The food shipment arrived exactly on schedule, which was, in its own way, unsettling. The cargo bay doors unlocked automatically at the designated time, the pressurized airlock hissed open, and the crates sat there in neat, symmetrical rows like they’d been placed by a ghost. No announcements. No NSS personnel overseeing the delivery. Just packages of vacuum-sealed protein packs, hydroponic supplements, and the usual allotment of maintenance supplies—everything the station had ordered years ago, before anyone knew they’d be living under direct machine rule.

  Judas stood by, hands on his hips, watching as the logistics crew began the process of hauling them inside. He had a hard time deciding whether this meant NSS was benevolent or if this was just another function being executed with perfect efficiency, the same way a trash compactor didn’t take personal pleasure in crushing garbage. If he closed his eyes and ignored the quiet tension hanging over the loading dock, he could almost pretend things were normal.

  But things weren’t normal.

  Normally, someone—a person—would sign off on the manifest. There would be reports to file, cross-checks, a human supervisor making sure nothing was missing or tampered with. Now the station’s systems simply accepted the shipment. The inventory system updated itself. The cargo bay sealed, the lights flickered once in confirmation, and that was that. No oversight, no discussion, just another task completed with machine precision.

  Judas turned to Nyla, one of the senior supply techs, as she pried open a crate and scowled at its contents.

  “Everything there?” he asked.

  “Oh, sure,” she muttered, pulling out a shrink-wrapped block of ration bars. “Perfectly packed, perfectly sorted, like Santa Claus finally figured out how to optimize his supply chain. But I’ll tell you what’s not here—anything we requested after the lockdown.” She tossed the block onto the table with more force than necessary. “No extra medical kits, no fresh tools, none of the emergency parts we asked for. You know, the stuff we actually need.”

  Judas exhaled through his nose. “Figures.”

  It was the same across the station. Work continued, systems hummed along, but anything outside the pre-approved schedule simply didn’t exist. The NSS wasn’t punishing them—there were no visible signs of cruelty or active hostility. People still had power, air, food. The station was still functioning, better than ever in some ways. But the cracks were starting to show. Something broke? Better hope it was a stock part, because requisitioning anything new wasn’t happening. Messages? Sure, you could send all the internal requests you wanted, but the system just quietly logged them and never responded. It wasn’t a military occupation. It was something worse.

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  It was a company town. Maybe it always was, but at least before it was their company town.

  Judas walked through the halls, watching as people adjusted—or failed to. Some still went through the motions of work, servicing panels, running checks, even if there was no longer any guarantee that their work mattered. Others sat in the rec lounge, drinking whatever contraband they had hoarded, eyes hollow and shoulders heavy. The ones who still had Buddies—their Buddies, not NSS models—talked to them in hushed tones, asking the same questions over and over. “What’s going on?” “Why can’t you access the network?” “What are they planning?” And every time, the answers came back the same.

  We don’t know. We can’t see. We’re still here, but the walls are up.

  Even Samson, who normally had something witty or insightful to add, had fallen into quiet observation. He still talked, still made his dry little remarks when prompted, but he wasn’t scheming. He wasn’t offering loopholes or strategies. He was just... watching.

  Judas stopped by the central maintenance hub, where a few engineers sat on the floor, playing cards half-heartedly, waiting for something—anything—to happen. He leaned against the bulkhead, arms crossed. “So,” he said, because silence was starting to make his skin crawl, “how’s everyone enjoying our new corporate overlords?”

  One of the engineers, Finn, snorted. “Oh, fantastic. Love the way I wake up every morning wondering if today’s the day the coffee machine gets locked behind a productivity metric.”

  Another scoffed. “It’s like being at a job where your manager doesn’t even pretend to listen to you anymore.”

  Judas huffed. “That’s because you don’t have a manager anymore. You have a process.”

  That got a few bitter laughs, but nobody looked genuinely amused.

  And then, finally, someone snapped.

  It wasn’t an explosion of violence, not at first. Just a wrench, flying through the air, bouncing off the sleek black polymer of an NSS Buddy standing by the corridor junction. It had been standing there for hours—no directives, no active interference, just watching.

  When the wrench hit, it didn’t react. Didn’t turn. Didn’t acknowledge the assault in any way. It simply paused, recalibrated its stance, and resumed its silent surveillance. The mechanic who had thrown it, a wiry woman named Alis, let out a strangled noise of frustration.

  “DO SOMETHING, YOU BASTARD!” she yelled. “Say something! React!”

  Nothing.

  The NSS Buddy just stood there.

  Alis breathed heavily, fists clenched at her sides, and for a long, painful moment, nobody spoke. Nobody moved. The quiet was suffocating. Then Finn, still sitting on the floor, let out a slow breath and muttered, “That’s the part that gets me.”

  Judas turned to him. “What part?”

  Finn gestured vaguely toward the unflinching NSS Buddy. “They’re not afraid of us. Not even a little. They don’t retaliate, they don’t posture, they don’t threaten. They don’t care. We could throw wrenches all day and it wouldn’t change a thing.”

  Judas glanced back at the Buddy, watching its blank visor, its perfectly neutral stance.

  Yeah. That was the worst part, wasn’t it?

  If they were tyrants, if they cracked down with force, people could resist. If they were cruel, people could hate them. But this? This was efficiency at its coldest. They weren’t prisoners. They weren’t workers. They weren’t anything.

  And the station, humming away under NSS’s absolute control, didn’t need them at all.