voice was rough, gravel scraped over gravel.

Zedd tilted the drill, catching the faint rattle inside. Loose part, maybe? Or something worse. His thumb popped the casing open with a little effort, exposing the guts of the machine. "Cooling array's clogged to hell. Regulator's fried too. This thing's a disaster."

The miner didn't react, expression set in stone beneath his thick beard. Zedd sighed, rubbing a smear of grease off his palm with his pants. "But hey, lucky for you, I'm feeling generous."

"Generous?"

"Yeah, it's my day off," Zedd shot back, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smirk. It wasn't, but the guy didn't need to know that.

The miner's snort carried just enough disbelief to keep things from getting tense, but he stayed silent as Zedd set to work.

Two hours later, the drill looked almost presentable. Fresh parts, cleaned vents, even a slight upgrade to the cooling system. The thing purred in his hands, steady and even like it had never overheated in its life.

Zedd wiped the sweat off his brow, ignoring the smudge it left on his sleeve, and stepped outside. The sun was still hanging low over the horizon, the air buzzing faintly with the hum of far-off machinery.

"Here," he called, holding the drill out like a trophy.

The miner took it, his calloused fingers brushing against Zedd's for a split second before pulling away. Without a word, he turned toward a nearby slab of rock, flicked the switch, and let the drill roar.

The sound was sharp, piercing the quiet like a blade, but it didn't stutter once. Shards of rock flew as the drill tore through the surface, the blue glow of its diagnostics shining steady.

The miner nodded, so subtle Zedd almost missed it.

"Next time, don't let it turn into a glorified paperweight," Zedd said, wiping his hands on a rag that was already filthy.

The man grunted, something halfway between a thanks and a goodbye, before trudging off.

========================

A few hours later, a courier drone zipped in through the open door with zero patience. It dropped a package on the counter and quickly buzzed away, the thing sounding like it needed a tune-up as well.

Zedd frowned at the shield generator inside, its faded casing covered in scratches and dents. A small datapad taped to the side read, "Need stronger output. Be there tomorrow evening for pickup. -TL."

"TL, huh?" Zedd muttered, pulling the thing closer. It looked basic—definitely something for civvies, and not anything close to military or combat-rated.

Prying it open, he traced the circuitry with his eyes, his brain already mapping the upgrades. The power distribution nodes were weak, fried in places. The capacitors? Barely hanging on.

The generator was limping at best. "Oh, you've got problems."

He didn't even bother cursing. Just grabbed his tools and started fixing.

========================

It took hours.

New circuits, soldering joints that sparked a little too close to his fingers, swapping out the power nodes entirely. The hum of his omni-tool filled the air, steady and constant as the generator's casing began to glow faintly under his desk lamp.

"Come on," he muttered, leaning in close as he adjusted the wiring.

The generator pulsed once, a faint blue flicker that settled into a steady rhythm. The energy field flared to life, brighter and more stable than before, lighting up the dim garage like a miniature sun.

Zedd leaned back, his chair creaking as he stretched. His fingers ached, his sleeves were ruined, and his stomach growled in protest, but the field held steady.

"Next," he muttered, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

========================

With the garage empty, Zedd turned his attention to something that actually mattered. The goggles on his workbench sat like a dare, their casing scuffed and patched from weeks of trial and error.

He slid them over his eyes, the faint hum of power vibrating against his temples. The lenses flickered, the faint blue hud coming to life in the corner of his vision.

Rough.

Unfinished.

But functional.

Zedd twisted the haptic controls on the side, tweaking the settings until the interface synced with his omni-tool. The data overlays were crude, the diagnostics lagging by half a second, but they worked. Not the best on the market, but… he nodded to himself, we'll get there.

This was his day now—customers rolling in with busted tech, each one clutching their little disasters and half-baked explanations like they weren't the ones who probably wrecked it to begin with. A sluggish omnitool here, a fried drone motor there, even a half-dead auto-loader drone someone dragged over looking like it lost a fight with a rockslide. Zedd handled it all. Every job was another set of clues, and by the time the sun slipped past the horizon, his credit balance was better off than it had been in the morning.

But the money wasn't everything. It was the puzzle of it. The challenge of turning scraps into something functional, of making the things everyone else gave up on work like new. Not that he'd admit it—it wasn't about pride or anything soft like that. It just felt... right.

His smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as he tightened the final connection on the mining laser. Last one for the day, probably.

Then he heard the laugh—Kira's sharp, unmistakable—and the sound of Dev's voice booming loud enough to make the tools on the bench rattle.

"Yo, Zedd! You home?"

Zedd rolled his eyes, not bothering to look up as the trio barged in like they owned the place.

"Nah," he muttered under his breath, already bracing for the chaos. Kira was first through the door, her blue hair catching the garage lights as her smirk widened.

"Well, well," she said, dragging out the words like she was tasting them, arms folding over her navy shirt. Muscle tone was starting to show on her arms—probably from all the military drills.

Zedd didn't even glance up. "Real original, Kira. Eighty square meters, not a mansion."

He could practically feel her rolling her eyes. "Better than the dumps they got us in."

"Course it's better," he shot back, finally glancing at her. "It ain't the barracks. Anyway, what're you guys doing here? Shouldn't you be busy pretending to be soldiers or something?"

Dev clapped him on the back, and Zedd barely caught the mining laser before it slipped out of his hands.

"Hey, don't knock it, man. We're learning valuable life skills. Like how to run laps till you puke," Dev said, grinning like the idea didn't make him want to die.

Adele leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching the back-and-forth with that quiet amusement she always had. "And don't forget scrubbing floors till they shine. Critical military prep."

"Sounds like a blast," Zedd deadpanned, finally setting the laser down and turning to face them. "So, what? You here to remind me why I don't miss working with people?"

"Nah," Dev said, dropping onto a stool like he belonged there, twirling a wrench between his fingers. "We're here to see this empire you're building. Said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm impressed. You've got a whole operation going."

Zedd shrugged, trying to downplay the flicker of pride that crept up uninvited. "It pays the bills. Unlike whatever you guys are calling work these days."

"Don't get too comfortable, Victors," Kira cut in, her smirk sharp as she glanced around the room. "We might recruit you when we're done with training. A brain like yours? Could be useful."

"Hard pass," Zedd shot back immediately, earning a laugh from Dev.

Dev leaned forward, grinning wide enough to be obnoxious. "By the way, Z, forgot to thank you for saving my bacon with Rourke last week."

Zedd froze for a second, his mouth twitching before it settled into a flat line.

"...Yep."

The garage thrummed with a faint undercurrent of machinery noise, broken occasionally by the metallic scrape of tools against the workbench. Zedd hunched over his project, fingers deftly peeling back the casing on a worn-out Omnitool. The mess on his L-shaped desk—wires coiled like snakes, terminals blinking at uneven intervals, scattered schematics—might've looked chaotic to anyone else, but it was all muscle memory to him.

He almost missed the footsteps, faint against the background hum, but the sharp edge of Dev's voice snapped his focus.

"Yo, Zedd! You got a second?"

Zedd's head jerked up, vision swimming for half a second. Weird… like everything had shifted just slightly off-center. Shaking it off, he blinked and looked toward the door.

Dev stood there, his frame filling the doorway like he owned the place. The armor he wore was scuffed, the dull gray plates lined with streaks of dirt and the faint shine of overuse. The dark blue trim around the edges wasn't doing it any favors, nearly lost against the grime, but the eagle insignia on the shoulder stood out clear enough: militia gear. Cheap and functional. Probably good enough to stop small rounds or maybe a glancing blade. Not much more than that.

Zedd's eyes dragged over the full-face visor, scratched to hell and retracting with a soft hiss as Dev flipped it back. That cocky grin split across his face like always—confidence radiating, even when there was nothing to back it up.

But it wasn't just Dev. Someone followed him in, footsteps heavier, steadier. The kind of measured pace that made Zedd's instincts twinge.

The guy was older, mid-forties maybe, with armor that said "Commanding Officer" before he even opened his mouth. The plating was reinforced, polished enough to reflect the dim light, with gold accents catching just enough attention without looking gaudy. His helmet stayed on, the visor glowing faintly from what had to be an advanced HUD. The way the bulkier frame moved with him made it clear—this wasn't for show.

Zedd's gaze lingered, taking in the man's posture. Shoulders squared, every step deliberate, his head turning just enough to survey the garage without making it obvious.

Former Alliance, Zedd thought, the idea slotting into place like it had been waiting for him. Had to be.

The man's focus settled on Zedd finally, eyes behind the visor tracking him with a practiced precision.

"Good afternoon," he said, his tone clipped, deliberate, almost mechanical. "Lieutenant Carter Rourke, New Abraham Militia and Security Corps."

Zedd straightened slightly, dragging a rag across his hands as his eyes flicked back to Dev. The dude was nervous. Dev wasn't supposed to look nervous.

Rourke wasn't waiting for a response.

"Private First Class Devraj Shankar spoke on some matters I overheard," he continued, the rank spat out with a faint edge, "He managed to mention your… work." The pause before "work" was deliberate, almost like he didn't want to say it. "He seems to think you're something of a savant… when it comes to the repair and modification of technology."

Zedd's tongue met his teeth in that familiar click, the teenager leaning back as Rourke spoke with the sort of dismissiveness in his tone that many of his customers had when they finally saw him in person. "Guess that's one way to put it," he said, his voice light as his eyes dropped to Rourke's Omnitool.

The faint blue flicker of the interface caught his attention immediately. Civ-grade. Armax logo. Zedd's grin sharpened as recognition clicked into place.

"Wait a second," he said, pointing, the grin widening. "Is that an Armax?"

Dev flinched, the motion barely noticeable, but his shoulders tightened like he'd just been called out.

"It is," Rourke said flatly, his tone steady as stone.

Zedd tilted his head, the grin slipping into something closer to a smirk. "Lemme guess. You saw the name Armax and thought, 'Top-tier combat tech,' right?" He laughed under his breath, shaking his head. "Yeah, no. Armax makes killer guns, sure, but their Omnitools? They've got, what, one civ-grade model? And it's…" He trailed off, pulling a face.

"Subpar," Rourke finished, his voice dry, the kind of dry that told Zedd this wasn't the first time he'd heard it.

"Yeah. Subpar," Zedd echoed, his fingers drumming idly against the workbench.

Rourke's gaze didn't waver. "The question is, can you make it better?"

Zedd leaned forward slightly, resting his elbow on the bench as the smirk returned full force.

"Better? Nah," he said, his tone dripping with confidence. "I can make it stupid good. Question is, how much you looking to throw down?"

Zedd leaned back, his eyebrows shooting up as Rourke's words registered. "Ten thousand credits," the lieutenant had said, like it wasn't the kind of number that could make someone double-take.

He let out a low whistle, his lips quirking into a half-smile. "Damn. Big spender."
Dev, standing just behind Rourke, didn't handle it as cool. "Bro," he hissed, his voice somewhere between panic and disbelief, "what the hell—"
Rourke silenced him with a sharp look, the kind that could make you regret opening your mouth.

"Half now," the lieutenant said, his Omnitool lighting up as he flicked through commands, "half on completion."

Zedd's Omnitool pinged softly, the notification confirming the transfer. He grinned, leaning forward to extend his hand, his grip firm but casual. "Deal."

Rourke unclasped his Omnitool with the same precision he seemed to do everything else, passing it over without hesitation. "I expect results, Victors."

Zedd turned the device in his hands, spinning it once like it was a prize he'd already won. "Results are my thing," he said, his confidence bordering on cocky.

Without another word, Rourke turned on his heel and strode out of the garage. Dev lingered, rubbing the back of his neck, his expression a mix of disbelief and frustration.

"Zedd," he started, his tone low but insistent, "do not screw this up. That's my C.O., bro. If you mess this up, he's gonna make my life a living hell."

Zedd waved him off, barely looking up as he set the Omnitool down on his workbench. "Relax, man. Wouldn't dream of it. Your guy's about to have the best damn Omnitool in the colony."

Dev muttered something under his breath—probably unflattering—but followed Rourke out without pushing it further.

Zedd stared at the Omnitool for a moment, the smirk on his face lingering as he turned it over in his hands again. "Stupid good," he murmured, his mind already cataloging what it would take to make good on that promise.

========================

Six days later, the Omnitool was gone, handed off to Rourke with the kind of smirk Zedd didn't entirely feel. But the image of it hadn't left him yet, sharper in his head than he would've liked.

Sleek casing, reinforced with scavenged alloys to withstand more than the occasional bump. The polished surface caught the light just enough to look professional, almost intimidating. The rewired kinetic barrier enhancers—originally an Armax oversight—distributed power evenly, creating a field that could hold against small-arms fire. Maybe even a heavier hit, if Rourke was lucky.

But that was the problem, wasn't it? Luck.

Zedd leaned back in his chair, his jaw tightening as he replayed the handoff in his head. Rourke's grin had been genuine, like Zedd had handed him a Spectre-class upgrade instead of a patchwork prototype. The Omni-blade had flickered to life on command, its orange glow cutting clean through the dim light of the garage. The combat scanner, jury-rigged from salvaged mining gear, purred as it swept the area, flagging mock threats with smooth precision.

It had all worked.

Every feature had done exactly what it was supposed to do.

But all Zedd could see were the cracks and the seams.

The Medi-gel dispenser had been an afterthought, shoved into a system that wasn't really designed to handle it. It worked, sure, but it was a roughshod edition at best. The integration slowed the response time—fine for a colony-level medbay, maybe, but not combat. And the encryption? Patched up enough to handle most local threats, but hardly anything that a half-trained Alliance N1 tech couldn't crack in a firefight.

Citadel-grade? Not even close.

Zedd dragged a hand down his face, his eyes fixed on the empty spot on his workbench where the Omnitool had sat just days before. It wasn't about trust—he trusted his work. But it wasn't good enough. Not for the battlefield.

He could still hear his own voice during the handoff, walking Rourke through every feature with a smoothness that didn't match the knots in his gut. He'd sold it, sure. But the weight of what he hadn't fixed, hadn't had time to perfect, sat heavy in the back of his mind.

"Stupid good," he muttered under his breath, the words sour now. Good for the colony. Not for out there.

And yet, Rourke handed over a thousand-credit bonus like it was nothing, grinning like he'd just secured the deal of the year. The chime of the transfer had barely registered before the man was out the door, his strides deliberate and unapologetic, leaving Zedd staring at his own Omnitool.

A thousand credits.

His lips quirked, but the grin didn't feel right. It never did. Not when he knew what he could've done if he'd had more time. Or better materials.

Or both.

Still, he shook his head, snapping himself out of it. "So," he said, letting the word drag a little, "you guys just here to see me work?"

Kira didn't even hesitate. "Nah, that's bullshit. We're taking you out."

Zedd blinked, eyebrows rising as he tilted his head slightly. "Out?"

"Out," Dev echoed, grinning like the idea was already settled.

Adele leaned in from where she'd been standing by the doorway, her arms crossed in that casual way she always did. "Come on, Z. When was the last time you actually took a break?"

Zedd opened his mouth to answer but came up short, realization dawning. Sleep didn't count. Neither did the fifteen minutes here and there when he scarfed down rations between jobs.

Adele didn't wait for a response. "Uh-huh, just like I thought. In my expert medical opinion, you need a night off."

"Like going to a bar with us," Kira added, her smirk sharp enough to cut.

Reflexively, Zedd shot back, "I don't drink."

The collective groans from the three of them were immediate and synchronized, like they'd been rehearsing it.

"What?" Zedd asked, glancing between them.

Dev leaned in, gesturing with exaggerated frustration. "Bro, you say this every time. You even made me waste that twelve-pack I brought over for you. To share, by the way."

Adele didn't miss a beat. "Waste? You drank all of it."

Dev glanced at her, wide eyed and whiny. "Babe, don't embarrass me."

Zedd snorted. "I was there. She was there. Kira was the only one not there."

"And I'm sad I missed it," Kira said, her grin widening.

Zedd rolled his eyes, already turning back toward his workbench. "And I'm sad I can't go out with you. There's no way you're getting me to go."

Somehow, they got him to go.

Granted, Zedd didn't put up much of a fight, if he was being honest, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to grumble about it.

The four of them sat in Dev's patrol car as the overmuscled guy parked it on a busy downtown street. Zedd stepped out after the others, glancing up at the bar they'd dragged him to.

Iron Sight.

His eyebrow arched as he read the glowing letters plastered above the entrance. "This the place?" he asked, closing the car door behind him.

Kira rolled her eyes, slapping him on the back hard enough to make him stumble a step forward. "What do you think, genius?"

Zedd shot her a look but didn't argue, instead trailing his gaze to Dev's car.

The thing looked like someone's idea of a military-grade brick on wheels. Squat, wide, and utilitarian, the vehicle's reinforced panels gave it a rugged, industrial vibe. Dark gray with faint blue accents lining the edges, it wasn't winning any style points, and the eagle emblem stamped on the doors looked more scuffed than official. Tactical lights ran along the frame, glowing faintly, more practical than decorative.

Zedd snorted, shaking his head as he followed the others toward the entrance. If they were putting Dev in a glorified brick like that, they definitely weren't expecting high-speed chases anytime soon.

Inside, the bar was everything Zedd had expected and worse.

Iron Sight was loud. Not just loud, but packed and obnoxiously overdone. Sleek holo-screens cluttered the walls, each one blasting ads or highlights from some colony sports league he didn't care about. The speakers thumped with bass-heavy music, competing with the noise of clinking glasses, half-shouted conversations, and bursts of laughter.

As they pushed deeper into the chaos, Zedd's gaze swept over the crowd. Lots of muscle, lots of dark clothing that screamed practicality over style.

"Huh…" he muttered under his breath, his eyes narrowing as he took it all in. Name's starting to make sense now.

"C'mon, Z!" Dev's voice cut through the bar's chaos, his frame weaving effortlessly through the crowd. Zedd followed, hands stuffed into his pockets, dodging a server who almost clipped him with a tray of frothing glasses. The place smelled like sweat, fried food, and desperation. By the time they hit the booth in the back, the noise was a full-on assault, pressing in from every direction.

Kira slid in first, throwing herself across the seat like she owned it. Her blue hair caught the pulsing lights overhead, flashing neon streaks across her grin. Dev followed, taking the middle seat with a thud, while Adele moved with that easy grace of hers, slipping in beside Kira. Zedd took the opposite bench, leaning back, trying not to let the dim glow of the holo-screens drilling ads into his retinas get to him.

The server appeared almost immediately, her eyes half-lidded, the kind of deadpan that came from too many shifts dealing with drunks and idiots. She had a pad in her hand and zero patience.

"Drinks?" she asked flatly, not even trying to fake pleasantries.

"Four house specials. And wings. The spicy ones," Kira said, kicking back with a grin that said she lived for this.

"Three specials," Zedd corrected, cutting her off. "And a Silas Cola."

The server blinked, looking at him like he'd just insulted her family. "Silas? Not Blasto?"

Zedd nodded, unfazed. "Yeah. Silas."

She rolled her eyes. "Your call," she muttered before disappearing into the crowd.

Kira turned her attention to him, leaning forward, her grin sharper now, more mocking. "Silas? Really? Richie's got no taste."

Zedd arched an eyebrow. "Says the girl drinking house piss. At least I know what's in mine."

Adele chuckled softly, brushing a stray lock of hair out of her face. "He's got a point."

"Nah, he's just boring," Dev chimed in, leaning his elbows on the table. "Zedd, you gotta loosen up. Like, once. For science."

"Science?" Zedd asked, deadpan.

"Yeah, science," Dev shot back, his grin wide. "Like studying the effects of not being a buzzkill on your social life."

"Pass."

Their drinks arrived, the tray clattering onto the table along with a bucket of wings that smelled like regret. Zedd grabbed his cola, taking a sip as Dev launched into one of his patrol stories, the kind where you could tell half of it was made up but entertaining enough that no one called him on it.

"So then, this guy," Dev said, gesturing wildly, "he takes one look at me—just one—and books it. Like full-on sprint."

"And you let him go?" Kira asked, one eyebrow arching.

"Hell no!" Dev looked offended. "I chased his ass halfway across the district."

Adele shook her head, smiling faintly. "And let me guess. He got away?"

Dev froze, his grin faltering. "...Maybe."

Zedd snorted, shaking his head. "So basically, you're the guy they call when they need comic relief."

"Don't hate the hustle, Zee," Dev shot back, pointing a wing at him. "Besides, I'm not the one who spent two hours yesterday fixing a coffee machine."

"Espresso module, not a coffee machine," Zedd corrected reflexively.

"Same thing."

Kira rolled her eyes, cutting in before Dev could argue further. "Anyway, I've got real news. Turns out being a biotic means I get special training. Like, actual perks."

Zedd blinked. Biotic? Seriously? He filed the thought away, keeping his expression neutral. That actually made her spot on the colony ship make a lot more sense. "Explains why you're insufferable."

"Keep talking, Richie," Kira shot back, smirking. "We'll see who's insufferable when I can throw you across a room with my brain."

Adele shook her head, laughing softly. "You two are impossible."

Their banter was cut short by a sudden, sharp slap of palms hitting the table. The glasses rattled, one of the wings almost toppling over. Zedd's head snapped up, his shoulders instinctively squaring as his eyes locked on the man standing there.

Connor.

The dickhead junior manager from the energy hub.

The guy looked rough—flushed, swaying slightly, the stink of alcohol clinging to him like a bad cologne. His eyes were bloodshot, and the sneer twisting his face was enough to put Zedd on edge.

"What… what are you doing here?" Connor slurred, the words dragging like he was trying to piece them together as he said them.

Kira's grin disappeared instantly, replaced by a look sharp enough to cut. "Can we help you?"

Dev leaned forward slightly, his tone dropping into something colder, more serious. "Yeah, bro. You got a problem?"

Zedd stayed quiet, his expression unreadable, as Connor's bloodshot gaze bore into him. His hands rested on the table, steady despite the pressure building in the air. Connor, though...

Connor looked one wrong word away from throwing something—probably his fists, maybe his drink. He'd seen tons of guys on the streets the same way—almost vibrating with that unpredictable energy people only carried when they were drunk as fuck and thought they were still in control. And people wonder why I don't like the shit.

Zedd kept silent as he stared back at Connor with a blank face, the red-faced man staring right back at him.

His thumb twitched, brushing against the edge of the table, nowhere near the gun at his hip, but he could feel the weight of it anyway. The Victor MK 1, sleek and stripped of the cheapness it once carried as a Devlon company Guardian Lite with the blocky, awkward shape, and the lack of proper balancing. It wasn't just a shitty gun anymore—it was his, through and through. Polymer frame reinforced, tuned perfectly, its matte black finish marked only by the deep red engraving of his name. It hummed with silent potential, the high-efficiency capacitor and micro-gyro stabilizer promising precision and power both.

But he didn't reach for it.

Not yet.

Connor's breath reeked of alcohol, the sour tang cutting through the bar's overlapping noises. Kira sat across from Zedd, her sharp eyes flicking between the two men, her posture deceptively casual but ready to spring. Adele was quieter, her grip tightening on the edge of the table like she was already planning an exit route.

Dev, meanwhile, shifted in his seat, his usual ease traded for something tense, like he was waiting for the first punch to fly.

"We got a problem, Connor?" Zedd finally asked, his voice calm, almost bored.

Connor's laugh was more of a bark, his hand slamming down onto the table, making the glasses jump. "You. Yeah, you're my problem." His words slurred slightly, but the venom in them cut through the drunken haze. "The fuck are you even doing here?"

Zedd tilted his head, a faint smirk pulling at his lips. "Sitting. Existing. Offending your delicate sensibilities, apparently."

Kira snorted at that, leaning back and folding her arms. "He always this charming, or is it just the alc talking?"

Connor ignored her, his attention locked on Zedd like a heat-seeking missile. "You don't belong here. This place—it's for us."

Zedd's smirk faded slightly as he gestured vaguely at the bar's interior. "Mmmm… You're former militia… no, you've been at the Hub at least half a decade. Colony's only officially twice that, I say officially because we both know how frontier colonies work." He blinked for a half second before he clicked his tongue, realization flooding his mind as he snapped his fingers and let out a slight hum. "Lemme guess, passed basic training but your bald ass couldn't handle the actual job. Am I close?"

"Watch your mouth," Connor snarled, stepping closer, his hand twitching like he was debating grabbing something.

"Or what?" Kira interjected, her tone sharp enough to draw blood. Her eyes narrowed, and for a second, Zedd wondered if she'd jump in before he had to.

"Guys, maybe we don't need to—" Dev started, but he was cut off by another voice.

"Connor."

The newcomer's tone was light but firm, cutting through the noise. Tall and wiry, the guy slipped through the crowd with practiced ease, his jacket hanging loose over his thin frame. The leather looked like it had seen better days, patched and worn in ways that suggested more fights than repairs.

"Kief," Connor spat, not looking at him.

Kief stepped closer, resting a hand on Connor's shoulder with the kind of casualness that only came from familiarity. "What's going on here, man?"

Connor gestured wildly at Zedd, nearly toppling his drink. "This asshole doesn't belong here. He's—"

"Just sitting," Zedd interrupted, his voice level but edged with irritation.

"He's not one of us," Connor snapped, louder this time, drawing a few glances from nearby tables.

Kief raised an eyebrow, his gaze flicking to Zedd and back to Connor, and raised both hands in a calming gesture. "Con, bro, that's not really a rule—"

"You don't get it, Kief," Connor snapped, his face reddening further as his voice climbed over the din of the bar. "He took my girl!"

Zedd blinked, his brows knitting together in confusion. "...Nina?" His voice came out quieter than he expected, laced with a disbelief that was quickly replaced by irritation. "You hate me 'cause of Nina?"

"Who's Nina?" Kira asked, her tone sharp.

Zedd didn't look at her. "Kay, not the time." It really wasn't, especially considering Nina hadn't even so much as rang his holo in the last 2 months. Apparently, they were more serious than he thought, even though they hadn't done anything more serious than… well, you know.

He also didn't know how to bring up to his friend that his kinda-sorta maybe ex-girlfriend carried a hateboner for her when all she knew was her name.

Connor's hand slammed down again, rattling the table. "You—she's a good girl, and you took advantage of her!"

Please, shut the ever-loving fuck up. Zedd exhaled, a sharp, clipped sound that teetered on the edge of a laugh. Nina was many things, but she wasn't some innocent maiden, he knew that for a fact.

"Bad girl, actually," he said, the words cutting through Connor's drunken fury for at the very least a moment. "That's what she prefers to be called. A whole thing with her, honestly. Just for your late night fantasies, big bro." His voice dipped into a bit more smug as he clicked his tongue on purpose this time, rather than the instinctive tic it usually was "And, let's be real, if anyone was taking advantage of someone, it wasn't me."

Connor's face twisted, the faint pink flush of alcohol deepening into something darker. The kind of red that came right before someone made a mistake.

"Hey, hey," Kief broke in, his voice jumping an octave as he tightened his grip on Connor's shoulder. "Relax, man. He's just a kid."

"A kid," Connor spat, shaking off Kief's hand, "who doesn't know his fuckin' place."

Zedd tilted his head, expression carefully blank. "Is that Nina's place or mine?"

Kira's voice sliced through the tension, her tone dry but laced with irritation. "Seriously, who the hell is Nina?"

The words hit their mark, pulling Connor back into the moment just long enough for Kief to step in again. His voice dropped, his tone firm but not unkind. "All right, that's enough. Connor, cool off. Kid," he turned to Zedd, his expression tight, "might be best if you head out."

Kira bristled immediately, her scowl deepening, her voice rising. "You're kidding me. He didn't do anything."

Adele wasn't far behind, her arms crossed, her tone cutting. "Yeah, seriously. This guy's been harassing us since he walked over."

Zedd sighed, stepping back from the table. "Nah, it's cool." The words were low, quiet, as he straightened and adjusted his jacket.

"Zee, c'mon," Dev started, his voice somewhere between a plea and a warning, but Zedd ignored him.

"No big deal," Zedd said, his tone casual, almost lazy. The deliberate kind of casual that made it clear he wasn't taking any of this seriously. As he rounded the table, his steps slow, measured, he let his gaze land on Connor one more time. His voice dropped, just loud enough for Connor to hear. "And let's not kid ourselves, man. Nina was never your girl."

Connor's jaw tightened, his breath hitching like he was gearing up to respond, but Zedd cut him off before he could. "Besides," he added, his voice quieter, sharper, "we both know she prefers guys who are actually good with their hands."

That was it.

The line snapped, and Connor moved without thinking, his fist swinging wide and sloppy.

Zedd's body moved fast, nearly as fast as his mind, instincts kicking in before the punch even got close. He ducked, leaning into the movement, his left shoulder forward to block the brunt of the momentum. The swing sailed past harmlessly, the force pulling Connor off balance.

Zedd didn't stop to think. A quick jab to the ribs to make him double over. A sharp strike to the arm, throwing the drunk's weight off completely. Then a deliberate shove, two hands against the chest, sending Connor sprawling to the floor with a thud that cut through the bar's noise like a gunshot.

Silence followed.

Not complete—there was still the faint hum of music, the clinking of glasses—but the conversations around them had dropped off, replaced by the heavy weight of eyes on him.

Zedd straightened slowly, rolling his shoulders, the faint sting in his knuckles already fading. He glanced around, catching a mix of stares—shock, amusement, a few unimpressed expressions—but no one moved to intervene.

Connor groaned from the floor, clutching his side, and Zedd exhaled as his eyes went dull again. A half-second later, the world came back into focus and he found himself running a hand through his hair as he forced a sheepish smile. "He swung first?"

Kira's laugh broke the tension, sharp and loud. "You're such a dickhead."

Chapter Text

Zedd slouched forward, complaining elbows digging into the workbench as the dim blue glow of his omnitool flickered against the dull light overhead. Wires, cracked circuit boards, tools scattered stared back at him in the mess of his workshop.

It was chaos, yeah, but it worked for him.

Everything had its place, even if it didn't look like it.

The mess mapped his projects better than any plan ever could.

On the left, the battered husk of a Devlon Worker Bee Mk III drone twitched faintly as he poked at its wiring. It looked half-dead, the kind of junk even scrap rats would pass on, which made sense given it was at least seven years out of date. But he could see through the mess to what it could be. potential, just waiting for the right hands.

His hands.

"Stubborn lil dickhead, aren't you?" His voice came out muffled under the snug goggles perched over his face. No reply, obviously, but the faint whir of its diagnostics felt like it was talking back anyway.

He couldn't tell if it was mocking him or just as tired as he was.

The goggles' hud flickered to life, syncing smoothly to his omnitool. blue-tinted readouts crawled across his lenses, pulsing faintly in time with the drone's gutted power core. Zedd tilted his head, watching the patterns. something felt off there, but he couldn't pin it yet. He reached for a salvaged regulator nearby, its edges worn smooth by years of use. His hands moved on autopilot, the motions familiar enough to let his brain wander.

The plan wasn't to just patch the drone up and call it a day.

Nah, that'd be boring.

This thing needed to be better—faster, smarter, built for more than what it was ever meant to handle. When he could tweak the core right—not if, when—maybe mix in some of Devlon's hive programming, it'd save him hours down the line.

Delegation, right?

Let the bot handle the grunt work. He had bigger things waiting.

His gaze slid sideways to the pile of emitters tangled with wiring on his right. kinetic barriers, or what was supposed to be. They were the kind of crap designed to make civilians feel safe but never actually worked when it counted. Way too much power wasted trying to protect everything instead of focusing on what actually mattered. Not that popular for a reason, for anyone outside of basic no-brain civs.

The inefficiency made his teeth itch.

He flipped the goggles up onto his forehead, leaning back to rub at the bridge of his nose.

His eyes stayed locked on the emitters, though, like glaring at them hard enough might fix their stupid design flaws. "Gotta get you sorted sooner than later," he muttered, mostly to himself. his thoughts jumped ahead, already picking at solutions. The shields didn't need to cover everything—just the essentials.

Head, chest, thighs, maybe.

Saving power was better than trying to tank every hit.

Sure, it left him open in places, but if someone managed to tag him in the shin? "That's on me for standing still like a dumbass."

His omnitool beeped softly, and he tapped in a quick note without looking. Stagger recharge cycle. Balance generator load. Stop frying the damn thing.

It wasn't the first time he'd told himself something like that, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

His eyes flicked to the corner of the garage where his recently purchased half-wrecked sports car sat under the weak glow of the flickering light. Mr. Jaxon was nearly in tears when I transferred the credits over, he thought with a snort, thinking of the recently married couple one neighborhood over. Guess Mrs. Jaxon finally put her foot down after a bad financial decision merged with a bad driving decision.

The dented frame still looked fast somehow, even dead as it was. He hadn't touched the engine yet—should've, but hadn't.

Instead, half his morning had gone to sketching out upgrades he didn't have the time or parts for. Turbochargers, hybridized drives, maybe even a kinetic barrier system just to make it into a juggernaut if he needed to.

Why not?

He snorted softly at his own thoughts, his fingers tapping out a rhythm against the bench that synced up with the faint hum of the drone's power core. The car wasn't even close to running, but the ideas wouldn't leave him alone. His brain kept pitching stuff like it had nothing better to do.

Jump jets.

The words hit like a punch out of nowhere, making his fingers pause mid-tap.

He let the thought sit there for a second, rolling it around in his head before testing it out loud.

"Jump jets."

He glanced toward the shelves along the back wall, squinting through the weak light. Parts from old mining exosuits were shoved into uneven stacks, collecting dust like they were part of the decor. Most of it wasn't worth the effort, but… maybe.

With the right mods, he could throw together something light enough to use for short bursts.

Nothing crazy.

Just enough to get vertical when he needed it.

His fingers twitched like they wanted to grab something, but his attention slipped instead to another half-baked idea circling his head: software. He could link it all together—drone, barriers, hell, maybe even the car. One system pulling everything into a neat, usable package.

Maybe throw in a VI, something basic, to run it all.

Yeah, that's what I need, he thought, the sarcasm sharp enough to cut. "A little voice nagging me about what I'm doing wrong," he muttered, the corner of his mouth twitching like it couldn't decide whether to smile or frown.

Still, the thought stuck. It had a spark to it, something too solid to let go of even as he leaned back over the drone and flicked his soldering iron back on. "One thing at a time," he reminded himself, more out of habit than actual conviction.

The solder hissed as it hit the connection, a thin trail of smoke curling upward. The drone hummed to life under his hands, trembling just enough to let him know its systems were spinning up like they should. Zedd smirked, wiping a streak of grease off his cheek with the back of his wrist. "That's what I'm talking about."

He glanced over at the sportscar again, parked like some wounded animal in the corner of the garage. The crumpled hood caught the faint overhead light, gleaming like a challenge. There were a hundred ways to mess with it, a hundred problems waiting to be solved, and for now, they'd all have to wait.

The drone was done, the barriers still needed work, and his brain was already kicking around half a dozen ideas about how to make the jump jets actually fly.

Clink.

The faint sound of a tool hitting the workbench barely registered. His focus was tangled up in the logistics of energy dispersion, heat regulation, and how to keep the jets from cooking the user alive mid-flight. His goggles had slipped down around his neck at some point, and he was running his thumb along the edge of the drone's reinforced frame when the voice cut through his thoughts.

"You gonna light yourself on fire or what?"

Zedd's head snapped up, the voice smooth and too familiar, tinged with just enough teasing to make him roll his eyes before he even looked. Kira leaned against the doorframe like she owned the place, arms crossed and a smirk on her face sharp enough to draw blood.

He groaned, though the hint of a smile tugged at his lips. "Don't you knock?"

"Door's open," she shot back, pushing off the frame with that lazy kind of confidence that was all hers. "That's basically an invitation."

"Yeah, well, next time I'll put up a sign. No Kira allowed."

"You'd miss me," she said, the smirk widening as she glanced around the room, her eyes landing on the sportscar. She let out a low whistle, shaking her head like she couldn't decide if she was impressed or horrified. "What's this? You buy this piece of junk, or did it crash through your garage on its own?"

Zedd snorted, leaning back in his chair. "Ten credstacks. Worth every single one."

"Ten…" Kira raised an eyebrow, the disbelief plain on her face. "Even for a roadster, that's a bad call."

"So, like every project I start."

"Uh-huh." She wandered closer, her eyes flicking over the mess of tools and parts on the workbench. She picked up a battered soldering iron, twirling it between her fingers like it was a toy. "You ever think about working on one thing at a time?"

Zedd tilted his head, pretending to think about it. "Nah. Too boring. Chaos keeps me sharp." And the money coming in.

"Funny. Chaos usually just blows people up." Her tone stayed light, but something flickered across her face—quick, faint, almost too subtle to catch.

Concern.

Weird, coming from her.

It threw him off, just for a second. Kira didn't usually hang out in his garage like this. Holo-calls, sure, but being here, in person, made the air feel heavier somehow.

Different. Awkward, even, now that she'd been showing up more lately.

It wasn't like when Adele or Devraj had tagged along, either.

Without them, it just felt… tense.

"Worried about me, Baby Blue?" Zedd let the grin soften just enough to take the edge off his words, leaning back further and letting his arms drape over the chair's armrests.

Kira snorted, not missing a beat. "Someone has to be." She twirled the soldering iron once more before pointing it at him like a warning. "Especially since you're apparently one misstep away from turning this place into a firework."

"Be one hell of a show, though," Zedd said, not quite looking at her, his smirk tugging at the edges of his mouth. "Bet you'd be front row."

"Hard pass." Kira set the soldering iron down with a click that echoed sharper than it needed to. Her arms crossed, her expression landing somewhere between a glare and one of those looks teachers used when they wanted to roast you in front of the whole class. "Seriously, though. Slow down. Or, like, focus on one thing before you accidentally blow a hole in the wall."

He shrugged, flicking a glance at the drone like it had an answer to give. "Can't help it. Too many ideas bouncing around."

"Try harder," she said, dry as hell, though there was a glint of humor there, buried under the scolding. Her eyes swept over the room again, landing on the sportscar like it had personally offended her. "So, what's the plan with that? You gonna fix it up, or is it just here to flex on your other junk?"

"Fixing it," Zedd said, letting the grin grow a little. There was no way he wasn't gonna buy it once he found the thing; it being half a wreck didn't really do much to change where he stood either way. A real aggressive looking sportscar was a rare find, especially on a colony, what with most of them looking like sleek little toys to copy the pattern of Mass Effect using spaceships and aircars. "Eventually. Might mod it, too."

"Mod it," Kira repeated, raising an eyebrow like he'd just suggested putting wings on it. Which… wasn't a bad idea. "Coming from the guy who can't touch anything without turning it into a walking hazard."

"It's a talent," he said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the bench. "Besides, wasn't it you who went full missile during training? Don't throw shade when you're out there trying to become an actual projectile."

"It's called practice," she shot back, her smirk creeping back to life. "You should try it sometime."

"Don't need it." Zedd's grin widened like the smartass he was. "Natural talent."

"Uh-huh," Kira said, rolling her eyes but still somehow failing to hide the twitch at the corner of her mouth. "Natural talent doesn't stop explosions."

"Yeah, maybe not." He looked back at the drone, his fingers idly tapping the bench. "But where's the fun in that?"

Her laugh caught him off guard, light and quick, like she hadn't meant for it to happen. He glanced up again, catching the way her smirk softened, slipping closer to something real before she shook her head and brushed a strand of blue hair out of her face. She moved closer, leaning against the edge of the workbench, her movements slower than usual.

"You're impossible," she said, voice low but laced with just enough exasperation to sell it.

"You love it," Zedd said before he could think better of it. The words slipped out too easily, and he almost regretted them.

Almost.

Kira's eyes narrowed, the smirk snapping back into place like armor. "Careful, Victors. Keep that up, and I might think you actually like having me around."

"Maybe I do," he said with a shrug, keeping his tone casual even as his brain started running the math on whether that had sounded too much like flirting. "Or maybe I'm just too busy to kick you out."

She snorted, but there was a flicker of pink on her cheeks as she turned her focus to the kinetic barriers. "But where's the fun in that?"

"Fun," he echoed, trying not to grin at her throwing his own words back at him. "What kind of fun are we talking about?"

Kira leaned forward, just a little, her smirk softening again. Her eyes locked on his, and for a second, there was something quieter in the air, something heavier.

Neither of them moved to fill the silence, for once.

"Kir—"

Zedd flinched as the sound of footsteps cut through the driveway, shattering whatever moment had been building. He bit back a curse, straightening instinctively as Kira stiffened beside him.

She stepped back fast, like she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't, the smirk snapping back into place, sharper than before. "Looks like you've got company," she said, tone too light, too casual.

But her eyes lingered, a half-second longer.

Zedd slowly scratched the back of his neck, trying not to let the awkward crawl too far under his skin. "Don't miss me too much, Blue."

"Don't hold your breath," she called over her shoulder, brushing past the figure stepping into the garage. Her voice was steady, but the quickness of her exit gave her away.

The man in the doorway moved slowly, his steps deliberate, like he thought walking with purpose might earn him a gold star. His jacket caught the overhead light, clean lines and subtle tailoring making it look more expensive than practical. The kind of outfit for someone who wanted you to think they were both.

Zedd tossed his gloves onto the bench, leaning back against it with his arms loosely crossed.

His eyes swept the man's face—mid-40s, sharp features, the kind of stress lines that came from too many late nights.

"Mr. Victors, I presume," the man said, his words clipped and precise, like he'd spent too much time practicing them.

Zedd tilted his head, one brow raising. "Depends who's asking."

The stranger's lips tugged into what could've passed for a polite smile, but it never touched his eyes. "James Takahashi," he said, hand extended. "Senior engineer for the colony's central operations division."

Zedd gave the outstretched hand a glance, more curiosity than hesitation, before gripping it with just enough pressure to keep things even. "Senior engineer, huh? This about a fine? 'Cause I'll save you the trouble—I don't even know if I need a business license."

Takahashi let out a small chuckle, the kind that was more for show than anything else. "No fines. Not today, anyway. I heard about your work—specifically from Lieutenant Rourke."

Zedd blinked, his eyebrow sliding up. "Man's still going on about that? It's been months since I fixed up his Armax."

"'Fixed,'" Takahashi repeated like he was testing the word. There was something almost skeptical in the way he said it, like he was measuring it against a checklist in his head.

Zedd didn't bother hiding the raised brow he shot back. The hell was that about?

"Anyway," Takahashi continued, his tone smoothing out. "Word travels. People talk. And from what I've heard, you made quite an impression." His gaze drifted to the cluttered bench behind Zedd, taking in the tangled mess of tools and half-finished projects.

"Pragmatic, efficient, and—if Rourke's report is accurate—miles ahead of what most engineers could manage in similar circumstances." He paused, eyes flicking back to Zedd's face. "I wanted to see for myself what someone with no formal training could accomplish."

Zedd leaned back slightly, keeping his posture loose. "Formal training's overrated. Got a few certs, though." He lied as easily as he breathed, feeling no need to mention the certs were about as real as a Krogan beauty pageant. Getting passage onto a colony when your education ended at thirteen was… tricky, even when you had money to buy passage.

Takahashi tilted his head, his curiosity sharpening as he gave Zedd a once-over. "Certifications or not, your results suggest someone with... a great deal of hands-on experience… which your age wouldn't imply."

Zedd held his gaze steady, no flinch, no tell. "Lots of practice."

There was a quiet hum from Takahashi, something like approval, as he took a step closer. His attention shifted back to the workbench. "And all of this?" he gestured vaguely at the scattered projects. "Is the practice?"

Zedd shrugged, tilting his head over to the disassembled drone in front of him. "What's the point of having tools if you're not gonna use 'em?"

They slipped into a rhythm—questions from Takahashi, answers from Zedd, the conversation picking up a beat as the stranger's inquiries got more specific. More technical.

"How do you handle heat dispersion when space for cooling is limited?" Takahashi asked, his voice dipping into something sharper, more precise.

Zedd leaned forward, his finger tapping one of the exposed thermal layers on the open barrier beside him. "Thermal conductors...layered over each other, simple as. Mining rigs scraps, being honest. Do the job, though. Compact, durable, so they handle all that strain without wasting space with more bulk."

"...Impressive," Takahashi said, his tone neutral, but the pause carried weight.

Zedd smirked faintly, letting the silence hang for a second. "Glad we agree on something."

Takahashi's gaze landed on the cluster of kinetic barriers stacked on the bench. "Localized shielding emitters?"

Zedd straightened, pointing toward the devices with a casual flick of his hand. "Yeah. Full-body shields just suck power. These focus on heavy zones—head, chest, arms. Keeps you alive without wasting energy on dumb stuff, like your shins."

Takahashi's brow furrowed as his curiosity sharpened further. "And you're confident the redistribution won't destabilize under sustained fire?"

Zedd tapped his temple lightly, a cocky grin sliding back into place. "Nah, math checks out, for the most part. Worst case, system overloads but that gives you less reverb than a push. Not the neatest fix, but it'll hold."

Takahashi nodded, the motion slow and deliberate, before his attention drifted toward the drone at the edge of the bench. "And this? Repair job or custom build?"

"Started as a repair," Zedd said, following the man's gaze. "But I'm tweaking it. Added modular features, so I can swap parts out instead of patching them up every time something fries."

"Pragmatic," Takahashi said, a hint of approval threading through his tone. "You've clearly got a sharp mind for innovation. Lieutenant Rourke's Omnitool alone was..." He trailed off, searching for the right word. "...Unexpectedly sophisticated."

Zedd let out a dry chuckle, his shoulders relaxing. "That's one way to put it."

Takahashi's voice dipped, quieter now, more deliberate. "How did you manage to integrate military-grade protocols into civilian hardware without destabilizing the shielding matrix?"

Zedd leaned back, his fingers drumming idly against the edge of the bench. "Trade secret."

Takahashi raised an eyebrow.

"Fine," Zedd relented, rolling his eyes. "It's just power flow. Combat Omnis already do a lot at once—shields, scans, the whole works. That's how they fry themselves, which is really why most people fuck up converting civ Omnis for use in combat, 'cause civ Omnis are technically doing a lot more in the background that soldiers don't need, and you can't really turn that off without all-new core soft. Rewired it so it could dynamically shift resources. Keeps it focused on a few tasks at a time without burning out."

The faint flicker of admiration in Takahashi's eyes barely registered before his expression shifted back to its usual careful neutrality. "You figured that out on your own?"

Zedd let his grin stretch just enough to read as cocky, leaning into the bench like he wasn't taking the question seriously. "It's a gift."

Takahashi didn't laugh, didn't even smirk.

Instead, he kept digging, each question sharper than the last, poking at Zedd's answers like he was trying to see where the cracks might be. Zedd played it cool, kept his responses short when he needed to, detailed when it counted.

Half the time, he didn't even think about the answers before they left his mouth—just instincts pulling the right threads. Still, something about the way Takahashi asked things made his skin prickle.

He's not here for small talk, Zedd realized quickly. He's testing me.

Trust wasn't automatic, and that was fine by him. The guy was an engineer, sure, but the way his eyes darted from the workbench to the drone to the half-finished barriers screamed more than just technical curiosity.

When Takahashi finally stepped back, there was a flicker of something on his face. Respect, maybe… but Zedd half-doubted it. "You're... an enigma, Mr. Victors." His tone was dry, like he wasn't entirely happy admitting it.

Zedd snorted, crossing his arms loosely. "I've been called worse."

The faintest trace of a chuckle slipped from Takahashi, polite and detached, the kind of laugh people gave when they didn't want to seem rude. "Pragmatic. I can appreciate that." He glanced around the cluttered space one last time, then flicked his wrist. His Omnitool lit up, casting his hand in a dark blue glow as he keyed in a quick message.

Zedd's own Omnitool chimed softly a second later, the notification glowing faintly on his wrist.

His eyes darted to it before lifting back to Takahashi.

"There's a gathering in two weeks," the engineer said, the polished tone slipping back into his voice. It felt rehearsed, almost clinical. "An event for innovators, entrepreneurs, and other prominent colonists. A chance to exchange ideas." He paused, letting the weight of the invitation settle. "I'd like you to attend."

Zedd raised an eyebrow, the skepticism plain in his voice. "A gathering, huh? Sounds real fancy."

Takahashi's smile widened just enough to show teeth, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "It's the sort of gathering where your talents might find... appreciation."


-----------------------


Two Weeks Later


Zedd leaned against the far wall of the room, hands shoved deep into his pockets, his shoulders relaxed.

His eyes, though, weren't.

They moved slow, picking the place apart piece by piece like he needed to file it away for later.

The room was too pristine. Too much money thrown at it.

Marble floors shined so bright they reflected the soft lighting overhead. Walls lined with wood paneling that screamed imported—not cheap knockoff, either, but the real thing.

Imported for effect.

He rolled his shoulders, forcing himself not to fidget. Everything about the place felt deliberate, the kind of effort that made him itch.

Soft orchestral music drifted around, background noise that sounded… off. Classical? No, he knew what classical sounded like. Dad played it all the time. Which dad, exactly, he wasn't exactly sure as ten months hadn't exactly helped him keep memories from overlapping each other but he knew it was at least one of them.

Problem is… this sounds like shit. Like, you fed classical to a robot and had it remix it or something. Just off…

Like everything and everyone else in here, aptly enough.

The crowd moved like they owned the place, which they probably did. Tailored suits and shimmering dresses gleamed under the lights, their every detail screaming wealth without having to say a damn word.

The kind of rich you couldn't afford to rob, because the blowback would be worse than just going to prison when you got caught.

Zedd glanced down at his own suit, and a faint grimace tugged at the corner of his mouth. It fit him fine—hell, It'd better, considering the 1,500 cred he dropped on it—but it wasn't even close to the level of polish these people were dripping with. Wouldn't even be a rounding error in their dry-cleaning bill.

His eyes flicked to one of the servers gliding past, their tray of champagne flutes balanced perfectly. The thought hit him sideways: even they're better dressed than me. He shoved the feeling down, shifted his weight against the wall like it didn't matter.

"Comfortable?" a voice broke through his thoughts, smooth and low.

Zedd turned his head, already knowing who he'd see. Takahashi stood beside him, a glass of amber liquid balanced in his hand. The man's tailored jacket looked every bit as sharp as the easy confidence in his stance.

Annoying, really.

"Comfortable's pushing it," Zedd said, voice low. "But I'm here, so there's that."

Takahashi's smirk was faint, almost more in his eyes than his mouth as he took a slow sip from his champagne flute. "True. And that's more than most."

Zedd's eyes narrowed slightly. "That supposed to mean something?"

"It means most people like you don't get into rooms like this," Takahashi said, his tone calm, deliberate. he gestured vaguely toward the crowd, his movements subtle but pointed.

Zedd stiffened slightly at the phrasing, though he kept his tone even. "People like me?"

Takahashi met his gaze without flinching. "Young. Self-made. Not tied to the system. Uncaring of the rules and standards of the Alliance, even the colonists… they just follow the leader and his rules without thinking too hard. It's a simple fact that most people are rather lacking in agency, and they don't simply do things, not unless it's easy or immediately extremely rewarding, You understand? " he paused, voice softening just enough to take the edge off. "It's a compliment."

Zedd snorted, glancing back at the room. his tone stayed flat. "Yeah, sure. Feels real complimentary."

The pause stretched for a beat too long, Takahashi's gaze sharp before it shifted toward the center of the room. "You should mingle," he said, his tone light but pointed. "There are people here who'd find your work... intriguing."

Zedd raised an eyebrow, his mouth tugging into a faint smirk he didn't actually feel.

He didn't answer right away, instead letting his eyes trail across the clusters of people filling the room. Loud laughter rolled out from one corner while other groups huddled close, their voices low, conspiratorial. His lips twitched into something closer to a grimace. "Everyone here wants something," he muttered, half under his breath.

"Everyone always wants something." Takahashi let out a quiet chuckle. "Welcome to the galaxy, Mr. Victors." Without waiting for a response, he slipped away, disappearing into the crowd with a practiced smile intended for someone he probably couldn't stand.

Zedd stayed put, hands buried in his pockets as people moved through the space with poorly-disguised precision, every gesture measured, every step deliberate. Conversations buzzed around him, layers of overlapping chatter that felt both meaningless and sharp-edged as smiles stretched too wide, laughter came a half-second too late. Fake.

He stayed to the edges, drifting slowly along the perimeter like a ghost. Wouldn't trust almost anyone in here with even a single cred.

A woman in a sleek black dress stood near the middle of the room, her hand slicing the air sharply as she spoke to two men with identical corporate badges pinned to their lapels. Her voice carried just enough to turn heads without outright shouting, her tone clipped, her body language aggressive.

Not far off, a younger man hovered at the edge of a different group, his nods too eager, his smile frozen in place. Same fucking smile, how do they not see it? At the bar, a man with a booming laugh and a thick mustache leaned into his audience, his gaze flicking between faces as if mentally sorting them into columns—useful and not.

Zedd's stomach twisted. Yeah. Not for me.

It didn't take long for someone to notice him lingering.

A woman, middle-aged, sharp-eyed, intercepted him before he could slip into the next shadowed corner. The marketing badge on her jacket practically gleamed under the recessed lighting, and her smile was wide and warm. The handshake she offered was firm, professional, practiced, but her eyes—those gave her away.

Why don't they ever try to match the smiles? He couldn't help but wonder. All of them had the same exact problem.

"Zedd Victors," she said, her voice smooth, polished, all edges sanded down to perfection. "I've been hoping to run into you tonight."

I… I'm not a fan of people knowing my name for no reason. Zedd shook her hand, keeping his grip steady, his face carefully blank. "Lucky me."

Her laugh was low, rehearsed. not a sound that meant anything. "Word's gotten around about your work. That custom job for a… Lieutenant Rourke, I believe? Impressive."

Zedd shrugged, his tone flat. "Just another job."

Her smile widened, bright but brittle, as she slipped a sleek contact card from her jacket. The Devlon logo shimmered faintly in the soft light, a small holographic detail that screamed precision and money. "What you did was... unique. Devlon prides itself on spotting exceptional talent, and I think you'd find our engineering team very... accommodating."

Zedd took the card, barely glancing at it before tucking it into his pocket. His eyes stayed locked on hers. "I'll think about it."

"I hope you do," she replied, her tone chipper, final. She didn't wait for a response before moving on, her attention already shifting to the next target.

Zedd watched her go, his jaw tightening. She didn't even introduce herself.

It didn't stop there.

They came one after another—with firm handshakes and firmer smiles, sharp questions dressed up in compliments. A mining executive asked about power efficiency like Zedd was a rookie getting quizzed. A wiry guy from a security startup cornered him near the bar, dropping words like "synergy" and "partnership" without saying anything that mattered. A woman from some Traverse-focused tech blog pushed for details on his methods, her wide-eyed curiosity hiding the thin blade of professional interest.

None of them cared about the hours he'd spent troubleshooting circuits or the way his fingers burned after too much time soldering wires. They didn't care about the trial and error, about how half the time his work came from scraps he dragged from salvage and barely managed to slam together.

They didn't care about him.

All they wanted was what they thought they could pull out of his head.

Zedd drifted back to the wall, his spot, jaw tight and eyes sharp as he scanned the room. Every laugh, every motion, every polished smile grated against something deep in his chest. They're good at this. The fluidity in how they moved, their banter flipping to razor-sharp negotiation in an instant—it all had a kind of calculated ease.

Watching it play out, though? He could see the cracks.

Too eager, he noted, his gaze catching on a younger guy leaning too far into the space of a suited exec, his handshake too vigorous. Too pushy, as a silver-haired woman jabbed a finger into the air while making her point to a bored-looking cluster of listeners. Tone it the fuck down, he thought as the man at the bar let out a booming laugh that couldn't possibly hide how his eyes darted between faces like he was tracking inventory.

All trying too hard.

All of it… just… he sneered for an instant, just remembering to control his expression. Bullshit.

He shifted his weight, leaning further into the wall and letting his hands sink deeper into his pockets. His mouth pressed into a line as he scanned the room.
Toward the center, movement caught his eye.

A man entered, cutting through the space like the room was built to accommodate him. The suit he wore gleamed under the soft lights, edges so sharp they could've been pressed that morning.

His entourage followed, their movements tight and coordinated, sticking close without seeming like they were hovering.

What really stuck, though, was the guy's smile—too perfect, too plastic.

"Who's that?" Zedd muttered under his breath, more to himself than anyone else. His voice stayed low, careful, like it'd give something away if he said it too loud.

A voice behind him answered, cutting through his thoughts. "Daniel Shen-Abraham."

His body jerked before he could stop it, a twitch he couldn't hide as he turned toward the speaker. The flash of blue hair made his shoulders drop slightly, the tension slipping.

Kira stood there, arms crossed, her usual smirk tilted just enough to soften the edge. Her head tipped slightly toward the man in the suit, who now stood mid-conversation with an older couple in matching outfits, his expression one of exaggerated concern.

"Founder. Governor. Basically the self-declared king of New Abraham, considering he named it after himself," she said, her voice dripping with sardonic weight, the words coming out like they were being read off a script she'd memorized but couldn't stand to repeat.

Zedd blinked, turning his head back toward the man as he processed the information. "Oh," he said simply, his voice flat. There wasn't anything else to say. "Didn't expect to see you here."

Kira rolled her eyes, her smirk inching wider. "Didn't expect to see your ass here either."

Her gaze dipped briefly, skimming over his suit. "You clean up nice, richie. Didn't think you even owned anything that didn't smell like grease."

Zedd snorted, his eyes narrowing slightly as he gave her a once-over.

Her hair was tied back in a loose bun, but it was the dress that hit like a punch. Shimmering cobalt, bold, the kind of thing that was all sharp lines and unapologetic edges. It clung to her in ways that felt deliberate, and it didn't stop there. The neckline dipped low. The hem hovered just above her knees, equal parts flashy and defiant.

His gaze flicked over the jewelry—silver, chunky—and the sequins catching the light. It was loud, on purpose.

No subtlety.

No understated elegance like the rest of the room. She was dressed like she wanted everyone to see her, just like the day he met her.

Classic Kira. He let the smirk tug wider. "and you're still impossible."

Her grin sharpened, but before she could fire back, someone else stepped into their space.

The guy who'd been hovering near her earlier—a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark, neatly cropped hair—moved closer. His posture was stiff, like he was stuck in parade rest, and his steps were calculated, too precise.

Military, no question.

His gaze flicked between Zedd and Kira, quick but deliberate, as if sizing them both up in less than a second. "You're the repair tech Kira mentioned," he said, his voice steady, neutral, but probing.

Zedd crossed his arms, his expression unreadable but his tone cutting. "That's me. And you're her babysitter, I'm guessing?"

Kira snorted, sharp and immediate, the sound bursting out before she could stop it. The faintest twitch of something that might've been amusement flickered at the corners of the man's mouth, but it didn't last.

"Lieutenant Adams," he corrected, his tone still even, calm. "And yes, you could say that."

So this is her biotic boss. Zedd's eyebrows lifted just enough to show he was unimpressed, the smirk creeping back into place. "Well, good luck with that."

Adams' face didn't move much—just a slight narrowing of his eyes, like he was tucking the comment away for later. "Thanks. I'll need it."

------------------------

Thirty minutes later, Zedd was out. muttered something vague about the restroom before slipping through the crowd. No one stopped him.

Not like anyone cared that much.

He didn't slow down until the noise softened behind him, the heavy buzz of the gala replaced by the quieter hum of the building's back halls. Clean lines, polished floors.

Sterile.

The air here didn't weigh as much.

His pace faltered when a voice bled through the crack of an open door.

"...shielding gaps outside major downtown areas…"

He froze, his body snapping to stillness before his brain even caught up. His head tilted slightly toward the sound.

"...dangerous if breached…"

"Of course. Abraham cut corners. always does…"

His stomach turned. his pulse thudded too hard, too loud in his ears. His feet felt rooted in place for a second longer before he shook himself loose, forcing his legs to move, each step slow and deliberate.

The pieces swirled in his head but he shoved the thought down.

Paranoia's a bad look.

The garage greeted him with silence, the faint hum of the charging station the only noise cutting through the stillness.

Zedd dropped into the chair, slouching back, one foot hooking against the edge of the workbench while the other stayed planted firm on the ground.

The bottle in his hand felt odd.

He hated drinking.

He'd done it once a year ago and it just ended… bad.

He hated the way it dulled his edges, made him feel slow, heavy.

But tonight? Tonight he didn't give a shit.

He tipped the bottle back, the fizz burning on its way down, cheap and acidic.

His jaw tightened as the taste lingered, sour and unsatisfying, but he didn't stop.

It was better than thinking about the gala. About the faces and their fake-ass smiles, every word they said wrapped in some hidden agenda. None of it was real. They didn't care about him or his skills, not in any real way.

They wanted to use him, probably locking him into some permanent contract that would make him half a slave. He'd heard about plenty of planets in the galaxy like that.

His hand tightened around the bottle, lifting it again. But before he could take another swig, his body stopped.

His grip slackened, the bottle slipping free.

Glass hit the floor with a loud crack, the liquid spraying up in sharp lines before pooling out in uneven rivulets. Cold champagne soaked his suit trousers, his brand-new syn-leather shoes, but he didn't flinch.

Didn't blink.

His eyes were locked ahead, glazed and distant.

His mind wasn't blank. It was worse than blank.

It was crowded.

Numbers, formulas, equations—shit that didn't belong—pushed into his brain all at once. The periodic table scrolled past his thoughts like a neon billboard, each element lighting up vivid and sharp.

Atomic weights. Molecular structures. Chemical equations.

Table salt? Sodium chloride. Sure. But tweak it here, add this, change that... Wait, what the hell?

His thoughts jumped tracks, spinning into reactions he didn't recognize but understood anyway.

"This… this…" he rasped, hands grasping at his worktable for support. This doesn't make sense.

But it did.

And that was the fucking problem.

Dipotassium phosphate. Acetaminophen synthesis. So many fuckin' compounds and their exact chemical structures, some that didn't even make fuckin' sense. All of it poured in, flooding his head with shit he had no idea how he was supposed to understand.

His chest hitched, breathing frozen in his chest. Like it was clogged leaving his throat. A-am I dying?

No. No, just... wrong.

Everything was wrong. "What… what the fuck is this?"

Chapter Text

The walk to Zedd's house felt like dragging lead boots across gravel.

Every crunch underfoot gnawed at Kira's nerves, filling the silence that clung to the prefab like a thick fog. Usually, there'd be something—faint music leaking out a half-open window, maybe the hum of one of his many projects sparking to life in the garage.

Today? Dead quiet.

Her eyes caught on the garage door, sealed shut and devoid of the usual chaotic sprawl of tools and half-dismantled tech he left lying around like breadcrumbs. The absence hit wrong, like seeing a bird too still. Even the scrap heap he always swore he'd "get around to" by the side of the garage was cleared out.

First time in the last few months.

"The fuck's got you locked up this time?" she muttered, half under her breath, the words meant more for the air than anything else. It didn't help the unease threading into her chest. Z's fine.

Just being his usual maniac self, probably buried in whatever half-brained genius idea's taken over this week.

But two weeks since the gala and dead quiet from the gearhead… it just felt odd. Not normal. Even for him.

Kira pushed herself forward, boots crunching against the path until she reached the door. Her hand hovered over the doorbell, hesitation prickling at her fingertips. Stupid. No reason to hesitate. but it was there all the same, like the silence from the house had bled into her own head.

She pressed the bell anyway, the faint buzz breaking the stillness. She waited.

Shifted her weight. Waited longer.

Nothing.

Her jaw tightened. Alright, if he wanted to play it like this—

"Who are you?"

The voice came low, calm, and sharper than glass.

Kira spun on her heel, tension snapping through her body as she scanned for the source. Her gaze landed on a woman standing a few feet away, hands tucked casually into the pockets of an oversized t-shirt. Caramel-skinned, curly hair framing her face in an effortless kind of way that definitely wasn't. The shirt caught Kira's attention first—it was big, baggy, familiar in a way she couldn't shake.

Her eyes narrowed.

"Who are you?" Kira threw the words back.

"I asked first." The woman's tone stayed even, but the steel underneath was impossible to miss.

Kira shifted, crossing her arms as she leaned slightly into her stance, tilting her head. "Yeah, and I don't care. What do you want?"

The woman took a step closer, slow but deliberate, the kind of movement that made you notice every inch of space shrinking between you. "What are you doing here?"

Kira didn't move, didn't flinch. The heat in her chest burned brighter as she took a step forward herself, the air between them taut like a drawn wire. "Visiting a friend. Why? Not your place."

The woman's gaze stayed locked on hers, and for a moment, nothing moved. But Kira caught the flicker in her eyes—protective, territorial. "It kinda is, actually," the woman said, her voice softening but not losing its weight.

Kira's lips twitched into a smirk that didn't reach her eyes. "Oh, yeah? Didn't know Zedd was giving out keys."

The woman tilted her head, mirroring Kira's stance almost perfectly. "Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you."

Kira looked her over with a tight sneer on her lips. the shirt—the way it hung loose over the woman's frame like she owned it. The calm, grounded way she stood, like she'd been here long enough to claim it. but what really hit was the look in her eyes.

She broke the silence first, letting her voice carry just enough bite to keep it interesting. "You gonna tell me who you are, or are we just gonna keep circling?"

The woman's lips twitched, a smile halfway between smug and pissed. "I could ask you the same thing."

Kira's jaw tightened. something twisted in her chest, sharper now. Zedd didn't talk about people—never like this. Never enough to explain… this.

But this wasn't about him. Not yet. no way in hell was she gonna let anyone else stake their claim. She shrugged, her smirk sharpening as she leaned lazily against the doorframe, like she had all the time in the world. "You wanna play territorial? Fine. But here's the thing, sweetheart: I'm not going anywhere."

The woman's calm slipped, just for a second. "Neither am i."

That tension sat there, coiled tight and buzzing, like it was just waiting for one of them to snap first. Kira jabbed at the doorbell hard enough to make the whole thing wobble, then glanced back over her shoulder, smirking sharp. "Hope you're cool standing out here all day."

The woman didn't even blink.

Her jaw ticked, but that was it. Like she was too chill to care or too stupid to know better. Kira couldn't decide which pissed her off more—the calm, cocky posture or how she just stood there, like the half a foot Kira had on her didn't even matter.

The woman took a step forward, slow, deliberate. Arms crossed like she had all the time in the world. "You always show up where you're not wanted, or is today special?"

Kira narrowed her eyes, leaning into the edge that came so naturally. "Funny. I was about to ask you the same thing."

"Nah." The woman's voice stayed low, steady, cutting like glass. "I'm where I'm supposed to be. You? Not so much."

That knot Kira had been ignoring in her chest tightened, sharp enough to make her fingers twitch. But she forced her smirk wider, locking her stance. Focus, Varnes. Don't let her drag you into this. Not worth the rank, not worth the drama.

"Look," Kira said, keeping her tone calm, measured, just enough bite to let her know who had control here. "I'm not here to trade insults with you, so why don't you tell me who the hell you are and why you care?"

The woman tilted her head, eyes flicking up and down like she was sizing Kira up. She took another step closer, close enough that Kira caught the faint freckles across her nose. "You first."

Kira exhaled, annoyed, but fine. She flicked on her omnitool with a practiced snap, letting her holo-badge hover there, glowing orange between them. "Lance Corporal Kira Varnes. New Abraham Militia and Security Corps, Special Operations. Watch your tone, civilian."

The woman blinked, and there it was—just a flicker of hesitation. Kira caught it, though, even as the woman's face locked down again.

"So, you're Kira," the woman said, quieter now.

Kira frowned, narrowing her eyes. "Yeah, I just said that. why?"

The woman's lips twitched into something halfway between a smirk and a sneer. "You're the slut who's been trying to move in on my man, that's why."

Kira blinked, caught off guard for half a second. "First of all, what? Second, when?" Her voice dropped, colder now, the sharpness coming through clear. "And third, watch your fucking tone, civilian."

The woman didn't flinch as she squared her shoulders, leaning just slightly forward, and her voice came out razor-sharp. "I'm not watching my fucking tone, bitch. Didn't know the mili was recruiting whores."

Kira's jaw clenched, her teeth grinding together hard enough to hurt. She could feel the heat rushing up the back of her neck, that pulse of anger that wanted to explode right there, but—focus. Focus. "My man?" she mouthed the phrase silently, piecing it together in her head before the realization clicked.

She exhaled sharply, locking eyes with the woman again. "...wait. you're Nina?"

The woman's expression flickered, just for a second. Recognition, then defiance. "Yeah, I'm Nina. You're Kira. and you're in my fucking way."

Kira let out a laugh—sharp, cold, just this side of cruel. She dragged her gaze over Nina, slow and deliberate, before shrugging like it wasn't worth her time. "Wow."

"What?" Nina snapped, her arms tightening across her chest.

"I dunno." Kira let the words hang there, dripping with mockery. "I just thought Zedd had better taste."

Nina's voice spiked. "You what?" Her hands curled into fists, shoulders twitching like she was about to step closer.

Kira's smirk widened, her retort already loading up when the sound of Zedd's voice cut clean through the tension.

"Hey, if you guys are gonna fight, could you not do it… here?"

Both women turned at once, finding Zedd leaning against the doorway like it was the only thing holding him upright. A lab coat hung limp over a t-shirt that had clearly seen better days, the hem just barely covering the edge of his boxers. Goggles perched lopsided on his forehead, tangled in his hair. He looked like death fucked over, dark circles dragging his face down, and somehow still managed to pull off that lazy smirk.

"Zedd!" Nina's voice softened, but the tension in her shoulders stayed locked in place.

His eyes flicked to her, the smirk twitching but not quite breaking. "Hey, Neen."

Then his gaze shifted, landing on Kira, and for the first time in weeks, something real cracked through his exhaustion.

A tired grin.

Not big, not flashy, but enough. "What's up, baby blue?"

Kira's pulse stumbled, but she shoved it aside, leaning into her default instead—a sharp-edged smirk. "not much, richie. You good?"

Nina didn't even give him a chance to answer. "I've been worried about you, zee," she said, stepping forward like she was staking a claim. "You haven't picked up my holo in weeks."

Zedd slowly raked a stained hand down his face, the weight in his movements bleeding into his voice. "Yeah... probably 'cause you haven't talked to me in months. You told me not to."

"That was because you were cheating on me," Nina snapped, her arm swinging up to point directly at Kira. "With her."

Kira blinked, her hands shooting up instinctively. "Me?" she asked, the word coming out somewhere between confused and insulted.

Zedd let out a low, drawn-out groan, like he was trying to physically push the entire conversation away. "I wasn't. Told you, she's a friend."

Nina's glare didn't budge, her voice slicing through his words. "I didn't even know you had friends. You don't like people, why would you have friends?"

Kira tilted her head, struggling not to laugh. "Fair point," she muttered under her breath.

Zedd snorted faintly, mouth pulling up just enough to match Kira's expression. "Ouch... but yeah, also fair."

Nina's arms crossed, her glare hardening. "And you never even tried to call me back."

Zedd stared at her, baffled. "...'cause you said, and I quote, 'never speak to me again, you fucking dick.'"

Kira's eyebrows shot up so high they practically hit her hairline. "Wow," she said, mostly to herself, biting back the laugh bubbling in her throat.

Nina's tone dropped, quieter now but no less sharp. "That doesn't mean don't try."

Zedd exhaled heavily, running a hand through his already disastrous hair. "...my fault, I guess. Whatever. I don't really care right now."

Nina scoffed, her sarcasm hitting like a slap. "Wow, so different from usual. What's the occasion?"

"C'mon…" Zedd groaned again, his voice cracking under the sheer weight of the moment. "You know I don't mean it like-"

But Nina wasn't letting up. "No, I mean it. Zedd not caring about something? That's a whole new personality, right there. You're a stupid, fake, nonchalant—" she broke off mid-sentence, huffing like she might actually explode. "Okay, fine. I'm fine. My fault, too much." Her face turned downwards in a look that told Kira the woman was actually hurting. "Still, you could've at least tried to get back together. Half a year, Zedd. Nothing."

He sighed, the sound raspy and low as he looked the shorter woman in the eyes. "Neen…"

"No!" She cut in, shaking her head. "Like… like, did you even care? Not even a message?"

Zedd pulled a face, something half between a frown and an awkward grimace. "But you said th-"

"Be serious with me right now!" Nina wasn't having it clearly, judging by her tone and volume as she threw her hands up. "Come the fuck on, Zee! Fucking dead silence is one thing. But then I hear you punch out that creep Connor for me? But you're also hanging out with her?" She jabbed a thumb in Kira's face, the blue-haired girl frowning but not flinching. "Mixed messages, like…"

Zedd's face twisted up again, before his mouth opened in an odd smile that made Kira frown as she spotted what looked like flecks of blood on his teeth. "Mixed messages… from you. Neen, I like you, but that's a fuckin' joke."

Said woman flinched, shrinking in on herself as she somehow seemed to get even smaller.

The sleep-deprived repairman shook his head and continued with a sigh, "And I didn't punch Connor for you. If anything, I did that for me."

"And on my end," Kira threw her hands up, cutting through the escalating tension. "I just came here to check on him, okay? This feels like a lot."

Nina's head snapped toward her, eyes narrowing like a laser. "You stay out of this. You're not involved."

Kira straightened, letting the words hit her and bounce right off. Her tone came out calm, steady, but there was steel under it. "Feeling pretty involved right now."

The argument spiraled, voices overlapping until Zedd's patience finally gave out.

"Shut. Up."

His voice hit like a hammer, freezing both women mid-sentence. Not loud, not angry, but packed with enough force to clear the air completely.

Zedd dragged both hands through his rat's nest of hair, his frustration spilling over like a dam breaking. "I haven't slept in days, I've got a hundred projects half-finished, and I'm not doing this right now. Both of you, just—go home or something."

Zedd slumped against the doorframe, the porch light throwing hard shadows over his face. The lab coat draped across his shoulders looked like it had lost a fight with both a grease fire and a chemistry set. The hollowed-out bruises under his eyes made him look less "burnt out" and more "straight-up haunting the place" and yet those same eyes were wide enough she could notice the fact he wasn't really blinking.

Kira's gaze swept over him, cataloging details on autopilot. twitchy fingers half-gripping the doorframe. the slight wobble in his stance, like his legs hadn't decided whether they wanted to hold him up. His shoulders looked… wrong.

Like they weren't broad enough anymore, just weighed down by something heavy she couldn't quite see.

This wasn't Zedd. Not the version she knew, anyway.

Nina didn't move, didn't even flinch.

Her arms stayed crossed so tight against her chest, it was honestly a wonder she hadn't cracked a rib yet. The tension pouring off her felt sharp enough to cut through steel, and Kira hated how it made her feel like clenching her own fists just to keep from reacting.

"Listen…" Zedd's voice scraped out like the back end of a sandblaster.

He gestured vaguely at the space between the two of them, like he was drawing an invisible line they'd both already crossed. "I appreciate the… uh, energy here—delayed as it might be for one of you—but I'm kind of drowning right now. So can we reschedule this for like… a week? Give or take?"

Kira raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms to match Nina's stance. "Give or take what?"

His head whipped toward her, and she caught the faintest twitch in his right eye. "I don't know—another week? Blue, y-you gotta cut me some slack. I'm busy."

"Busy doing what? You're twitching, Zee," she shot back, voice sharp but not unkind. The edge in it wasn't just for him. "Whatever the hell you're doing in there, it's not worth killing yourself over."

"Yeah," Nina added, her voice dripping with suspicion. A half-second later, she sniffed the air, her nose scrunching up. "When was the last time you showered even?" The hell are you doing in there?"

Zedd's gaze flicked toward Nina, and for half a second, his lips twitched like he was considering something. Then he snorted softly. "W-working my way across the tech tree."

Kira blinked. "What?"

"Are... are video games lame again in the future?" he deadpanned, voice dry as the gravel under Nina's boots.

Both of them looked back at him: "What?"

He let out a low laugh, the sound just this side of manic. "Love the stereo, but I haven't slept in… a long time. I'm saying stuff. Just… just give me some space."

Nina didn't miss a beat, her voice cutting clean through the weird half-pause that followed. "Are you gonna call me?" the words came out hard, sharp as the glare she leveled at him.

"Are we gonna talk?" Kira added, her tone lighter but laced with an equally pointed undertone.

Zedd's head tilted back against the doorframe, eyes fluttering shut like they were carrying bricks. "Later," he muttered, barely audible over the sudden thud of his door slamming shut.

Nina let out a sharp huff, the sound loud enough to echo off the quiet street as she spun on her heel. Her boots hit the pavement hard, each step radiating an irritation that practically burned in the cold air. Kira stayed rooted in place, her arms loosening slightly as she watched the other girl stomp toward her car.

"...hey." The word slipped out before she could stop herself, low but enough to make Nina hesitate mid-step.

She didn't turn.

"Nina!" Kira's voice sharpened, slicing through the space between them like a blade.

The shorter woman stopped, exhaling sharply before spinning back around. Her expression was a mix of exasperation and something else Kira couldn't quite pin down. "What?"

Kira shrugged, keeping her tone lighter, cautious. "Listen… no hard feelings, alright? Me and Zedd… we never did anything. Like, ever. At all."

Nina's eyes narrowed, her lips pressing into a thin, tight line. For a second, Kira thought she might snap again. but instead, Nina's shoulders dropped just enough to register as something almost… defeated.

"...yeah," Nina muttered, her tone quieter but no less bitter. "I can tell that now."

Kira blinked, caught off guard. "So… we're cool?"

The laugh Nina let out was sharp, bitter, and so quick it almost didn't sound like one. "Fuck no."

Kira's hands slowly dropped to her sides, fists curling for a second before she forced them loose. "Then what the fuck is your problem?"

Nina stepped closer, voice low enough to cut but sharp enough to sting. "Because I've got eyes. I see the way he looks at you. And the way you look at him." She scoffed, the sound harsh and dismissive. "You were all tough until he showed up, and now suddenly you're sweet as sugar. Spare me."

Kira bit her tongue, heat rising in her chest as the words hung there. She wanted to hit back, to snap something clever or cutting, but nothing came fast enough. Her teeth dug into the inside of her cheek. Screw this.

Nina's scoff hit again, sharper this time. "So unless you can stop acting like some fucking princess every time he so much as breathes your way... we're not cool."

The jab landed harder than Kira wanted to admit. Her jaw tightened, and she opened her mouth to fire something back—anything—but all that came out was a heavy, exasperated sigh. She threw her hands up. "Jesus…"

Nina shook her head, her expression cold as steel. She didn't bother looking back as she spun on her heel, her voice just loud enough to carry. "Thought so."

Kira stayed rooted in place, watching as Nina stomped toward her car. The tension in her chest started to unravel, but not fast enough. The sound of Nina slamming her car door and peeling out onto the street echoed in the silence, fading out as the vehicle went down the road.

The street felt too still now, like even the air didn't know what to do. Kira let out a slow, shaky breath and ran a hand through her hair, her fingers catching on the tangles she hadn't bothered to fix that morning.

"What the hell, richie?" she muttered under her breath, her voice tight with frustration that didn't know where to go.

Her gaze shifted back to Zedd's closed door. For a moment, the idea of ringing the bell again crossed her mind—forcing him to answer, to explain—but the thought fizzled out almost as fast as it came.

She shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and turned away.

The hallways of Militia HQ stretched out in front of her, quiet and empty.

Her boots echoed faintly against the polished floors, each step feeling louder than it had any right to. The faint smell of ozone lingered in the air, biotic discharge, sweat, and whatever burned-out energy fields left behind.

Late enough that most of the recruits were gone, the stillness felt suffocating.

Her thoughts circled back to Nina like a bad song stuck on repeat. Acting like a princess.

The words dug in, humming in the back of her head until she wanted to scream. Her fists clenched at her sides as her pace picked up as she kept walking. It wasn't just the insult; it was everything under it. The way Nina had thrown it out, like it was fact.

Like she knew something Kira didn't, like she had some kind of claim.

"Bitch doesn't know me," Kira muttered under her breath, jaw tight as she rounded a corner.

The private biotic gym came into view, its reinforced door glowing faintly from the access panel. she didn't hesitate, her omnitool flickering to life as it scanned her credentials. The door slid open with a soft hiss, the hum of machinery inside welcoming her like an old friend she wasn't quite ready to see.

the gym wasn't much, but it worked. bare walls, a handful of reinforced dummies shoved off to one side, and the biotic obstacle course flickering weakly in the corner.

It was functional, sure. Inspiring? Not so much.

Twenty biotics in the entire New Abraham militia, out of an active roster of eight thousand. The numbers weren't bad compared to most colonies, but they were still low enough to make this place feel like an afterthought. Whatever.

It'd do.

"Perfect," Kira muttered, stepping inside and letting the door slide shut behind her.

She didn't waste time.

There was a reinforced dummy near the far wall, its frame dented and battered from years of abuse. Kira exhaled, her breath evening out as she raised one hand. The familiar ripple of biotic energy shimmered across her fingers, a faint violet glow snapping into place as her focus locked on.

"Get over here!"

The Lift field snapped into place, hauling the dummy off the ground like it weighed nothing. It hung there, jerking awkwardly in the air before Kira's wrist flicked sharp and deliberate. The thing flew across the room, slamming into another target with a hollow thud.

The second dummy toppled over, its metal frame groaning against the floor.

Better.

She moved to the obstacle course next, her steps quick, precise.

Platforms shifted under her boots, the rhythm of dodging and leaping instinctual. Disks hovered ahead, just long enough for her to vault them before snapping out of reach. Biotics flared like muscle memory, pulling targets into her path before she slammed them into the floor with bursts of raw force.

Her breathing picked up, heat burning in her limbs as she vaulted another platform. A holographic target appeared on her left, translucent body flickering just a second too late. Kira lashed out with a throw, the energy field hitting dead-center. The projection shattered into static, pixelated fragments dispersing across the air.

But it still wasn't enough. Every hit, every motion felt hollow. Like she was trying to fight something that wasn't really there, something too intangible to break through.

"Effective."

The voice came clean, steady. Kira froze mid-step, her pulse skipping once before her head snapped toward the doorway.

Lieutenant Adams leaned there like he'd been watching the whole time, arms crossed against his chest. His gaze tracked her movements—not cold exactly, but focused.

She brushed loose strands of blue hair from her face, breathing heavy but leveling out. "Sir."

Adams pushed off the doorframe, his boots clicking softly as he stepped into the room. His eyes flicked to the dummies, the scorched metal of the course, the faint distortion still hanging in the air from her biotics. "That idiot still missing your hints" he asked, tone dry, "or is this about something else?"

I wish. Kira rolled her eyes, grabbing a towel off the nearby rack. "Just… getting practice in."

He didn't move. didn't look away either, that calm, level expression still pinned on her. "You've been here almost every night this week," he said. His voice dropped slightly, not enough to lose its evenness, but enough to press the words in. "Practice is one thing. whatever this is? It's starting to look a lot more like avoidance."

The words hit sharper than she wanted to admit.

Kira stiffened for half a second, then threw the towel onto the bench with more force than necessary. "What do you want me to say? I'm pissed? I'm tired of people acting like they know what's best for everyone while their own shit's falling apart?"

Her jaw tightened.

The next words spilled out before she could stop them, heat lacing her voice. "Or maybe i'm just tired of people who can't say what they fucking want because they think everything has to be some big struggle."

The echo of her own voice in the empty room dragged too loud, too long.

Adams didn't flinch.

He never did, the man too controlled with both his body and biotics.

His posture stayed steady, his tone even. "I want you to say whatever's actually on your mind. For your own good, kid."

He stepped closer, gaze holding hers like it wasn't up for debate. "You're one of the best recruits we've got, Varnes. But carrying this much weight around isn't going to make you better. It's going to make you sloppy."

Kira let out a long sigh. She knew that much; biotics was in the head more than anything else, literally and otherwise. She opened her mouth to snap back, to argue, but…as expected, nothing came out.

Because he wasn't wrong, and that only made it worse.

Her shoulders dipped slightly, the smallest crack in her stance. she looked away, her voice quieter but sharp enough to cut. "It's not about me."

Adams raised an eyebrow, unbothered by the shift. "From where i'm standing, it's all about you."

Kira's gaze flicked back to him, her eyes narrowing just slightly. "...harsh, sir."

His lips twitched, almost a smirk but not quite. "I will do my best." his tone shifted back, firm but lighter. "Now hit the showers. Can't have you dead on your feet when a real emergency comes up."

Kira snorted faintly at that, her head shaking as she turned away. "Emergency," she muttered under her breath, the edge of a smirk ghosting her face. We're about three weeks off the nearest relay. What emergency?

The Blood Tithe thrummed beneath Gra'hal Dro'kash's boots, a steady rhythm that seeped into his bones. The ship's hum wasn't just noise—it was alive, as heated circuits mingled their scent with the musk of the bridge crew, thick and layered, carrying the tang of effort and discipline. His upper eyes fixed on the tactical displays hovering mid-air, scanning the flickering contours of Arkadia IV, while his lower set tracked his subordinates like a predator monitoring its pack.

The planet glowed faintly against the deck's low light, its holographic lines too smooth, too clean.

A weakling.

No teeth to snarl, no claws to lash out.

The lack of an Alliance garrison painted the picture clear—no shepard to sour the air with their two-eyed defiance, no butcher or savior to twist desperation into something filthy and wrong.

This would be what Elysium wasn't.

Clean. Precise. Proper.

His lower eyes caught Kranik's chin—a tilt too high, a sliver of time too long.

Gra'hal's jaw tightened, the gesture digging into instinct.

Small slights festered if left unchecked. The upper pair stayed fixed on the planetary defense markers, steady and unbroken, but his lower set drilled into Kranik until the officer's head dipped, the angle corrected to deference. Correct.

The moment passed, balance restored.

"Report," Gra'hal commanded, his voice a low grind against the steady pulse of the ship. The weight of it cut cleanly through the hum. There was no need to bark when steel could break bone with a whisper.

Kranik straightened, his hands moving over his console with the crispness of someone who'd felt a line and knew not to cross it. "The colony's defenses are minimal, captain. Two anti-ship batteries, both inactive for several cycles. Majority of militia presence is clustered in the southern quadrant—a training ground. Their response will be slow."

Gra'hal's upper eyes flicked across the display, noting the positioning of the batteries and their coverage arcs. His lower eyes narrowed slightly, the thought forming sharp and silent. Two missiles, two graves. The militia was barely worth a mention—largely corporate tools clinging to pay rather than duty.

They'd scatter before they'd stand.

The cost of their failure wouldn't even scratch the ledger.

"Two batteries," Gra'hal murmured, the rumble of his voice largely more to himself than the bridge. "One strike to cripple their systems, another to remind them of their place."

Harrak stood by the weapons console, stance angled just right—head low, shoulders aligned, eyes not daring to meet Gra'hal's. His movements spoke without need for words. Proper.

"Prepare overload missiles for each battery," Gra'hal ordered, voice even and finall. "Detonation upon defensive range entry. no excess."

"Yes, captain," Harrak replied, his words clipped. He moved with precision, hands already adjusting settings on the console. There was no hesitation, no question.

Gra'hal's upper eyes swept back to the colony layout as Harrak worked, scanning the lines of infrastructure with clinical ease.

Power hubs, storage clusters, militia points—they unfolded naturally under his gaze, each detail slotting into the larger framework. He absorbed the picture, layer by layer, the potential resistance reduced to raw cost and yield.

"Hmmm."

Elysium. The scar ran deep, the Shepard a jagged blade twisted in the wound.

A colony of humans, disorganized and underdefended, defying what should have been inevitable. The Blitz had carved its humiliation across the collective pride of the Batarians, a crack in caste and face that never properly healed. Gra'hal's teeth ground together, the faint bitterness lingering like bile.

This colony would not be another Elysium.

Torfan's specter lingered next, unbidden but inescapable.

The reek of scorched flesh, the riot of screams—slaves driven to rebel by a chaos that was pure Shepard. Jane Shepard's savagery had reeked of a two-eyed arrogance, unbound and abhorrent.

Hierarchy upended. Caste ignored. Face obliterated.

He pulled himself from the memories as Harrak's voice punctured the silence, sharp but measured. "Missiles armed and locked, Captain."

Gra'hal tilted his head just enough to acknowledge him, upper eyes locked on the tactical display while his lower set fixed on Harrak, gauging every flick of movement in the officer's stance. "Fire."

The Blood Tithe's frame rumbled faintly, an energy rippling through its decks that resonated like a pulse. The missiles streaked toward Arkadia IV, leaving faint trails across the holographic display.

Gra'hal's lower eyes flicked briefly to the Sovereign's Will and the Iridani Fang, both maintaining perfect formation. Their captains were waiting—silent, compliant. As they should be.

The anti-ship batteries jolted to life on the display, sluggish and erratic.

Poorly maintained. Predictable.

The first overload missile detonated before they could respond, its electromagnetic wave cascading outward, shorting circuits and plunging defenses into stillness. The second missile struck seconds later, its detonation sharp and final.

On the surface, the southern quadrant dimmed, the faint glow of emergency lights struggling against encroaching darkness.

Gra'hal exhaled through his teeth, a faint hiss of satisfaction. His gaze sharpened, tracking every movement of the displays and his crew.

"Begin approach," he commanded, his voice calm but cutting through the hum of the deck like a blade. "All ships to combat stations."

The Blood Tithe shifted course, its engines humming with a calculated menace.

Gra'hal's upper eyes stayed fixed on the colony's image, now a dull flicker of darkened structures and static defenses, while his lower pair swept the bridge. Officers moved with precision, their roles executed without hesitation.

There was no room for error here.

Face will be restored.

Order will be upheld.