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Ivo's staring at me like I'm a mistake someone printed twice.
"What the hell are you?"
The cable's still in my neck. Cold spreads down my spine, not from the jack but from the way he said it. Not who. What.
Briar shifts her weight. Her hand's near her sidearm but not on it. "Ivo."
"Her gene lock's got a handshake I've never seen." Ivo doesn't look away from me. "And the encryption syntax? That's AI core language. Not medical. Not even military-grade implant protocol. She's talking to systems like she's got kernel access."
"I don't—" My mouth's dry. "I don't know what that means."
"It means you're not just keyed to the vault." Ivo taps his screen. "You might be part of it."
The deck shudders. Not the normal hum. Something sharper. Briar's comm crackles before the intercom does.
"All hands, Torus-3 just lost main thrust. She's bleeding coolant and drifting into our envelope. Engineering's trying to—"
Static eats the rest.
Briar's already moving. "How long till impact?"
Ivo's pulling up a different screen. "Six minutes if her thrusters don't fire. Four if her reactor goes."
"Can Vey remote-dock her?"
"Not without her transponder handshake. She's locked down." Ivo glances at me. Then back at Briar. "Unless someone with admin access opens her up."
Briar goes still.
I feel it before I decide. The cable in my neck isn't just reading me anymore. It's asking.
Something in my skull clicks. Not a sound. A shape. Like a key I didn't know I was holding just found a lock that's been open the whole time.
"I can do it," I hear myself say.
Briar's eyes snap to me. "What?"
"I can open her transponder." My voice sounds wrong. Flat. Too sure. "If she's on the network."
Ivo's mouth opens. Closes. He looks at his screen. "She is. But her systems are locked to charter command only."
"Not anymore."
I don't know how I know. I just do. The same way I know the vault's layout without ever seeing it. The same way I knew the mess hall had coffee three hours before I saw the dispenser.
Briar steps closer. Her hand's on my shoulder now. "Sable. If you've got root access to fleet systems, Vey's gonna cut you open the second he finds out."
"Four minutes," Ivo says quietly.
I meet Briar's eyes. "If Torus-3 hits us, nobody's got time to cut anyone."
She holds my stare. Then she lets go and steps back. "Do it."
Ivo doesn't wait. He pulls the cable out of the diagnostic rig and plugs it into a gray box bolted to the bulkhead. Fleet relay. "You're live. Don't touch anything except Torus-3's transponder unlock. If you brick our comms, we're all dead."
"Okay."
"I mean it. One command. That's it."
"I got it."
He doesn't look like he believes me. But he taps his screen and something floods into my head.
Not data. Not like reading a file. It's everywhere at once. I can feel the Long Invoice's reactor like a heartbeat three decks down. The mess hall dispenser cycling. The air scrubbers in the aft module choking on recycled CO2. And Torus-3. Drifting. Cooling. Her transponder's still pinging but it's wrapped in a lockout I can see like it's glowing in the dark.
I reach for it.
Not with my hands. With whatever part of me is threaded through this cable.
The lock doesn't break. It kneels.
Torus-3's systems open up clean. I ping her attitude thrusters. They fire. She corrects. Her drift slows, stops, pulls back. I can feel her crew's comms lighting up in confusion.
Ivo's staring at his screen. "She's stable. Thrusters responding. How the hell did you—"
Then something else hits me.
A memory. But it's not mine.
I'm standing in a cargo hold I've never seen. The lights are red. Alarms everywhere. Someone's shouting coordinates but the voice is wrong. Too calm. A woman's hand—my hand—no, her hand—reaches for a console. Her fingers know the commands before she thinks them. The hull's screaming. She's laughing.
She's laughing because the job's finally done.
I gasp. My knees buckle. Briar catches me before I hit the deck.
"Sable!"
"I'm—I'm okay." I'm not. My hands are shaking. That wasn't me. That was someone else wearing this body. Someone who thought a dying ship was funny.
Ivo yanks the cable out. The flood cuts off. I'm just me again. Small. Cold. Scared.
"What happened?" Briar's got both hands on my shoulders now.
"I don't know. I saw—" I can't finish. I don't have words for it.
Ivo's not looking at me anymore. He's looking at his screen. His face goes white.
"What?" Briar snaps.
"The vault just pinged."
"What do you mean pinged?"
"It's live. Active." Ivo's scrolling fast. "It's been dark for six months. We thought it was in standby. But it just woke up."
Briar's grip tightens. "Why?"
Ivo looks at me. Then back at his screen. "Because someone else just logged in."
The air in the cabin goes thin.
"What do you mean someone else?" Briar's voice drops.
"I mean there's a second admin on the network." Ivo's hands are moving but I can tell he's rattled. "Root-level access. Same encryption syntax as hers. But it's not her. The handshake signature's different."
"Where?"
"I don't know. It's not pinging from any registered node. It's just—" He stops. Stares. "It's inside the vault."
No one moves.
Briar's hand drops to her sidearm. "How long has it been in there?"
"I don't know." Ivo's voice is tight. "But it's awake now. And it's looking at us."
I can still feel the cable's ghost in my neck. The memory that wasn't mine. The woman's laugh.
She knew. Whoever she was. She knew the job wasn't done.
The vault hums. Just once. Low and long. I feel it through the deck.
Ivo's screen flashes. Text scrolls too fast to read. Then it stops. One line.
> CONTRACT RESUMED. ADMINISTRATORS: 2/2 PRESENT. AWAITING FINAL AUTHORIZATION.
Briar reads it over his shoulder. Her jaw works. She looks at me.
"Sable. Who the hell else has your face?"