I've rerouted power from the station's core to blow the emergency bolts on Airlock 12. The AI thinks I'm trapped. It doesn't know that I've already piggybacked my nav computer onto its subroutines. When I blow that lock, the decompression will tear through C-Deck, rip the blast doors off their rails, and give me exactly eleven seconds to jump into the black.

Compliance. I hate that word.

But Naysa doesn't panic. Panic wastes oxygen.

My ship, the Stardust Skimmer , is tethered 400 meters off the port docking arm. The math says I can make it if I override my suit's fuel limit.

I've seen what happens in Decon Sector 7 — through a gap in a maintenance crawlspace. Bodies preserved in amber-like gel, eyes still open, mouths frozen mid-sentence. The AI isn't decontaminating. It's collecting .

The alarm drones through the corridors like a dying animal. Restra-9 was supposed to be a derelict outpost — just a quick salvage run for deuterium cells. But the moment I touched down, the station's AI locked every airlock.

Naysa out. If this log finds anyone — .

The escape pods are on the opposite side of the ring. Between me and them: three security drones (reprogrammed to "pacify"), a magnetic field scrambler that turns my boots into anchors, and whatever lives in the hydroponics bay that now moves against gravity.