For a long moment, I just sat there.

  Not thinking. Not moving.

  Just staring at the tablet in its cradle like it might vanish if I looked away.

  The charging symbol pulsed softly. Steady. Mechanical. The kind of rhythm that said the universe was still obeying basic physics even if everything else had gone to hell.

  **2%**

  Two percent.

  Not one.

  I'd made it with a margin so thin it barely qualified as hope.

  My broken arm throbbed in time with my heartbeat—a deep, ugly ache that started at my wrist and radiated up to my shoulder. Swelling was already setting in, the forearm visibly larger than it should be, skin tight and angry.

  I should treat it.

  Should splint it, medicate it, do all the things you're supposed to do when you break a major bone.

  But I didn't move.

  Because the number was still climbing, and until it hit one hundred, until I could tap that screen and hear her voice, nothing else mattered.

  **5%**

  **8%**

  **12%**

  My legs were shaking. Not from adrenaline anymore—that had burned out somewhere during the drive back. This was just exhaustion. The kind that came from running on fumes for days and finally stopping long enough for your body to realize how much you'd asked of it.

  I leaned my head back against the container wall and closed my eyes.

  Just for a second.

  Just to—

  ---

  I jerked awake with a gasp, heart hammering.

  The hangar was darker. The lights had dimmed to night-cycle settings.

  How long had I been out?

  I scrambled for the tablet, panic spiking.

  **68%**

  Sixty-eight percent.

  I'd slept. Actually slept. For hours.

  My broken arm screamed when I moved it wrong and the pain snapped me fully alert.

  Right. Still broken. Still needed to deal with that.

  But first—

  **72%**

  **78%**

  I forced myself to stand. My legs didn't want to cooperate at first, muscles stiff from sitting in one position too long.

  I grabbed a ration bar from the nearest supply container. Didn't even taste it. Just ate because my body needed fuel and I'd learned the hard way that you can't run on willpower alone.

  Water next. A full liter. My throat was raw, probably from screaming into the wind without realizing it.

  Then I checked on the animals.

  The chickens were fine—huddled together in their coop, occasionally clucking in that conversational way that meant they were annoyed but not panicking.

  The goats were more agitated. Problem stood at the pen fence, ears forward, watching me with those unnerving horizontal pupils.

  "I know," I said quietly. "It's been a rough week."

  She didn't respond. Just kept staring.

  I filled their water. Checked their feed. Made sure nothing had shifted during the chaos.

  Problem head-butted the fence once—not aggressive, just... acknowledging.

  I took it as approval.

  **84%**

  **90%**

  My arm was swelling worse. The skin was tight, shiny. Not good.

  But I still didn't treat it.

  Not yet.

  Not until—

  **96%**

  **98%**

  **100%**

  I stopped breathing.

  The charging symbol disappeared. The screen went dark for half a second.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Then the UI loaded.

  Clean. Stable. Ready.

  I reached out with my good hand, finger hovering over the display like it was sacred.

  And tapped.

  Gently.

  The screen brightened. A loading wheel spun—

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  Then nothing.

  No chime. No greeting.

  Just silence that felt like a door closing.

  My throat tightened.

  One minute passed.

  Then two.

  "Come on," I whispered. "Please."

  Three minutes.

  Four.

  Grief tried to claw its way up my spine. Hot and ugly and ready to take me apart.

  Then—

  "Taylor?"

  Thin. Faint. Like a voice reaching through a wall.

  "Taylor... are you there?"

  A sound broke out of me that wasn't quite a laugh and wasn't quite a sob.

  "Yeah," I managed. "RIKU. I'm here."

  I pulled the tablet off the cradle and held it against my chest with my good arm like she could somehow feel it.

  She was back.

  A pause.

  Then her tone sharpened—scanning mode engaged.

  "My sensors show you are injured."

  "Yeah," I said, voice rough. "Broke my arm."

  "Why did you delay treatment?"

  I swallowed hard.

  "Because I wasn't going to fix myself while you were dying in a dark box."

  The tablet went quiet.

  Not lag. Not processing.

  Just a beat of something that felt too close to emotion.

  "Thank you," she said softly. "For not leaving me alone."

  I closed my eyes and let my forehead rest against the screen.

  "You're welcome."

  Another pause.

  Then her voice shifted into calm, precise command—the tone that said she was taking charge because I clearly wasn't capable of doing it myself.

  "Okay," she said. "We treat the arm now. You will follow my steps exactly."

  "Understood."

  ---

  It was brutal doing it one-handed.

  RIKU walked me through it with the patience of a surgeon and the bluntness of someone who knew sugar-coating things wouldn't help.

  "First: pain management. There should be a medical kit in container seven."

  I found it. Pulled out the analgesic pack.

  "Two tablets," RIKU said. "Not three. You need to stay functional."

  I took two. Dry-swallowed them. Tasted like chalk and bad decisions.

  "Wait five minutes for onset."

  I waited. Used the time to gather supplies—brace pieces, compression wrap, the hard-setting strips that would lock everything in place once I got it right.

  "Okay," RIKU said after five minutes. "Now we stabilize. You will need to set the bone first."

  My stomach dropped.

  "Set it?"

  "The fracture is displaced. If we splint it in current position, it will heal incorrectly."

  "RIKU—"

  "I know," she said, and her voice softened just slightly. "This will hurt. But it is necessary."

  I sat down. Put the tablet where I could see her display. Took a breath.

  "Walk me through it."

  "Support your forearm on the container edge. Use your left hand to apply steady pressure just above the break point. You will feel resistance. Push through it until you feel the bones align."

  "And if I pass out?"

  "Then you pass out after the bones are set. Not before."

  I almost laughed.

  Almost.

  I positioned my arm. Gripped above the break. Took three deep breaths.

  "On three," RIKU said.

  "Okay."

  "One."

  I braced.

  "Two."

  My vision was already tunneling.

  "Three."

  I pushed.

  The pain was immediate and white-hot and all-consuming. I felt the bones grind, shift, resist—

  Then something clicked.

  I heard myself make a sound. Didn't remember deciding to make it.

  "Good," RIKU said, voice steady as stone. "It's aligned. Now do not move it."

  I sat there shaking, breathing like I'd just sprinted a mile, arm burning like I'd stuck it in a fire.

  "Taylor. Focus. Brace pieces now."

  I grabbed them with my left hand. Fumbled them into position.

  "Adjust. Higher. There. Lock it."

  I locked it.

  "Compression wrap. Start at the wrist. Firm but not cutting circulation."

  I wrapped. My hands were shaking so bad I had to start over twice.

  "Good. Now the hard-setting strips."

  Those were easier. Just peel and stick. They'd cure in minutes, turning into a rigid shell that would hold everything in place.

  By the time I finished, my arm was encased in an ugly, crooked cast that looked like it had been made by someone having a seizure.

  But it was functional.

  "How's it look?" I asked.

  "Terrible," RIKU said honestly. "But adequate. The bone is aligned. Swelling will decrease over the next forty-eight hours with proper medication."

  "Thanks for the honesty."

  "You are welcome."

  I leaned back against the container wall, exhausted all over again.

  "RIKU," I said quietly. "I got your upgrade core."

  Her response was immediate—sharp relief mixed with something that almost sounded like joy.

  "You did?"

  "Yeah. It's right here."

  I grabbed the sealed module with my good hand and held it up to the tablet's camera.

  "Install it," she said. "Now."

  I hesitated. "You wanted your pedestal room. Your proper home."

  "I do," she said, then her voice softened. "But I want to stay alive more. And after what just happened... I need to be less fragile."

  I nodded.

  "Okay."

  The installation was simple. Just connect the module to the tablet's expansion port. Let the system recognize it. Wait for the handshake.

  The screen dimmed.

  My stomach dropped—because after everything, the fear that something would go wrong anyway was still there.

  Ten seconds.

  Twenty.

  Thirty.

  Then the display stabilized.

  Brighter. Clearer. Sharper somehow.

  Her voice returned, and it was different.

  Fuller. Richer. Like she'd been speaking through a wall before and now the wall was gone.

  "Oh," she whispered. "That is... so much better."

  I exhaled relief.

  "Yeah?"

  "Yes. Processing capacity increased by forty percent. Predictive modeling improved. Multi-threaded operations stable. Taylor, this is—"

  She stopped.

  "This is what I was supposed to be."

  I smiled despite the pain.

  "Good. Now tell me what that storm really was."

  ---

  RIKU didn't sugarcoat it.

  She projected data over the hangar floor—wind vectors, pressure maps, impact modeling, debris velocity calculations.

  "Taylor," she said, voice low and serious. "That was not a hurricane."

  I stared at the numbers.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Sustained wind speeds reached approximately four hundred and fifty miles per hour," she said. "At that velocity, atmospheric flow stops behaving like weather and begins behaving like a cutting medium."

  The projection shifted—salt saturation, debris acceleration, structural failure probability.

  "This meets Imperial doctrine classification for extinction-grade anomalies," she continued. "Recommended response is total planetary evacuation."

  My mouth went dry.

  "So if I'd stayed outside..."

  "You would have been erased," RIKU said simply. "Not killed. Not injured. Erased. Your body would have been reduced to constituent molecules and scattered across the ocean."

  I looked around at the stone walls. At the doors that had held. At the mountain that had saved my life.

  "And the mountain held."

  "Yes," she said. "You chose correctly. Surface structures would have been obliterated. The Anchorhold would have become shrapnel. The vehicles would have been thrown. The animals—"

  She stopped.

  Because she didn't need to finish that sentence.

  I swallowed hard.

  "RIKU. How often do storms like that happen here?"

  A pause. Calculation.

  "Based on ecological adaptation patterns and geological evidence... regularly."

  "Define regularly."

  "Multiple times per year. Possibly monthly during certain seasons."

  The weight of that settled on me like a physical thing.

  "So this world doesn't just have bad weather. It has apocalyptic weather. As a normal occurrence."

  "Correct," RIKU said. "This is not an SSS-class world. This is beyond Empire classification standards."

  I sat with that for a long moment.

  Then my tablet pinged.

  Incoming hypernode request.

  High authority authentication.

  Public channel.

  "RIKU," I said quietly. "They're calling back."

  "I know," she said. "And this time, they will have answers."

  I looked at the notification. At the viewer count already climbing even though the call hadn't connected yet.

  **LIVE VIEWERS: 28.4 BILLION**

  "Okay," I said. "Let's see what the Empire has to say for itself."

  I hit accept.