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Vey's not bluffing.
I can see it in the way he's standing. Not angry. Not even impatient. Just waiting for me to do the math. His coat's got burn marks along one sleeve and there's a smear of coolant or blood across his collar. Fresh. Whatever happened to this fleet happened fast and he's still wearing it.
"I don't—" I start.
"You don't remember." Vey cuts me off. "Briar already told me. Don't care. Your brain can forget every name you ever knew but your implants don't forget jack. Vault's gene-locked and protocol-locked and you're the only one on this boat who makes it past the vestibule."
Briar shifts her weight. Still got the gun low but her hand's on it.
"How long?" she asks.
Vey glances at her. "Eighteen hours before we're floating cold. Maybe twenty if we shut down the med bay and let the rest of the caskets rot."
Twenty hours. I don't know what that means yet but I know it's not enough time for whatever he wants me to open.
"You didn't answer her question," Briar says.
"I did."
"You told her fuel. You didn't tell her why we're bleeding it." Briar's voice is flat but there's an edge under it. She's pushing him. Or testing him. "You didn't tell her about the Lattice drop."
Vey's jaw tightens. Just a fraction. Then he looks back at me and I'm the one he's measuring again.
"Beacon Lattice failed mid-jump. Dumped us Rimward with partial nav and two of our three escorts limping. We're supposed to be six days from a depot. We're forty-three. No chart. No relay. No fuel line." He takes a step closer. "And no margin. The Long Invoice is a family charter. Oldest independent salvage ticket in the trailing sector. Four hundred ninety-six years of operational history. My family's name is on the manifest. My daughter's name is on the crew list. I'm not losing it because you forgot who you are."
Four hundred ninety-six years.
I try to wrap my head around that and can't. This ship is older than anything I can remember. Older than nations. Older than most stations. And he's saying his family's been running it the whole time.
"You're saying this is personal," I manage.
"I'm saying it's survival. Personal's a luxury." Vey jerks his chin toward the door. "Vault's three decks down. You're coming with me."
"Wait." I don't know where the word comes from but it's out before I can stop it. "You said you had a buyer. For the keys. For me."
Vey pauses.
"You told me there were buyers waiting," I press. "Which means you already shopped me around before I even woke up."
Briar makes a sound. Not quite a laugh. "She's got you there."
Vey's expression doesn't change but something flickers behind his eyes. Calculation. "I put out a feeler. Standard practice when you're hauling a lockbox you can't open. Found out fast there's three different interests willing to pay hull-weight in processed deuterium just to know what system we're in. That tell you how valuable you are?"
It tells me I'm screwed six different ways.
"Who are they?" I ask.
Briar answers before Vey can. "Keelwright Guild. Probably. They've been hunting vault access for twenty years. Lost their master craftsman to one that wouldn't open. They'll pay but they won't stop at buying."
Vey shrugs. "I didn't confirm. Just listened. And right now I don't need to sell you. I need you to earn your passage."
"I don't even know what's in the vault," I say.
"Four hundred years of contract cold-storage." Vey taps something on his wrist and a holo flickers to life between us. It's a list. Long. Dense. Scrolling. "The Long Invoice isn't just a name. It's the job that never closed. Salvage rights. Station deeds. Trauma comp clauses. Crypto wallets that've been accruing interest since before the first Lattice anchor went up. Some of it's garbage. Some of it's a generational payout. And all of it's locked in your vault because the family that chartered it four hundred years ago paid us to keep it cold until extraction."
The list keeps scrolling. I catch fragments. Registration codes. Planet names I don't recognize. Strings of numbers that might be coordinates or currency or something else entirely.
"They never came back," I say quietly.
Vey kills the holo. "No. They didn't. Contract says if the client goes dark for a century we can liquidate to cover operational overhead. It's been four. That vault's ours. And I need it open before we run dry."
I'm starting to see it now. The shape of the trap. I'm not just a key. I'm the last link in a chain that's been dragging this ship through the dark for longer than I've been alive. Longer than anyone I might've known has been alive.
"You open it, you get passage," Vey says. "We make it to a depot, you walk. I'll even cut you a finder's fee. Ten percent of liquidation. Enough to buy a new name and a ticket anywhere that'll take you."
Briar's watching me. I can feel it.
"And if I can't open it?" I ask.
Vey doesn't blink. "Then we find out how much of you it needs."
There it is again. The threat. But this time I hear the exhaustion under it. He's not saying it because he wants to. He's saying it because he's got no other cards.
"You're betting the vault won't lock if I'm dead," I say.
"I'm betting it keys to implants, not pulse. If I'm wrong—" Vey tilts his head, "—we're all dead anyway."
Briar takes a step forward. "You're not cutting her."
Vey looks at her. Really looks at her. "You sure about that?"
"I'm sure if you start, you won't stop until there's nothing left. And then you'll have a locked vault and a corpse." Briar's hand drifts back to her gun. Not pulling it. Just reminding him it's there. "Let me take her down. Let Ivo run a scan first. If her protocols are intact we don't need blood."
Vey considers this. Then nods once. "You've got two hours. After that I don't care what Ivo says. She's opening it or I'm opening her."
He turns and walks out. Doesn't look back. The door hisses shut behind him and I'm alone with Briar again.
She exhales. Long and slow. "That went better than I expected."
"Better?" My voice cracks. "He just threatened to vivisect me."
"He threatened. He didn't do it." Briar finally holsters the gun. "Means he's still thinking like a captain. If he was thinking like a survivor you'd already be on the table."
I don't know what to say to that.
Briar crosses to the door and taps the panel. It opens and she glances back at me. "Come on. Ivo's three decks up. We're burning time."
I follow because I don't have another option. My legs are still shaky but they're moving. Muscle memory. My body knows how to walk on a ship even if my brain doesn't remember which ship.
The corridor outside is narrow and cold. Conduit lines running overhead. Exposed panels every few meters. The lighting's amber and dim and it flickers every time something hums through the walls. The ship's alive. I can feel it. Not just operational. Alive.
"Who's Ivo?" I ask.
Briar doesn't slow down. "Keelwright tech. Independent contractor. Came onboard five months ago when Vey needed someone who could coax the vault vestibule into diagnostic mode without triggering a purge. She's good. Paranoid. Doesn't like people. You'll get along fine."
"You trust her?"
"I trust she wants to see what's in your head more than she wants to see you dead. That's enough."
We climb two decks through a maintenance shaft. My hands know where to grip. My feet know where to step. It's eerie. Like watching someone else move my body. When we come out the other side we're in a workshop. Benches covered in tools and parts. Screens everywhere. And sitting in the middle of it all is a woman with short dark hair and a neural jack rig that looks like it grew out of her skull.
Ivo. Has to be.
She doesn't look up when we enter. Just keeps working on whatever's spread across the bench in front of her. "You brought the key."
"I brought Sable," Briar says.
Ivo snorts. "Same thing." She finally glances up and her eyes are chrome. Full replacement. No iris. No pupil. Just mirrored chrome that reflects me back at myself. "Sit."
There's a chair bolted to the floor next to her bench. I sit.
Ivo rolls over on her stool and reaches for the port on the back of my neck. I jerk away.
"Easy," Briar says. "She's just reading your config."
"I don't—"
"You don't remember. I know. Everyone knows. Sit still." Ivo's voice is flat. Bored, almost. She reaches again and this time I let her. Her fingers are cold and precise. She finds the port and I feel the click as something slides home.
Then the world tilts.
It's not pain. It's not even sensation. It's data. Raw. Unfiltered. Pouring into me and out of me at the same time. I can see the workshop but I can also see code. Strings of it. Layered. Cascading. My heartbeat's a rhythm and my breath's a packet stream and I can feel Ivo on the other end pulling things apart.
"What the hell," she mutters.
Briar steps closer. "What?"
Ivo doesn't answer. She's staring at one of her screens now and her chrome eyes are wide. "These protocols. They're not... Briar, this isn't human standard."
"What do you mean not human standard?"
Ivo taps the screen. "I mean the encryption layer's using a syntax I've only seen in salvage AI cores. And the gene lock's got a secondary handshake that doesn't match any medical or security database I've got access to." She looks at me. Really looks at me. "What the hell are you?"