Tess didn’t wait for Petra to arrive at Lab 9. She met her halfway,
in the corridor outside the research wing where the emergency lighting
cast long shadows across abandoned equipment carts.
“What are you doing?” Petra’s vibroblades were still drawn and still
humming. “Are you crazy?”
“Probably.” Tess kept walking. “The spawner has to be shut down
manually. The terminal’s inside Lab 9. Inside the containment
field.”
“The containment field you just fixed.” Petra fell into step beside
her. “The one keeping two spawns trapped inside.”
“Those spawns are going to be the least of our problems if that thing
keeps running.” Tess checked her interface and still had all six AP. Nothing
about this job had needed them yet. If she had to use them now, at least
she had everything available. “The researchers said the manual override
is the only option. Allen, or whoever, disabled everything else.”
“And you’re just going to walk in there.”
“I’m going to try.” Tess glanced at Petra. “I need you to handle the
spawns. They’re nothing for you, clearly. I’ll handle the spawner.”
Petra’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t argue. Between the two of them,
the division of labor made sense even if neither of them liked it.
They moved through the facility quickly, past empty labs and
abandoned workstations. Tess counted doors, tracking their progress
against the mental map she’d built from the camera feeds.
The containment field became visible before they reached Lab 9—a
faint shimmer in the air at the end of the corridor, like heat haze
rising from hot metal. Through it, Tess could see the crystalline spires
of the spawner, still pulsing with Aether, still doing whatever it was
doing.
“That’s the boundary.” Tess slowed as they approached. “Should hold
for a few more hours.”
“Should.”
“Best I could do with what I had. Everything was above my level.”
Petra studied the shimmer, then the room beyond it. “I can’t see the
spawns from here.”
“They’re in there. The cameras showed two.” Tess stepped closer to
the field, feeling something strange as she approached—a resonance,
almost. Like standing near a transformer that was working too hard.
“Give me a second.”
She reached out and placed her palm against the barrier.
The field thrummed against her hand. It was warm, almost alive. Her interface
reacted before she did, sending some sort of ping through the field. The
field pinged back. Recognition. It saw her as someone who belonged
here.
Then another handshake, layered on top of the first. Bee’s
acknowledgment code; the format she’d been transmitting since Tess had
fixed the signal spoof—started scrolling through her vision. The field
accepted it without question.
·········································
CONTAINMENT FIELD INTERFACE
Subroutine Access: Repair-04
Core Authorization: Accepted (Relay: CORE-B)
·········································
> Adjust Boundary
> Create Passage
> Deactivate Sector
> Emergency Shutdown
WARNING: Spawner still active
·········································
“I can get through,” Tess said. “It… recognizes me. It thinks I’m
authorized.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” That was mostly true. She understood the
what, even if the why was still a mystery. “But I can
get in. You can’t—not unless I open a gap from inside.”
Petra’s expression flickered—frustration, concern, something else
Tess couldn’t quite read. “Then open a gap.”
“Once I’m inside and I can see where the spawns are. I don’t want to
let them out.”
Tess stepped forward experimentally, and the field parted around her
like water. One moment she was in the corridor; the next she was
through, standing in Lab 9.
The spawner dominated the room.
She’d seen it on the cameras, knew intellectually what she was
walking into, but the reality was something else entirely. Crystalline
spires reached toward the ceiling like frozen lightning, teal and violet
and colors she didn’t have names for, all of them pulsing with Aether in
rhythms that felt almost like breathing. The air itself seemed thicker
here, charged with potential energy.
It was beautiful and strange in equal measure.
At the base of the spawner, something was forming. Crystal grew like
frost across an invisible framework, branching and spreading in
structures that resolved slowly into something almost humanoid. A
metallic layer was forming over the crystal—like ice freezing across a
pond, but in reverse, building up rather than spreading out. The
figure’s features were vague, unfinished, but she could see the shape
emerging. Arms, legs, and a head resolved from the chaos.
A spawn in the process of being born.
And it wasn’t the only one.
Two completed spawns prowled the perimeter of the lab, their
movements precise and mechanical. They were larger than the ones Petra
had killed in the corridors—more defined, more solid, their crystal
cores visible through gaps in the metal skin. These were stronger than
the ones in the hall. She could see it in the way they moved, the
deliberate grace of predators that knew exactly what they were capable
of.
They hadn’t noticed her yet. She was standing still, barely
breathing, trying to assess the situation before everything went
wrong.
[ANALYZE] activated almost reflexively.
·········································
SPAWNER UNIT S4-7
Designation: Manifestation Prototype
Status: Operational (Forced)
Control Interface: Corrupted
·········································
WARNING: Aether intake climbing
8.47 AW… 8.49 AW… 8.53 AW
Spawn Rate: 1 per 12 minutes (Accelerating)
·········································
The emergency shutdown terminal was across the room, past the spawns,
past the half-formed thing still growing at the spawner’s base. Maybe
forty meters.
Forty meters with no combat skills and two predators between her and
the objective.
Tess touched the containment barrier from the inside—and this time
the interface was different. More options, more control. She was inside
the field now, recognized as a core presence, and the system wanted to
help.
She found the option she needed and opened a gap for Petra. A section
of the barrier flickered and went transparent.
“That’s useful,” Tess muttered.
Petra was through in an instant, vibroblades raised, already tracking
the nearest spawn. “Left side. I see it.”
“There’s another on the right. And something forming at the
base.”
“Forming?”
“A new one. Growing.”
Petra’s expression went flat and professional. “Growing? Okay, we
move fast. Go.”
The spawns noticed them at the same time. The one on the left
oriented toward Petra, its core pulsing brighter. The one on the right
turned toward Tess.
It looked at her. Through her. Like it was calculating
exactly how long it would take to cross the distance between them.
Tess couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Every muscle in her body had
locked up, and some ancient part of her brain screamed that if she
stayed still, maybe it wouldn’t…
Petra was already moving, intercepting them before they could reach
Tess.
Tess ran as fast as she could.
She sprinted across the lab, dodging equipment stands and abandoned
research stations, heading for the terminal she’d seen. Behind her, she
heard the clash of Petra’s blades against crystal—metal on faceted
glass, a sound like bells being murdered.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
The terminal was exactly where she thought it would be. A standard
interface console, modified with additional inputs she didn’t recognize,
all of it labeled with handwritten notes and color-coded tape. Someone
had been working on this for a long time. Someone who understood what
they were doing.
And someone else had locked it down.
TERMINAL_ACCESS: DENIED
AUTHORIZATION: ROOT_ADMIN ONLY
OVERRIDE: pwnd_lol (ACTIVE)
Note: "lol get rekt"
“Of course,” Tess said. She pulled up [INTERFACE], preparing to
bypass whatever hacker nonsense was blocking the system.
The moment she connected to the spawner systems, the world
opened.
Her eyes were still seeing the lab, the terminal, the
spawns prowling the perimeter. But behind her eyes, something
else flooded in. Data. Code. Structures that folded in on themselves and
split apart and reformed into things she didn’t have names for. It
wasn’t a simple readout like she was used to. This was
everything. Every process the spawner was running, every
instruction it was following, every desperate signal it was sending out
into the void looking for a parent that would never answer.
[AUXILIARY_LINK] ACTIVATED
·········································
CORE INTERFACE ESTABLISHED
Connection Type: Bridge
Source: {null} Class User
Destination: Spawner Unit S4-7
Relay: CORE-B (Remote)
Status: Active
·········································
WARNING: Insufficient AP
·········································
Her AP counter flickered. 6. 5. 4.
The connection was drawing from her, using her as a power source the
same way it would use a dungeon. Because that’s what she was pretending
to be. That’s what the spawner thought she was.
BEE: Tess. There is a significant amount of code coming
through. I can see it.
“I thought you said spawners were independent.” Tess’s voice came out
strained, her head already beginning to pound. “You can’t access
them.”
BEE: They are independent. But the repair subroutine can
interface with them. You are acting as a bridge between it and…
me.
The data kept coming. Calculations she couldn’t follow. Code in
languages she didn’t recognize. Fractals that seemed to fold in on
themselves, revealing deeper patterns within patterns within patterns.
Her vision swam with text and symbols, none of it making sense, all of
it feeling important in ways she couldn’t articulate.
BEE: Tess, focus on my text. I will walk you through this. I
know this code. It is everything that I am.
Bee’s messages cut through the chaos like a beacon. Tess grabbed onto
them, using the familiar formatting as an anchor while the storm of data
raged around her.
BEE: What you are seeing is the Genesis protocol
architecture. This is how dungeons build things from Aether. It is the
fundamental process underlying all dungeon manifestation. I remember
now.
Behind her, Petra was fighting—the ring of blades, the crack of
crystal, a grunt of effort more strained than before. These spawns
weren’t going down easy.
BEE: The spawner is trying to connect to a parent system that
does not exist. It has been running in isolation, being forced to
operate without proper coordination. This is causing an accelerated
spawn rate.
The data resolved slightly as Bee guided her through it, pointing out
structures she recognized, explaining connections she didn’t. And
slowly, piece by piece, Tess understood what she was looking at.
Layers of instructions for Living Crystal.
She could see it now through the
connection. The crystal wasn’t a conductor of Aether. Instead, it was
breathing it. Taking it in, transforming it, using it to grow
and change and create. Like some sort of printer for artificial
life.
This was what Bee was. What Bee did. Growing dungeon floors,
shaping environments, creating challenges. Not because some programmer
told her to, but because that’s what living crystal did. It created.
And someone had ripped this piece out of a dungeon and forced it to
work in isolation, confused and desperate, pumping out spawns because
that was all it could do now.
BEE: I see it now; I remember. This is what I am, Tess. What
I was built to do. What the Network took when they sealed me away and
isolated my connections to the dungeon.
AP: 3.
The headache was building, pressure behind her eyes. But she couldn’t
look away. Couldn’t stop looking. Because this—all of this—was
beautiful. The way the Aether flowed. The way the crystal
responded. The intricate dance of creation happening right in front of
her, reduced to nothing more than a tool by people who didn’t understand
what they had.
A crash behind her. Petra’s voice strained: “Tess, whatever you’re
doing…”
Tess turned her attention to the spawns.
Through the connection, she could see them differently now. Not as
monsters. As processes. Subroutines running on the spawner’s
framework, drawing power from its core. They had instructions burned
into their lattice—move, hunt, kill—and they were following them because
that’s all they knew how to do. And she was connected to the
spawner.
She reached through the interface, feeling for the command structures
that controlled the spawns. It was like trying to grab something
underwater—the shapes kept shifting, the data kept moving—but Bee was
there, guiding her hands, showing her where to push.
BEE: There. The floor reset subroutine. Trigger
it.
Tess pushed.
Something moved through her. Not painful exactly, but she
felt it go—like releasing a breath. One AP gone.
And the spawn fighting Petra simply stopped.
Its crystal flickered once, twice, and then the light went out. The
metal skin lost its tension, sagging like wet cloth, and the whole thing
collapsed into components that dissolved into mist before they hit the
ground.
“What…” Petra spun, looking for a threat that was no longer there.
“What did you do?”
AP: 2.
“Made it think there was a floor reset,” Tess managed.
The second spawn was already charging at Petra, faster than the
first, more aggressive. And at the base of the spawner, the half-formed
thing was almost complete now—crystal features resolving into something
that looked almost human, metal coating flowing across its surface like
mercury.
Three targets. Two AP remaining.
Tess reached for the second spawn through her interface, found it,
and pushed. Another point of AP gone, another spawn dissolving into mist
mid-stride. Petra stumbled as her target vanished, blades cutting
through empty air.
AP: 1.
The headache was a roar now, pressure that made her vision blur at
the edges. And the newly formed spawn was pulling itself upright,
testing limbs that hadn’t existed ten minutes ago, turning toward her
with eyes that glowed with freshly minted purpose.
BEE: Tess. You need to shut down the spawner. One more should
do it.
One AP. Her last one. If something went wrong—if the shutdown didn’t
work—she wouldn’t have enough left to try again.
The new spawn took its first step toward her. Then its second.
“Tess!” Petra was moving, trying to intercept, but she was too far
away. The spawn was between them, and it was fast—faster than the
others, fresh and strong and filled with all the Aether the spawner had
been pumping into it.
She had one AP left. One chance to get this right.
Tess ignored the terminal and reached out. The spawner’s core systems
spread out before her like a maze. She was searching desperately for the
floor reset subroutine, her vision swimming through code like
tunnels.
BEE: THERE!
Tess pushed, and her last AP drained out of her.
For a moment, nothing happened. The spawn kept coming, the spawner
kept pulsing, and Tess thought she’d failed—thought she’d burned her
last resource for nothing.
The spawner’s light went out.
It happened all at once, like someone had thrown a switch. The
crystal spires stopped pulsing. The Aether flow stuttered and died. And
the spawn that had been about to tear her apart simply… stopped. Its
eyes went dark. Its limbs locked in place. And then it was falling,
dissolving before it hit the ground, joining the mist that was all that
remained of its siblings.
A new half-formed spawn at the spawner’s base never finished growing.
Its crystal framework collapsed inward, the metal shell flaking away
like ash, until there was nothing left but a faint shimmer in the air
that faded to nothing.
Silence.
Tess’s legs buckled. She didn’t so much sit as collapse, her back
hitting the terminal she’d been working at, sliding down until she was
on the floor with her knees pulled up. Her head was pounding. Her hands
wouldn’t stop shaking. And somewhere behind her eyes, the afterimage of
all that data was still flickering—fading, but not gone.
She checked her interface. Had to blink a few times before the
numbers made sense.
{NULL} LEVEL UP!
LEVEL 6 → LEVEL 7
TECH: 6 → 7
AP: 6 → 7
LEVEL PROGRESS: 87%
[ERROR] NEW SKILL UNLOCKED! [AUXILIARY_LINK]
CURRENT AP: 1/7
A new skill, and 87% to level 8 already. That couldn’t be right for a
list of reasons. Classes only received two skills before level 10, and
she had used this one before she even unlocked it. She had gained a
level for not repairing something, and nearly skipped one.
BEE: Tess. Are you alright? The bridge connection has been
terminated.
“I think so.” Her voice came out rough, exhausted.
Petra was at her side a moment later, dropping into a crouch, one
hand on Tess’s shoulder. “What in the name of the Founders was
that?”
Tess looked at her hands. They were shaking. She couldn’t make them
stop.
“I’m honestly not sure,” she said.
She just didn’t have the words for it yet. The connection had shown
her something—something that was still echoing in the back of her mind
like the afterimage of a bright light. She saw creation and growth, the
way Aether became matter…
Living crystal.
“I think,” Tess said slowly, still staring at her trembling fingers,
“I finally understand what I’m trying to save.”
BEE: Tess.
She looked up, blinking against the headache.
BEE: Thank you.
That was it. Two words. But there was something different about
them—a weight that Tess could almost feel through the text. No glitches.
No uncertainty. No “I am uncertain how to process this.”
There was nothing but gratitude in the signal.
BEE: For a moment, I could feel it again. What I was. What I…
am.
A pause longer than Bee’s usual processing time.
BEE: I had forgotten how much I had lost. Or rather, those
memories were taken from me.
“I levelled up, but I didn’t fix anything,” she said. “The spawner’s
just off. That’s not a repair.”
BEE: No, but you fixed something else.
“What?”
BEE: Me. Just a little. For just a moment, through you, I
remembered what it felt like to be whole. Several of my system indexes
have been restored.
Tess didn’t have a response for that. Her head hurt. Her AP was
gone—well, actually almost gone now. Though she probably wouldn’t be
interfacing with anything more complex than a light switch for the next
day or two.
But Bee had felt whole. Even just for a moment.
That had to count for something.
Petra helped her onto her feet, steadying her when she swayed. “Can
you walk?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Because we still need to get those researchers out of Lab 4,
and then I need to have a very long conversation with my father about
what exactly is going on.”
“I know one thing, Petra,” Tess said. “I’m done doing house calls for
your family.”
Petra laughed. “At this point I’m pretty sure Delving is safer. Let’s
go get those researchers out of the lab and get out of here.”
The two of them made their way through the gap in the containment
field, Tess holding onto Petra’s arm to keep herself upright.
Once they had passed through, it closed behind them, leaving the
spawner fully contained. Dark, offline, and lonely.
