"I'm sorry - what did you just say?"
Down the corridor, Calyx turned, one hand already mid-gesture as if conducting an invisible orchestra. "Maxim Cutter," she said lightly, shifting her hips. "The man. The legend. The empire in a suit. He's agreed to meet with us."
Nova blinked. "He... what?"
Calyx's grin bloomed across her faceplate, arms outstretched an exaggerated gesture like an old-timey burlesque show-stopper on a stage wired for espionage.
"Enemy faction! Supreme executive!" She twirled. "Likely surrounded by assassins and monogrammed death protocols!" She ended the movement with jazz hands and a curtsy. "It's all very dramatic."
Nova stared. "Are you high?"
"Mmmm, no, but only one of us needs to be."
Nova stood. "How are we even supposed to get there? That city's -
"Off-limits? Monitored? Probably booby-trapped in ways we don't have names for? Exactly." Calyx said, already crossing over to an adjacent hallway leading to a sealed door at the far end. "Which is why we won't be going. Not physically, anyway."
Nova narrowed her eyes. "Then what?"
Calyx turned, arms wide like a stage magician at the finale. "Synaptic Projection."
Nova's face darkened instantly. "Synaptic?! Absolutely not. There's no way I'm letting that thing near my mind again."
Calyx stopped, her expression softening. Not in confusion, but curiosity. "...Thing?"
Nova looked away. "Nothing. Just... no interfaces. Not after what happened."
Calyx tapped her chin theatrically. "Mmhmm. Sounds like alot to unpack. But I promise you, this isn't that."
She drifted closer. "This is my own design. Nothing touches you that I don't allow. The projection units I use are closed-loop; non-networked, triple-encrypted, and offline unless I personally wake them. Built from scratch. Grown, even."
Nova didn't reply.
"And," Calyx added with a flutter of her synthetic fingers, "I monitor all access. If a packet so much as breathes in the wrong direction, I crucify it in code."
Nova's lips twitched. That sounded like something Calyx would enjoy.
"Aaaaand," Calyx added, sliding onto the edge of one of the wall counter spaces like she'd just sat down to gossip, "those synthetic bodies you've seen me use? The ones networked to me? Cutter helped make them."
Nova blinked. "Cutter built those bodies?"
"Funded. Facilitated. Helped design the sensory matrix protocols, even. Surprisingly good at interface logic for someone who still wears a tie." She leaned forward, conspiratorially. "He thought he was making me tools. What he got were extensions of my mind. Not puppets. Not proxies. They cant be hacked because they're not separate."
She tapped the side of her temple. "He gave me form, I gave them purpose."
Nova hesitated. "So... you... trust him?"
Calyx smirked. "Oh, no no no. Trust is organic. I understand him." Then, with a more thoughtful tone: "Our relationship is interesting, you know. He can't manipulate me, not like the others. I'm not susceptible to fear, addiction, debt, or sentiment. His usual tools don't work. So instead..." She paused for effect. "He befriended me."
Nova raised an eyebrow, not sure what to make of this story. "Connection, dear. The most underrated weapon in the Sovereign arsenal. People underestimate the value of a friend until the battlefield shifts and they're the only one still standing next to you.".
They entered the communications room: a circular, glass-walled chamber haloed in soft silver-blue light. A polished ring hovered near the ceiling, humming with quiet power. The floor shimmered with data threading; thin golden lines that pulsed as the machinery stirred awake. There were no headsets. No helmets. No glowing chairs. Just the hum of systems so advanced they no longer looked advanced.
"You'll stand here," Calyx said, gesturing to the center of the floor. "Probes will descend. It'll scan your synaptic lattice, map axon potentials, read cortical alignment, then duplicate the data as a mapping reference on the other side."
Nova stepped forward slowly, then paused. "And the body on the other end?"
"Synthetic," Calyx said. "We'll use one built to your specs. Fully sterile, thick in all the right places. Lightly modded. I gave it good hair."
The probes descended - elegant, quiet things that flickered with scanning beams across Nova's scalp. Lights danced briefly across the air like fireflies caught in a mason jar. Calyx studied one of the readouts. "Telemetric destination is officially locked. Receiving system is online. Cutter's team has accepted my handshaking protocol and initiated their security tokens."
Nova exhaled, trying to brace herself, but entirely unsure of how to do so or what to think. She ran her thumb against the dermal plate at her wrist, nervously, just like before. It had small comfort.
"One more thing," Calyx said casually, tapping a diagnostic pad. "You may feel a little... floaty."
Nova's brow furrowed. "Floaty? Why floaty?"
Calyx grinned in her usual fashion. "Because I can do this seamlessly. You, however, are meat. Your mind needs to be more... plastic. Malleable. Open to suggestion."
Nova opened her mouth. "What does that -"
A hiss.
One of the probes released a puff of transparent gas directly into her face. She flinched, staggering back half a step.
"Don't worry," Calyx called cheerfully. "Just a low-grade psychoactive. You've done mushrooms, right?"
Nova coughed. "You drugged me!?"
"Buffed you!" Calyx corrected. "Call it a mental yoga warm-up! You got this."
The world began to sway gently, as though the floor was a breathing thing. Lights brightened. Calyx's voice elongated into warmth and resonance.
"And now," she said, her voice suddenly calm, serene, reverent, with all the makings of true Ascendent tonality, "step into the space between selves."
The projection chamber blurred at the edges first.
Not a fade to black, rather something more fluid. Like glass re-melting into sand. Nova's peripheral vision fractured into hard geometry: hex patterns, flickering diagnostics, chemical trails. She felt like her skull had folded inside-out and was now remembering itself from the outside.
Calyx's voice still echoed somewhere behind her in the real world, filtered through warmth and distortion:
"Step into the space between selves..."
A brief moment of weightlessness, before gravity reasserted itself. Not hard, but definite. Like someone had chosen a direction for her.
And suddenly -
A room.
The transition was seamless. Too seamless. She stood upright, already balanced, already breathing in air that wasn't air. The synthetic body didn't feel strange. It felt... corrected. She flexed her fingers. The movement was instant, smooth. Not just mimicry, but mastery.
Standing beside her, elegant as a glass of wine held too long -
Calyx.
Already integrated. Already smirking.
"And there she is," Calyx cooed, nudging Nova with a grin. "Your consciousness is absolutely glistening, Nova Cale. I almost want to bottle it."
Nova looked up just in time to see the room open up around them. It was everything Sovereign City wanted you to believe it was: clean power, elevated vision, the scent of ozone and expensive privacy. The walls were curved obsidian, inlaid with lines of golden sigils. Every angle was intentional. Every gleam had been told exactly how to behave.
At the center of it all: Maxim Cutter.
He was standing near a synthstone crescent table, backlit by the glittering skyline of the city he ruled. He didn't move at their arrival. He didn't need to. His presence filled the room like its own architecture.
Caaaalyx," he said, a little breathy, smiling faintly. "Still dressing like an expensive virus, I see."
Calyx's grin widened. "And you still smell like strategic debt and conditional loyalty. I was worried you'd gone soft."
"Never soft," Cutter said, approaching slowly. "Just patient."
They stood facing each other; two sculptures in conversation. The air felt heavy with old secrets.
"I see you've added new eyes," Cutter noted, glancing at the faint crystalline sheen behind her synthetic oscillators.
"You should see what I've added underneath," Calyx replied, leaning in just slightly. "I had time. You gave me bodies."
"I gave you resources," he corrected. "You made them dangerous."
"Same thing, darling."
Nova watched, half-forgotten, as two of the most unsettling beings she'd ever encountered traded winks and sharpened jokes like duelists, circling each other like well-dressed panthers, with herself being caught in the gravitational pull of their long history. For a moment, she felt like a child crashing a masquerade.
And then Cutter's gaze shifted to her. Not suddenly. Not rudely. Just... precisely.
Like a data packet re-routing through high-priority channels.
"Nova Cale," he said, her name falling from his mouth like it had always belonged to him. "The architect of stabilization. The anomaly in the lattice. Echo-touched.
Nova's pulse flinched. So he knew. Of course he knew. She held her voice steady. "You've done your homework."
"I do more than homework," he replied, voice smooth as engineered silk. "I invest in probabilities. And you, Miss Cale, are... trending."
Calyx slid past her, settling herself onto the edge of the synthstone table like a cat settling into a sunbeam.
"She's not for sale, Max," she said idly. "Though I am curious to hear what you'd offer."
Cutter studied her, still and silent as the skyline behind him. The room felt even larger now, like it had grown with his intent. His voice, when it came, was soft - too soft for what he was about to say.
"What if you could build without fear?"
Nova blinked, although she found it to be more of a human reaction. As a synthetic, it served no real purpose. "What? What do you mean?"
He stepped away from the crescent table, pacing slowly through the ambient light as if it bent to accommodate him. "No permissions. No filters. No risk that your designs will be handed off to a committee of cowards or buried beneath layers of outdated doctrine. What if I gave you freedom, Miss Cale?"
She stayed still. Not a single servo moved.
"Lucius Ward," Cutter continued, "values results. But not curiosity. You've noticed that, haven't you?"
Nova's mouth opened. Closed. Then: "You're not exactly a neutral voice."
Cutter smiled. "No. But I'm an honest one."
He turned back to her fully, voice crisp. "Here's what I'm offering: your own R&D lab. Fully funded. Entirely autonomous. Staffed only if you choose. It can be inside the CutterSpire - our corporate arcology, if you like the skyline - or on a Sovereign satellite platform beyond Praxelia's reach, if you prefer peace."
"And in return?" she asked quietly
"In return," he said, "you defect."
Ten tons of silence pressed into the room like it was sent by the Compression Lance itself.
"You leave the Ascendents. You let Kreel and Ward wonder what became of you while you design the future."
Nova swallowed, another pointless gesture. "And my work? You'll just let me do what I want with it?"
"I don't care what you do with it," Cutter said. "I care what you make."
He crossed his arms behind his back, tilting his head slightly. "Your work will never be used in combat without your explicit consent. No backdoors. No quiet reassignments. You'll retain your intellectual rights. You'll license what you wish. You'll name what you create."
She narrowed her eyes, scanning his body language. "You're not afraid I'll walk away with everything you give me?"
"Of course not," he said. "That's the difference between control and conviction."
"And what about Echo?"
That made him pause, just long enough for her to see it. "Echo," Cutter said slowly, "is a question still being written. What I'm offering you... is a pen. Even I am not clairvoyant, just all powerful." He said the end part with a carefree resonance to his voice.
Nova looked down at her synthetic hands, still not quite hers. She felt the weight of the offer sink into her skin like cooling metal.
"And you're just offering this... why? Because I impressed you?"
"Because you're useful," he said plainly. "And because I'd rather have you in the room than outside it."
She nodded once. Honest. Brutal.
"That's... a lot," she said.
Calyx, still lounging nearby, yawned theatrically. "He doesn't offer these things twice, dear. Well, not unless the last person explodes."
Nova didn't flinch. "I need time."
Cutter inclined his head. "Take the night. But don't take too long. The world doesn't wait for maybes."
Nova looked at him. Looked at Calyx. Looked back out at the city that stretched in all directions like a living simulation. "I'll think about it."
"That," Cutter said, "is all I ask."
The two of them stepped out of the room graciously, almost without sound, back into what might have been the longest hallway Nova had ever seen. It was practically a procession of wealth itself.
"Well, gumdrop... since you're here in one piece and he didn't vaporize us," she said, "why don't we do something scandalous?"
All Nova could do was blink, still processing the weight of the last half hour. "Like what?"
Calyx tilted her head, synthetic hair catching the low ambient light like fiberoptic silk. "We live. Briefly. Lavishly. Irresponsibly."
The elevator from Cutter's sanctum didn't hum - in fact, it made no noise at all, which was surprising. Another secret of this city. The walls shimmered with slow-moving data, and the floor beneath Nova's synthetic feet felt warm, responsive; like it adjusted for your presence without ever admitting it.
They emerged into the Arx Bazaar, a tiered, open-air market stacked across curved platforms that spiraled upward like a chrome nautilus. The sound hit her first: not just noise, but life - vendors shouting, synth-jazz spilling from ceiling grids, augments singing through powered displays.
Nova's eyes widened. Colors saturated differently through the sensory array of her projection body. Everything had so much depth, contrast, edge. It was like her senses had been polished.
"Welcome to the nervous system of Sovereign luxury," Calyx said, spinning as they walked. "Anything that breaks the rules of anatomy? You can buy it here."
They passed a stall labeled Subdermal Holography - live tattoos dancing across a customer's neck in sync with his speech. Another offered emotive enhancers - glands that could spike empathy, rage, or bliss at the twist of a dial.
One section dipped into shadow. Not darker in light, but in tone: illegal augment slicers, pirated implants, conversion kits for military loadouts. Calyx strolled through it like a day spa.
"Is any of this even... regulated?" Nova asked.
"Regulation, my synthetic friend," Calyx said, drifting past a glass case full of spinal mods, "is what happens when the gifted run out of imagination."
Nova paused at a booth hawking ocular mods. The dealer was lean, all wire and chrome eyelids, with a breath that smelled like recycled adrenaline.
"You got anything Ascendent-class?" she asked before thinking.
His optical sensors chirped in affirmation, which seemed to shift his attention squarely on Nova. He grinned. "Youre Nova Cale?"
She stiffened.
"Relax," he said, holding up a chip labeled NovaLink™ Beta. "Half my best-selling templates trace back to specs with your signature. You made me rich!"
Calyx leaned over her shoulder, eyes twinkling. "Well would you look at that. You've been franchised."
Nova stared at the chip. Part of her wanted to vaporize it. Part of her wanted to negotiate licensing. She laughed instead.
It startled her.
The sound came out cleaner than expected - like her projection body didn't know how to carry bitterness.
"I think someone owes me a drink."
"Correction," Calyx said, looping her arm through Nova's, "someone owes you a rooftop bar."
They continued to wander, and The Bazaar continued to impress. Life roared around them like a living engine. Aisles of glowing neuro-fabric. Sculpted synth-skulls re-engineered to sing in five-part harmony. Drone dogs. Spine-sequencers. Organs in jars that winked at passersby. A vendor shouted over the din, advertising memory implants tuned to simulate nostalgia for childhoods you never had.
"What the hell is that?" Nova whispered, pointing at a glass coffin of hissing vapor.
"Its an Emotion chamber," Calyx replied. "Pick a mood, step inside. Cry like your ex just moved on, but with catharsis."
Nova actually laughed.
Calyx lit up. "There she is. My little pixeldove. I was beginning to think I'd have to commit a minor felony just to get a smile out of you."
Nova rolled her eyes, still grinning. "You're insane."
"Incorrect, sugarbean. I'm distributed. Four bodies, one beautiful mind, no bedtime."
They passed a booth selling neural fidgets; finger-sized augmentations that stuttered anxiety signals into rhythmic pulses. Another offered skin grafts that sparkled when you told the truth and burned when you lied.
The two of them vanished into the crowd, light reflecting off synthetic skin and polished chrome. Around them, the market hummed like a dream with teeth. And Nova, reluctantly, impossibly - was having fun.
The two then arrived at their last stop, a hololift poised to take them to the upstairs lounge. Before she knew it, Nova was looking up at a fresh, Sovereign sky - the Verdantra Lounge clung to the highest arc of the outer ring, its floor a seamless sheet of polarized glass. The view was terrifying and addictive -Sovereign City spilled out in every direction, skyscrapers pulsing with neural light.
Nova stepped out slowly, her synthetic heels clicking soft and precise. The lounge's perimeter was wrapped in translucent windshields that adjusted pressure and temperature based on emotional biofeedback. She felt it the moment she sighed, just the subtlest shift of warmth, like the building cared how she felt.
A soft synth-jazz trio played in the corner, their instruments hollowed from transparent alloys. A bartender with orchid-colored implants nodded as they passed. "Pick anything," Calyx said, sweeping toward a curved seating alcove shaped like a blooming helix. "First round's on the patent theft proceeds."
Nova dropped into the seat beside her, the cushioning adjusting instantly to the contours of her projection. She felt impossibly light. "What is this place?"
" This...this is the lounge for people who don't need to prove anything anymore. Executives. Dead poets. Neural fashion designers. People who trade in concepts."
Nova scanned the crowd. A woman with a luminous collar that blinked in rhythm to stock volatility. A man whose face was entirely polished obsidian, sipping something from a floating cube of vapor.
"And us?" Nova asked.
Calyx grinned. "We're the wildcard guests. Dress code optional. Consequences sold separately."
Drinks soon arrived, and Nova's glass was cool to the touch, the liquid inside a pale shimmer of violet. It tasted like nostalgia, if nostalgia were a fruit grown in an oxygen-deprived atmosphere. For the first time in... maybe years, she didn't feel like she had to be somewhere else.
"This city's beautiful," she said, almost surprised to hear herself say it.
Calyx reclined, her synthetic silhouette flawless against the starlight.
"Of course it is. Cutter made it that way on purpose. Sovereign's whole aesthetic is built on the idea that suffering should be optional."
"Is it?"
Calyx paused. "Not really. But when it looks like it is... people stop asking questions."
Nova considered that. "Is that what you think I am? Someone who'll stop asking?"
"Oh no, sweetness," Calyx said, raising her glass. "You're someone who'll ask better."
Nova looked out over the city again. The lights shimmered like a machine dreaming of constellations. And for the first time, she wondered:
What would it mean to belong here?
Her gaze drifted across the lounge, chasing no particular thought; until it caught on someone near the glass edge of the platform.
He stood alone, backlit by the city's spectral glow, a drink in one hand, the other - augmented - braced against the railing. His frame was broad, built not for elegance but for durability. One eye glowed faint amber. His jawline was partially plated, the muscle beneath twitching with synthetic servos as he smiled at something only he knew. It was the way he stood. Confident but tired, like someone who'd carried too much for too long.
Nova's chest tightened.
Dad.
She didn't say it aloud, but the word rippled through her like pressure. It wasn't him, of course. Her father wouldn't be in a Sovereign skybar, sipping luxury cocktails and letting his spine implants glint like fashion statements. But the resemblance was enough.
Enough to bring back the warmth of streetlights flickering over repair scaffolds, the sound of laughter between the two of them, and bites of synthetic barbecue, the spark of tools clacking on countermetal while her father told a joke he barely finished before snorting.
"They said I voided my warranty when I got a second heart installed."
"Did it help?"
"Oh yeah. Now I can break it twice as fast."
She smiled. Then blinked. And the smile faded. Because another face rose in her memory, uninvited - scarred, silent, restrained.
Caelus.
The way he laid when she found him. Broken but composed. That same grim grace her father had before the world labeled him policy instead of person. She looked down at her drink, then back out toward the horizon. So much had happened since the explosion. Since the moment she heard the panic in the hallway and saw Caelus bleeding through a gurney frame. And if time moved differently in projection...
"How long has it been?" she asked quietly.
Calyx looked up from her glass, eye modules refocusing. "Since what?"
"Since we left Praxelia. Since I saw him." She paused. "He might be awake by now."
Calyx gave her a long, appraising look. "He might," she said. Then softer: "You want to know for sure."
Nova nodded. "I need to."
Calyx stood, unfolding with almost feline grace. "Then let's go check on your Tank."
"He's not mine."
"You keep saying that, bluebird, but your echocardio readouts would beg to differ."
Nova rolled her eyes but followed her toward the elevator. As they stepped into the quiet light, she took one last look at the stranger on the balcony. Not her father. But something adjacent. A shape her life kept orbiting.
The world stuttered.
Not violently, but with finality.
The lights of Sovereign City dimmed, not because they faded, but because Nova's connection to them did. The rooftop lounge folded inward like paper soaked in water. Colors bled. Sound lost texture. Gravity reversed its logic.
She heard Calyx's voice in both directions at once:
"And... there we go. Welcome back to the meat suite."
Nova gasped.
The return was sharp... too sharp. She jolted upright in the projection chamber, lungs pulling breath that didn't taste like citrus and chrome anymore. Just filtered air. Cool. Forgettable.
The probes above her hissed and receded.
Her own hands, real hands - felt slower, clumsier. The fluid strength of the synthetic body was gone, replaced by the weight of old bones and fatigue that couldn't be debugged.
Across from her, Calyx sat sideways in a chair, one leg over the armrest, already back in one of her real-world bodies. She tilted her head and grinned. "Well, that was emotionally productive. Ten out of ten. Would scandal again."
Nova rubbed her eyes. "How long were we gone?"
"Two hours," Calyx replied. "Just long enough for the AI to miss us. Just short enough that no one filed a missing consciousness report."
Nova sat quietly for a moment. The buzz of machinery and the stillness of the lab wrapped around her like static. "I want to see him," she said.
Calyx's expression shifted. Still playful, but softened around the edges. "I figured."
"He might be awake. Or close."
"He is," Calyx said, standing. "Vitals normalized twenty-three minutes ago. Reflex testing started five minutes after that."
Nova adjusted her posture, still getting used to the imbalance of reality. "You didn't tell me?"
"Ma'am, you were drinking galaxy glitter in a body built from starlight. I figured I'd let you finish your vacation before reminding you that feelings exist."
Nova gave her a half-hearted glare. "You're a menace."
"A stylish one," Calyx replied, already halfway down the corridor. "Come on, sugartech. Let's go check on your war boy."
Nova hesitated. Just for a second. Then followed.