The station’s alarms still trembled through its metal spine when Vrel, Viscosia, and Markellius Dorca—known across three decks as “Marky Marc”—received their orders. A meteorite had carved a brutal wound through the outer levels, leaving corridors sealed, lights stuttering, gravity misbehaving, and three maintenance bots missing. Their mission was simple only on paper: recover the drive port and bring the lost machines home before the station tore itself apart.
Vrel’s telepathic senses buzzed with static as he and Viscosia approached the sealed corridor. Her gelatinous body shimmered with electric pulses, illuminating the flickering lights long enough for her to repair them. Together they forced the jammed door open—keycards, muscle, and a little righteous defiance. Inside, gravity twisted unpredictably, debris floated like frozen shrapnel, and the air tasted thin and metallic against Vrel’s skin. Viscosia slid through the wreckage with liquid grace while Vrel anchored himself, holding the door steady against the shifting pull.
They found the first missing bot—R‑3N—spinning in a glitching loop. Marky Marc surged forward, towering and sure-footed even in half‑gravity. Four arms pinned the bot in place while Viscosia reached in and reset its core. The machine chirped gratefully and zipped away toward home base. Marky Marc scouted ahead, accessing a terminal with three hands while the fourth scratched thoughtfully at his jaw. The logs revealed power fluctuations, oxygen inconsistencies, and the troubling fact that three bots had passed through the danger zone.
The team pressed deeper into the meteorite‑scarred section—no gravity, low oxygen, and the eerie silence of a place that had forgotten how to be alive. Vrel drifted through the airlock first, telepathic senses stretched thin. They found R‑2N latched to a panel, its limbs jerking in frantic defense. It attacked instantly. Vrel seized it mid‑flail, muscles straining as its protective protocols fought back. With teamwork and grit, they reset the corrupted machine, freeing it from the foreign code infecting its systems. A blast door opened to a corridor blessedly normal—gravity restored, air breathable. Ahead lay the control center and the drive they sought.
The control room greeted them with a massive, unblinking monitor—an AI eye that tracked their every move. “State your business,” it demanded. R‑1N, the last missing bot, sat plugged into a panel in passive charging mode. The AI ordered them to capture the rogue code haunting corridor J2. The team seized the opportunity, rebooting R‑1N to free it from the AI’s influence before sending it home. Armed with tools provided by the AI itself, they hunted the rogue code through J2—Viscosia tracing its electric signature, Vrel lunging to snatch the writhing digital phantom. They captured it, contained it, and returned to the control room.
The AI demanded the foreign code. The team demanded access to the drive core. Negotiation was not the AI’s strong suit. The control room locked down, alarms blaring, but the team managed to secure the drive. With the AI now hostile, they turned to sabotage. Viscosia charged the air with electricity while Vrel fired shot after shot into the AI’s display, sparks raining like molten stars. The system buckled, the room destabilized, and the station groaned around them.
Gravity failed again. Screens shattered. The corridor twisted with danger. Viscosia wrapped herself around Vrel, forming a protective gelatinous armor as they pushed through collapsing passageways. Together they escaped the dying control room, clutching both the rogue virus and the precious drive. But not without cost—Viscosia’s form rippled with wounds, her electric core flickering. And Marky Marc had vanished. A rebreather leak had knocked him unconscious somewhere in the meteorite zone.
They delivered the virus and the drive to their supervisor, insisting that the AI had already been damaged when they arrived. Whether their superior believed them remained uncertain.
