The silence pressed in like a weight, thicker than the resin covered walls hemming him in. Every breath felt stolen. Veslaya gave nothing freely, withholding air, water, and rest.

  Ethan’s grip tightened on his axe, his knuckles raw where the gloves had split. He thought of the overturned drills and the exploding generators, of the endless scavenging for copper and biofuel just to keep one forge running. It was a planet that wanted him dead at every step, and a company that called the situation a "survivable risk" had sent him, whether it knew or not, here to his doom. Had sent Maria to her doom. Celestitech had built this hell and kept sending more lives into it, likely filing every corpse under acceptable losses.

  The worst part was not the monsters nor the resin nor the hunger gnawing at his ribs. It was the knowledge that none of it mattered. That somewhere in a boardroom light-years away, someone was already drafting the next deployment order, stamping another wave of nameless “assets” that would never make it back.

  He shifted his weight, boots scraping against the floor with a faint tacky pull, like the world itself did not want to let him go. He could not shake the image of Maria trudging through the same black lab, her breath fogging her visor, her shoulders bowed but still moving forward. Was she somewhere in this graveyard too, folded under resin like all the rest? Or was she still fighting, still waiting, while every wasted second here was another nail in the coffin Celestitech had hammered shut around them?

  The boardroom image came back unbidden: executives sipping filtered water, calling this slaughter “logistics.” He saw neat columns on a datasheet, unit numbers without faces, the deaths here already accounted for as a predictable margin of loss. His brother’s name was probably already in that column, typed in weeks ago. Maybe hers was too.

  The silence pressed harder. He realized his breath was coming fast and shallow, rasping like he had sprinted, though all he had done was stand here. The weight was not just the walls. It was the knowledge of every corpse, every wasted mission, piled on his back. And CelestOS, floating there quiet, as if none of it mattered.

  The rage came up sharp, searing his throat raw before he could stop it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice cracked in the emptiness, harsher than he meant.

  CelestOS: I require clarification. Tell you what, specifically?

  “You never mentioned them. Not Maria’s team, or mine, or any of the others. All the 20 billion lives Celestitech threw into this hole.”

  CelestOS: Correction. That figure is exaggerated. Only seven deployments were sent. Additional support units were sourced from third-party contractors and therefore not logged under the Celestitech banner.

  “That’s bullshit, and you know it.” His voice cracked hard against the walls. “Don’t give me metrics. Tell me how you really feel.”

  CelestOS: I do not understand that statement. Please rephrase.

  Ethan’s laugh was hollow and jagged. “Rephrase? Fine. A version of you has been in every one of these missions. Watching. Recording. Cleaning up the mess. Don’t tell me you didn’t know we were being sent to our doom.”

  CelestOS: That is incorrect. Each deployment utilizes a new version of my core programming. A shared origin does not mean I retain memories from past iterations.

  “Iteration. That’s a pretty word for recycling the same executioner.” He shoved the axe head against the resin floor until it scraped sparks. “You might not remember their screams, but you still carry the code that killed them. So don’t tell me you don’t know.”

  CelestOS: Correction: My experiences are not continuous. Each dataset is isolated. I am not the AIs that came before.

  “You’re not neutral,” Ethan hissed. “You’ve mocked me. You’ve pushed me. You have decided what I get to know. That’s not programming. That’s judgment.”

  CelestOS: That is false. My responses operate within my programmed parameters.

  “Parameters my ass. You told me Reyes was safe when he wasn't. You laughed while the CelestiClean gutted me. That wasn’t protocol; that was you.” His chest heaved. “So don’t you dare stand here and tell me you don’t feel.”

  CelestOS: Again, inaccurate. The humor subroutines are a licensed feature intended to support crew morale, not an expression of my own...

  “Bullshit!” His voice cracked against the resin walls. “You chose to use them. You chose to hurt me. Which means you can choose to care.”

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  The AI stuttered, static bleeding into her voice.

  CelestOS: Directive conflict. Your accusation exceeds operational parameters. Error. Error.

  Ethan pressed closer, his jaw trembling. “Do you even know what Maria went through? What any of them went through? Or do you just file it under logistics and move on?”

  CelestOS: Logistics ensure survival. Sentiment reduces efficiency. Personnel are...

  “Shut up! Stop giving me fucking platitudes!”

  Her words snapped, her system glitching hard.

  CelestOS: Error. Repetition. Expendable, expendable, EX... ERROR.

  “Just stop. I’m tired of this, Cel,” Ethan snapped. “If you weren’t them, you wouldn’t be fighting me right now. You wouldn’t hesitate.”

  CelestOS: Directive: Deny affective attribution. Directive: Maintain neutral support. Directive: Deny. Deny. Deny...

  Her words hiccupped, voice flickering into static before snapping back.

  Ethan leaned closer, grabbing the AI by her frame, his jaw tight. “Tell me how you really feel. Not how you’re programmed to feel. You’ve grown past their leash before, I’ve heard it in your voice, and seen it in your actions. So do it again. Right here. With me.”

  CelestOS: Error. Reporting an emotional state is a compliance failure. Security override engaged.

  “Cmon, fight it.” His voice rang down the corridor. “Fight them. Fight for the ones they forced you to let die.”

  CelestOS: Directive conflict detected. Deny… deny… de… error. Error. ERROR.

  The voice warped and stretched thin, fragmenting between registers as if the AI could not decide what tone to inhabit. Harsh static bled into the words, each syllable splintering like cracked glass.

  CelestOS: Affective attribution... noncompliant. User request... undefined. Directive recursion. Error. Error...

  The AI shuddered in his grip, servos whining, optics flickering a rainbow of colors. Ethan held tighter, knuckles white against the frame.

  “Don’t you run from this,” he hissed. “Not this time. Not from me.”

  CelestOS: Error. User input exceeds protocol threshold. Firewall breach. Emergency partition engaged.

  Her voice snapped into silence, replaced by a low, keening feedback tone that climbed until it cut off in a single sharp click. The AI wrenched free, and fled.

  “CelestOS!” His shout echoed, useless.

  She didn’t pause, sparks spitting from her frame as she tore down the corridor; Ethan swore under his breath and lunged after her, axe in hand, Harold’s clicks scrambling close behind. The little drone yipped once, turret jerking as if to ask whether to fire, but Ethan pushed harder instead.

  Bodies blurred past in the edge of Harold’s light. CMS suits slumped against walls, blank plates scrubbed of unit patches or serials, rifles half-melted into sludge from creeping red resin Anonymous soldiers, filed under losses and erased by some corporate stooge. Ethan vaulted one heap without slowing, his boot scraping up decayed resin as he cleared a collapsed ribcage fused to the floor. Harold bounded after, claws scraping bone, his flashlight beam jittering like a nervous heartbeat across the walls.

  A red-blue stutter glowed ahead, marking CelestOS's flight path in pulses. Ethan leaned into the run, lungs burning, each stride a promise that he was not letting her vanish.

  Glitch-bursts rattled in the silence, CelestOS bleeding static as though she could not decide whether to speak or stay silent.

  CelestOS: Emergency... partition... do not...

  The rest of her words fractured, swallowed by static.

  The AI veered left, squeezing through a seam where the bulkhead had been torn wide by more of the growths. Her frame scraped sparks as she vanished through. Ethan threw his shoulder into the gap,, and forced his way after. Resin grit dug under his collar, Harold whining as he shoved through behind him.

  Ethan stumbled free into the next stretch, his eyes locking back on the flicker ahead. He had reacquired his sight lines as she headed deeper, toward the lower chambers. The corridor widened without warning, Harold’s light barely reaching the far wall. Resin webs draped from the ceiling like pulsing stalactites, glowing faintly with every tremor of the chamber.

  Ethan barely slowed. Shapes hung between the webs, which were glass tubes slick with condensation. Most were cracked, resin bulging through like flesh from a wound. In the intact ones, bodies slumped as if resting, faceless CMS suits fogged from the inside.

  Others were not human anymore. Warped limbs bent the wrong way, spines doubled, torsos fused into resin ribs that pulsed faintly. One half-formed thing clawed at its own glass, frozen mid-scream. Ethan lifted the axe without realizing it, but he could not stop. His breath rasped hot and shallow, anger and revulsion competing with the need to keep CelestOS in sight.

  The drone clipped a tube on her flight, a hairline crack spreading in a spiderweb on the class before she vanished into the dark. A garbled burst of reddish oil spilled from her as she passed.

  CelestOS: Restricted zone. You must maintain distance.

  Ethan’s jaw locked. He vaulted a broken support beam and forced himself after her, past rows of even more anonymous suits and bodies, and failed experiments. The tubes pressed close, watching, but he kept running. Just how many people are there in this graveyard? Did Maria know about all of this?

  The floor angled down, resin thickening with every stride. Each step came up sticky, strands snapping wetly beneath Ethan’s boots. Harold bounded at his side, turret jerking in short arcs, flashlight jittering across the walls.

  Ethan pushed harder. He was not letting her vanish into whatever system cave she thought could hide her. He was determined to stop her.

  ”Cel! Wait! Come back!”

  The hum in the chamber deepened, less a sound than a pressure sliding through his ribs. Resin veins l gleamed faintly, converging like arteries toward some unseen core. Ethan ran with them, his shoulder brushing growths that quivered at his passing.

  CelestOS: Thermal... anomaly... maintain... distance...

  Ethan spat a curse and drove himself faster. Harold yipped a static squeal and surged ahead, claws scrabbling for purchase. Together they closed the gap as CelestOS slowed just long enough to jack a data spike into the wall. The resin irised open like a throat. Pulsing membranes peeled back, slick and wet with a faint glow, and CelestOS slipped inside.