Wesley climbed out of the soup cooler container and looked for Riven. She was gone. He started to walk. Wesley didn’t run. Running attracted attention. He walked at exactly the pace of everyone else breaking lockdown: the Partisant-approved shuffle, one part exhaustion, one part compliance, zero parts anywhere to be. He matched it, kept his head down. Roz’s voice echoed in his memory: Your left heel drags approximately two centimeters.
He corrected it. Lifted his feet properly. Became invisible.
It was much easier to get to the ventilation shaft now. He didn’t see or hear a drone, and when he arrived at his hideout it was exactly as he’d left it. No yellow tape. No drone residue on the metal. No signs of forced entry.
He squeezed through the narrow passage, his shoulders scraping the walls, his heart hammering against his ribs. The tarp was still in place. The equipment still dark.
His foot caught on a bolt rooted up from the floor. His tattered pant leg snagged on jagged metal. Rip.
Of course.
His aunt had to repair yet another pair of pants. The collection was growing. Three pairs this month, all torn on the same stretch of ductwork. He had actually diagrammed the bolt once. He had not, it turned out, done anything about it.
“Roz?”
No response.
Wesley pulled the tarp aside.
She sat exactly where he’d left her, slumped against the wall, eyes dark. Powered down. Waiting.
He connected the power tap and held his breath.
Her eyes flickered. Brightened. Focused on his face.
“Wesley.” [Recalibrating] “You were gone for approximately 13.7 hours. My concern subroutines have been... active.”
“I know. I’m sorry. The lockdown—”
“[Monitoring] I am aware of the lockdown. I monitored security frequencies during low-power mode.” [Pause] “You returned. That is... satisfactory.”
Wesley laughed. It came out shaky. “Just satisfactory?”
“[Recalibrating] I am recalibrating my emotional vocabulary. ‘Satisfactory’ may be insufficient.” Roz’s head tilted. “[Puzzling] I experienced something during the shutdown. A processing state I cannot categorize. It resembled the anxiety responses you described, but without external stimulus.”
“You were worried about me.”
“[Bewildered] That appears to be the case.” She sounded almost surprised. “The sensation consumed 4% of reserve power and produced no actionable output. I do not recommend it.”
Wesley knelt beside her. “I’m not going anywhere. Not without you.”
“[Calculating] That is statistically unlikely. The Beta Test is tomorrow. You will be assigned to a new Stack. I cannot accompany you.”
The words hit harder than Wesley expected. She was right. Tomorrow he’d be sorted into a new life. A new Stack. Maybe hundreds of levels away.
And Roz would still be here. Hidden. Alone.
“I’ll find a way,” he said. “I don’t know how yet. But I’ll figure it out.”
“[Assessing] You are proposing to solve an undefined problem with no clear variables or constraints.”
“Yes.”
“That is not how problem-solving works.”
“It’s how my problem-solving works.” Wesley pulled the bar from his pocket. “And speaking of problems. This thing fell into our room last night. You said it was emitting a frequency you didn’t recognize. Can you analyze it now?”
Roz’s eyes focused on the bar. [Deciphering]
“[Unraveling] The frequency is complex. Multi-layered. Encoded in a wrapper I have never seen, nested inside a wrapper I have seen exactly once, inside a checksum any Partisant scanner would discard as a rounding error.” [Pause] “Translation: someone wanted this to look like nothing. I can identify partial patterns. Orbital calculations. Gravitational constants. References to celestial bodies.”
“The moons?”
“[Searching] Unknown. The data is incomplete.” [Pause] “There is also a timestamp. Encoded differently than the rest. If my interpretation is correct, it references an event approximately twenty-five days from now.”
[ENCRYPTED:Orbital calculations celestial bodies timestamp.]
Twenty-five days. The alignment.
Wesley stared at the bar in his hands. Someone had dropped this into his life. Someone who knew about his hidden room. Someone who wanted him to find it.
“Roz,” he said slowly, “what if you’re not just a robot I built? What if you’re part of something bigger?”
“[Contemplating] I am uncertain how to respond to that question. I am two days old. My dataset is limited.”
“Yeah.” Wesley tucked the bar back into his pocket. “Mine too.”
He looked at her sitting there. Half-functional. Unable to raise her arms above shoulder height because he had cut that corner and meant to come back to it. Powered by salvaged components and stubborn hope. Two days old and already the closest thing to family he had left.
Tomorrow the Beta Test would try to decide his future.
But Wesley was starting to think his future had already been decided. By his mother. By whoever dropped the bar. By forces he couldn’t see and didn’t understand.
The only question was whether he’d figure it out in time.
“Roz,” he said. “I need you to do something for me.”
“I am listening.”
“Stay hidden. Stay safe. And if I don’t come back after the test...” He swallowed. “There’s a data chip in the wall panel. My mother left it. Instructions, code fragments, an audio file. If something happens to me, I need you to find someone who can use it.”
“Who?”
“Shoot.” Wesley pushed to his feet. “I don’t know. Someone. There has to be someone out there who can take you in and make sense of what she left behind.”
[Processing]
“You are asking me to trust an unknown entity based on incomplete evidence and intuition.”
“Yes.”
“That is not logical.”
“No,” Wesley agreed. “But it’s human.”
[Long Pause]
“[Resolving] I will comply. But I am registering a formal objection. Filed to no one. Retrievable by no one. It will remain on record inside me.”
Wesley smiled. “Noted.”
Wesley and Roz spent the rest of the day hidden, talking, working through bugs in Roz’s functions until the lockdown ended.
He covered her with the tarp, powered down the connection, and squeezed back through the ventilation shaft. The corridor outside was quiet.
Tomorrow was the Beta Test.
Tomorrow everything would change.
But for the first time in his life, Wesley felt like he might be ready for it.