Kairo Venn had been broke before.
Not the "down to his last cred" broke. Not even "skip meals to pay docking fees" broke.
No, this was the other kind. The kind where your HUD glitches because your station access chip hasn't synced in three cycles, and the food dispensary lists your account as "inactive." The kind where you start asking which corners of the station might have a salvageable mana relay, and whether trespassing really applies if no one's around to enforce it.
He tugged his jacket tighter and glanced down the corridor. The outer ring of Breach Dust Station was falling apart faster than the gravity seals could hold it together. One of the overhead lamps flickered, revealing rusted bulkhead seams and air recyclers that wheezed like sick dogs.
Five more hours to his next shuttle contract.
Five more hours of nothing.
He leaned against a support beam and tapped a cracked stim tab onto his tongue. It fizzed weakly. Barely even tingled.
[Mana density: Low]
[Field stability: Inconsistent]
[User: Still pathetic]
The readout scrolled across his half-functional HUD. Kairo rolled his eyes.
"Thanks, diagnostic," he muttered. "Really needed the commentary."
He'd studied for three years at Orion Technical, trained to be a Threadscaper - someone who maintained spellcode infrastructure for licensed cities. Then he'd gotten booted six months before certification for modifying a mana rig too efficiently.
Apparently, corporations didn't like it when you bypassed half their energy-hogging runes with logic compression.
Now he was stuck bouncing between scrapyard gigs and low-level courier work, trying to keep his head down long enough to save up for a forged license reset.
If he was lucky, he'd die before the student debt tracker caught him.
–
A flashing error lit up on his datapad:
[Proximity Alert – Pulse Spike Detected]
[Source: Uncharted Object – Debris Sector 9]
[Trace: Unknown]
[Distance: 11.4km – External Orbit]
Kairo stared at the alert.
Unknown trace. No system tag.
Too far out to be station maintenance. Not far enough to be a shipping route.
Could be junk. Could be something real.
Or maybe just another busted capacitor melting down in the dark. Again.
Still...
He flicked open his skiff's hatch and slid into the pilot seat.
Even if it was trash, the rules were simple: first one there, first one keeps it.
And Kairo hadn't caught a break in months.
–
The skiff's landing struts barely held as he set down on the jagged surface of the drifting fragment. No clear designation - just a scab of rock and rusted alloy hanging in orbit like a broken thought.
Half-buried in dust and scorched plating sat a pod. It had smooth metal with a single glyph pulsing faintly on its surface. The mana field around it shimmered like heat on glass, unstable and growing hotter.
"Drone," he muttered, crouched behind the glowing pod, "how volatile is the mana field?"
Kevin, his maintenance bot, spun lazily in the air behind him.
"Twelve percent over channel safety. Climbing."
"So don't touch it," Kairo said.
"I was going to say 'poke it with a stick,' but sure, be careful."
Kairo grunted. He wasn't in a great position to argue. His knees ached, his sleeves were scorched just being near it, and his HUD kept glitching every time he looked at the artifact in front of him.
It didn't look like much. Just a pod the size of a supply crate, buried in ash and old stone. No markings. No warning lights. Just a single, dimly pulsing glyph on its surface - slow, steady, alive.
He adjusted the cracked visor over his left eye and squinted. His fingers trembled - not from fear, but from recognition.
Something about it felt old. Not old like "pre-Corp era." Old like before manuals. Before mana casting was split into pretty thread diagrams and corporate licenses.
He ran a quick scan. The glyph shimmered and kicked his scanner offline.
Kevin floated closer. "That's the fourth system you've fried this week."
"I'll fix it."
"You said that last week. Then you hit the nav port with a wrench and called it 'manual calibration.'"
Kairo ignored him.
–
Eighteen years old, six months out of the orbital academy, and already blacklisted by two freelance agencies and a scavenger guild. His talent with systems was undeniable. So was his inability to play by rules written by people who'd never touched an engine.
He didn't look like a threat. Wiry frame, layered patchwork coat, hair too long to be standard-issue. But Kairo had a look in his eyes - sharp, restless, like he was always two questions ahead and one paycheck behind.
And now he was staring at something nobody should have found.
A voice in his head whispered:
This could change everything.
Another voice - his own - whispered back:
It'll probably just kill me.
But his hand was already moving. His glove, the only mana resistant item he was able to afford, slowly burned as he forced his way through the unstable mana field.
The glyph responded to his touch.
–
[Installation Failed]
[Critical root functions missing. Emergency reboot initializing…]
Light cracked through his vision like a broken lens.
He got sent flying. Before coming down, he froze - suspended mid-air as symbols spiraled into his mind. Not thoughts. Not code. Something between. Something older than either.
[System Integration: 21%... 37%... 53%]
[Host capacity: Incomplete. Partial compensation in progress]
[Stabilization Mode: Emergency only]
His breath caught. The light snapped off.
And then he dropped like a bag of parts.
Silence.
A single spark fizzled in the dirt beside him.
Kevin hovered overhead and poked his shoulder with a metal limb.
"Still alive?"
Kairo wheezed. "Define... alive."
"You're still complaining. That qualifies."
–
Minutes Later
Kairo's skiff launched from the moon's surface in a stuttering arc, the half-dragged pod lashed beneath it like some ancient relic hitching a ride. The console spat errors while plasma licked the stars behind them.
He sat slumped in the pilot's chair, every nerve buzzing. The ship's lights flickered, then steadied.
And then, in the corner of his vision:
[GodCore Interface Active]
[Synchronization: 12%]
[Awaiting Calibration]
His throat went dry.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
[System online]
[User: Kairo Venn]
[Unauthorized. But accepted]
Kevin beeped. "What did you install this time?"
Kairo stared ahead.
"I don't know."
But deep down, something in him smiled.