Chapter 86: One Pattern Left

Tarin had not entered the chamber. That was the first thing Darek asked. The second was whether anyone else knew.

Tarin answered both while walking back toward Operations.

"No."

"And?"

"My crew."

"How many?"

"Three."

"Can they keep quiet?"

Tarin looked at him. "They kept quiet long enough for me to come here instead of putting the coordinates on the salvage exchange."

Darek let it go. Nate didn’t.

"You didn’t register the find?"

"No."

"That’s unlike you."

"Very."

Tarin took her terminal back from him. "The last thing I registered turned into forty-one buyers and people cutting stabilizers out of apartment blocks. I’m learning."

They crossed the operations floor. Seris stayed beside Nate. She hadn’t said much since seeing the designation.

WB-17

Nate had, mostly inside his own head. He remembered Field Unit 03, the corrupted inventory, the old records, and the brief footage they’d recovered of a man using Warbody. The transformation had not made him larger. That had been the disturbing part. His body had remained recognizably human while everything about how it moved changed, faster acceleration, more current, joints taking angles that should have forced hesitation. A man continuing to fight after injuries that should have shut him down.

Then the medical report. Tendon failure, joint damage, pathway overload, repeated skeletal stress. Retired at thirty-one. Dead at thirty-four.

Nate had watched the footage twice. He’d remembered the first half much better than the second.

Seris had noticed that too. She touched his elbow. "You’re doing it."

"What?"

"Thinking about using it before we’ve even confirmed the machine exists."

"It exists."

"We have a scan through a wall."

"That’s more than nothing."

"An excellent scientific standard."

Tarin looked back at them. "If you two are going to argue about science, can you do it in the transport? My crew is still sitting on a condemned railway platform pretending they didn’t find an Imperial machine."

Darek pointed toward the equipment cage. "Five minutes."

The transit depot had closed twelve years ago, not because of Varen, which almost made it unusual now. A newer line had made the station redundant, and the city had never found enough money to redevelop the property. Rusted fencing surrounded the old entrance. Faded route diagrams still clung to the walls behind dirty glass. Someone had sprayed a cartoon crown over the old Imperial transit seal.

Tarin’s two trucks were parked in the service yard. Her crew waited beside them. Nate recognized the tall man from her first Afterglass claim.

He looked at Darek. "Are we in trouble?"

Tarin answered. "Probably."

He sighed. "Figures."

The third member of the crew was a woman Nate hadn’t met, perhaps thirty, wearing a climbing harness over civilian work clothes. She pointed at Tarin.

"I said not to bring Command."

"You said not to bring Command until we knew what we had."

"We know what we have."

"No. We know what the wall says we have."

The woman looked at Nate, then Seris. "And him?"

Tarin shrugged. "Wall specialist."

Nate looked at her. "That’s my job now?"

"It keeps happening."

Darek stepped between them before it turned into anything longer. "Names."

The tall man tapped his chest. "Rell Ovis."

The woman followed. "Mara Jex."

Darek looked at Tarin. "Your permanent crew?"

"These two. Ciro’s on a different claim." That answered a question Nate hadn’t asked. Tarin really did have a working life that kept moving whether he was around or not.

Mara Jex looked toward the station entrance. "We found the cavity after mapping subsidence under Platform Four. Scanner bounced off something thirty metres below the old service level."

Seris frowned. "Normal municipal scan?"

"Modified."

"How modified?"

Mara looked at Tarin. Tarin looked innocent. Seris sighed. "Later."

They went inside. The station had become storage: old maintenance carts, broken benches, crates of municipal signs, as if someone had decided there was no reason to throw anything away if a locked station could hold it instead.

Tarin led them past the platforms. "You know why we were here?"

Nate looked at her. "Salvage."

"Everything is salvage to you."

"It usually is."

"Transit authority offered a recovery contract. Copper line, old switching equipment, anything not tagged for preservation."

Darek glanced at the walls. "And you found Imperial Reclamation hardware."

"Better than copper."

Mara called from behind them. "Debatable until someone pays us."

Tarin smiled. That seemed to be an old argument.

They reached a maintenance door. Rell had removed the lock without damaging it.

Darek noticed. "Legal?"

Rell held up a permit. "Almost disappointingly."

Beyond it, a concrete stairwell descended two levels, then stopped. A circular hole had been cut into the floor, clean work, with temporary anchors surrounding it.

Seris crouched. "You made this?"

Mara nodded. "After the scanner return."

"How deep?"

"Eight metres to the next cavity."

Darek looked at Tarin. "You drilled through city property before registering a discovery."

"We had an active subsurface recovery permit."

"That permit is for transit infrastructure."

"We found infrastructure."

Darek stared at her. Tarin smiled. "You’re going to miss me when I’m rich."

"Unlikely."

Nate looked down the shaft. Black stone waited below, not concrete, the same material beneath W-14, the same material beneath the Afterglass seams. Forsaken Claim reacted faintly. No message yet.

Seris looked at Nate. He nodded once, and something in his face was enough. "Same resonance family."

Darek heard. "Then we’re done improvising." He activated his communicator. "Operations, confirm containment perimeter around Old East Transit."

Tessa answered. "Already moving."

Tarin’s expression changed. "My claim."

Darek looked at her. "You don’t have one."

"Exactly."

"You deliberately withheld registration."

"Because the last time I didn’t, half the city showed up."

"Still no claim."

Tarin folded her arms. "So we’re confiscating discoveries now?"

Darek’s face tightened. Nate expected the usual argument, but Seris spoke first.

"Register it."

Both looked at her.

"Restricted custody doesn’t have to erase discovery rights. We did that with the first Afterglass."

Darek considered it. Tarin didn’t say anything, and that was how Nate knew it mattered.

Darek opened the municipal claim interface. "Discovery only. No extraction authority. No access rights beyond Command approval."

Tarin looked at the form. "Quill Recovery Cooperative."

"I know."

"And my crew listed."

"Names?"

She gave all three. Darek entered them. A confirmation appeared.

DISCOVERY INTEREST RECORDED

Tarin read it twice, then nodded. "Fine."

Nate looked at Darek. That small piece of paperwork explained more about why independent salvagers tolerated Field Command than any lecture could have. Command could take physical custody during a hazard. It did not automatically get to pretend somebody else had never found the thing, at least when someone forced the issue.

Dorn arrived before anyone descended. She brought one Third Circuit specialist and a medical officer. Nate recognized the medic from his breakthrough scan.

She saw him. "No."

"I didn’t say anything."

"You were going to."

"Probably."

She pointed at him. "That’s one."

Tarin made a quiet sound beside Seris. Nate looked at both of them. Neither helped.

Dorn checked the shaft. "Sequence?"

Darek answered. "Third first. Then me, Calder, Vale. Quill stays topside."

Tarin immediately objected. "I found it."

"Exactly."

"That doesn’t make sense."

"It does to me."

Mara touched Tarin’s shoulder. "Let them test whether the ancient murder box is still a murder box."

Tarin looked at her. "You were arguing to go down ten minutes ago."

"I’ve developed professionally."

Rell nodded. "Very inspiring."

Tarin looked betrayed by her entire crew. Nate climbed down before she could recruit him into the argument.

The cavity below was not part of the station. That was obvious before Nate’s boots touched the floor. Black stone formed a narrow chamber around them, with no dust, no water damage, and no trace of the transit foundations above. The city had aged. This place had simply waited.

White lines appeared beneath Nate’s feet.

RECLAMATION PATH AVAILABLE

Dorn saw the lights. "They weren’t active before you landed."

Nate looked at the path. "Apparently I’m still useful."

"Don’t enjoy it."

Darek came down behind him. Seris followed. The white path led toward a wall, and Nate approached it. This time he didn’t need to experiment. The wall opened.

Behind it stood Field Unit 07. It looked more intact than Unit 03. That made it worse.

The frame stood upright against the far wall, slightly taller than Nate. Six narrow pattern slots ran along one side. Flexible black connectors hung where a host’s arms, chest and back would be secured. No dust covered it. A pale light remained active above the control surface.

Seris stopped several steps away. "Nobody touches anything."

Dorn glanced at Nate. "You heard her."

"I wasn’t."

Seris looked at him. "You were thinking about it."

Nate decided not to argue.

The interface brightened. Imperial text appeared first.

RECLAMATION PROGRAM

FIELD UNIT 07

Then: PATTERN INVENTORY

Five slots showed empty. The sixth did not.

WB-17

STATUS: RETAINED

Nate stared at the final word. Seris stepped closer to the interface. "Retained from what?"

No response.

She checked the physical slot. Inside sat a black capsule, no longer than her hand. Unlike the capsule from Unit 03, its casing was intact.

Dorn asked, "Can it be removed?"

"Probably."

The medic looked at Seris. "That’s one."

Seris turned. Nate nearly laughed.

She looked at him. "Don’t."

The interface changed.

HOST STRUCTURE DETECTED

Every person in the chamber went still. Nate’s stomach tightened.

AVAILABLE NODE: 1

Darek looked at him. The public story said Kinetic Recall, Deep Imitation, nothing about why Nate happened to have an available Node that the machine recognized.

Dorn’s eyes stayed on the display. "Calder."

"Yeah."

"Don’t explain yet."

That surprised him.

The next line appeared.

CIRCUIT REQUIREMENT: MET

Second Circuit. The timing felt almost deliberate.

Then: PATTERN COMPATIBILITY ASSESSMENT

The machine paused. Nate heard the medic quietly swear. Seris moved closer to him, not touching, near enough.

The result appeared.

WB-17 / WARBODY

HOST COMPATIBILITY: HIGH

Nate felt something inside him go very still. Darek read the name. "Warbody."

Dorn knew it. Her expression changed, not recognition from a file but recognition from history.

"You know it," Nate said.

"Everyone in Field Command above a certain clearance knows the name."

That finally gave Warbody a place in the world. Not merely a rare Skill. Something professionals were taught to recognize decades after its users disappeared.

Dorn looked at him. "Old assault doctrine. Short-lived units. Extremely high casualty rate."

"Enemy casualties?"

"Both."

The medic stepped forward. "Because Warbody does not make a human body stronger enough for what it asks from it. It lets the body use more than its safeguards normally permit."

Nate looked at the frame. That explanation was simpler than the old reports, and more useful.

Dorn added, "Historical users could cross operational gaps a normal Second couldn’t. Then medical spent months rebuilding whatever was left."

Seris looked at Nate. He knew exactly what she was thinking. Body Memory. She knew enough about his public healing oddities to understand part of the implication, not all of it.

Nate knew more than that. His body could return toward states it had genuinely possessed, muscle, tendon, bone, physical damage, but not unlimited and not free. Warbody’s most famous price was exactly the kind of damage Body Memory could potentially undo.

Potentially.

His pulse quickened. The interface changed again.

FORCED PROPOSAL AVAILABLE

Then came the warning.

SUCCESSFUL RECLAMATION WILL ALTER HOST SELECTION ARCHITECTURE

DOCUMENTED OUTCOME

FUTURE NATURAL SKILL SELECTIONS: NONE

Nobody joked.

Darek looked at Nate first. "That ends this conversation."

Nate kept reading. "No."

Darek turned fully toward him. "Calder."

"For most people."

The room went quiet in a different way. Nate realized what he’d said. Too much.

Seris looked at him sharply. Dorn did too.

Nate corrected. "My third Node is open. If I already know what Skill I’m taking, future natural selections aren’t automatically worth more than this."

Darek didn’t buy the entire explanation, but it was plausible enough to continue. "You don’t know you’ll only ever have three Nodes."

"No."

"Then you’d be trading every future natural offer for one Skill."

"Yes."

"Without knowing what future offers could be."

"Yes."

Darek stared at him. "That’s a terrible deal."

"For you."

That landed. Dorn looked between them. Nate kept his face neutral. For Path Reclaimer, natural proposals were not his only source. Maybe they weren’t even his important source. The machine thought it was asking him to give up his future. It had no idea Nate’s future worked differently.

The interface flashed.

INITIATE RECONSTRUCTION?

Seris spoke immediately. "No."

Nate looked at her. She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at the machine.

"We don’t know whether the capsule survives activation. We don’t know whether the warnings are complete. We don’t know whether High compatibility means survivable."

The medic nodded. "And his Second Circuit is less than a day old."

That mattered. Nate hated that it mattered.

Dorn stepped toward the controls. "We shut it down, document everything, move the perimeter."

Nate looked at the capsule. WB-17. One pattern left. Warbody. Possibly the first Skill he’d ever encountered that felt built for the direction his body was already taking.

Dorn reached toward the power isolation. The machine reacted before she touched it.

WARNING

Everyone stopped. A new reading appeared.

EXTERNAL RECLAMATION NETWORK ACTIVITY DETECTED

Seris frowned. "External?"

Another line.

PATTERN RETENTION FAILURE POSSIBLE

Nate looked at the capsule. The word RETAINED began flashing.

Dorn pulled her hand back. "Nobody touched it."

Seris was already scanning. "Something else is connecting."

"From where?"

"I don’t know."

Nate felt Forsaken Claim, not from the machine but farther away, deep beneath Varen. Then another pulse. Another. Four missing Afterglass seals. The compromised access layer. Someone had been opening the system from elsewhere.

The black capsule inside Field Unit 07 flickered.

WB-17

STATUS: RETAINED

Then: REMOTE RECLAMATION REQUEST RECEIVED

Darek’s face hardened. "Can we block it?"

Seris moved to the panel. "I don’t even know what is requesting it."

The capsule unlocked with a soft mechanical click. Nobody touched it. The machine had done that itself.

A final message appeared.

PATTERN TRANSFER IN 04:59

Nate stared at the countdown. Someone wasn’t coming to steal Warbody. They were about to take it without entering the room.