A week slipped by without incident. I spent most of it in the dock bay, shaping the frame of a new ship from scratch. Not "scrapheap" scratch either — this was something I had made myself using a few tools off the blackmarket.
The air inside the bay was a mix of ozone, hot metal, and lubricants that stung the back of the throat. Arc welders flared white-blue, cutting sharp shadows across the walls. My meeseeks clanged and shouted in the background as they stacked prefabricated plating on the expanding fortress outside.
The ship's skeleton rose from the floor like the ribs of some massive animal, smooth composite struts replacing standard alloys. Lighter. Stronger. Each one integrated with superconductive conduits I'd scavenged off a scrapped Galactic Federation courier — tech rated for hyperspace traffic. That was the baseline.
The real trick was the drive.
FTL was common. FTL+ was
2 the kind of rare you only got when you stopped caring about safety regulations and space-time stability warnings. I'd stripped the containment rings down to a skeletal housing, then slotted in a hybrid core that could spike past light-speed curves without collapsing in on itself.
Three seconds to Proxima Centauri.
Nine to the Andromeda outskirts.
That's if I *didn't* push it.
The hull plating was layered like an onion — ceramic mesh over adaptive shielding, tuned to deflect debris at relativistic velocities. The cockpit wasn't some glass bubble; it was a sealed command pod sunk deep in the center mass, with panoramic holo-feeds pulling in from the exterior sensors. Less "joyride," more "warship you could nap in."
By the end of the week, both the ship and the base were functional. I didn't celebrate. I just plotted my next stop.
Beta-Seven's intel had been rattling around in my head for days. According to him, there was a planet under Unity's control nearby. Seemed like a good opportunity — though not necessarily for the reasons Beta thought.
When I landed, the ship touched down with a soft, deliberate *thunk*. No dramatic blast of thrusters or cloud of dust — just precision. I stepped onto the surface, the air heavy and slightly metallic, and started walking.
Blue-skinned aliens moved about in lazy arcs through the streets, chatting, trading goods, tending to crops. Their buildings were organic-looking — curved spires grown from some sort of crystalized plant matter.
It should have been exactly what I expected.
It wasn't.
Not a single one of them looked… controlled. No glazed eyes. No slack expressions. No telltale synchronized movements. They laughed. They waved.
I slowed, watching two kids chase each other between food stalls, shrieking in that universal pitch only children hit when they're happy. The absence of Unity's puppeteering presence made my stomach feel… lighter.
*So… Beta was wrong?*
No. Not wrong. Just… incomplete. This didn't disprove anything. But it did plant the kind of question that doesn't go away easily.
That's when the ambush hit.
The first one was subtle — a brush of movement in my peripheral vision. Then, six of them stepped out of an alley at once. They didn't talk. They didn't give me a chance to. They just rushed.
I called in meeseeks instantly, a small swarm popping into existence with their bright-eyed "Hi!" still fresh as they were tackled. But I hadn't given them weapons — they were just bodies, meat shields. I could have ordered them to kill, but that would have made enemies I didn't want yet.
So I pulled punches. Even as I tore through waves of bodies, I aimed to incapacitate — breaking legs, dislocating arms, anything to stop them without crossing the permanent line.
It was the hesitation that got me.
One of them staggered toward me, mouth open wider than it should be, and then— *projectile vomit*. Thick, black-green fluid hit my face before I could fully turn away. It burned my eyes, and the world blurred.
By the time I hit the ground, I could feel it. Something… threading through my mind. No whispers, no voice — just *presence*.
Unity.
—
It was strange. I could feel the way she worked — spreading like roots, filling neural pathways, taking over motor control.
But my mind… my mind had room.
For two.
Or more accurately — for two million. That's how many I could *sense*. All the minds she'd already merged with on this planet, flaring like distant lights across a black sky.
We hadn't merged, not exactly. She'd taken the body, but my will still lingered — not an echo, but a wall. A fortress she hadn't breached.
They dragged me — or rather, *us* — to a crystal hall at the heart of the city. Sitting on a dais at the far end was a tall, blue-skinned figure in ceremonial armor. The president. Unity's first host here.
She didn't speak. She just stared at me, and in her mind I could feel her curiosity sharpen. Then she gave a wordless command.
Half a dozen more approached. They leaned down and — again — vomited into my limp body.
It made her stronger, sure. It dulled the edges of my control, but didn't erase it.
When she was done testing, I decided to return the favor.
I closed our — my — eyes. Focused. Not on Unity's threads, but on my own will. My own architecture. And just like that, the body shifted. Muscles I wasn't "supposed" to have control of tightened. Fingers curled. Knees locked.
Gasps rippled through the room.
The president sat forward. Unity's consciousness, spread across countless hosts, funneled into this one body's attention. She felt what I was doing.
I stood.
We looked at each other, and there was no hostility. I wasn't here to burn her down — and she knew it. Whatever she was, whatever she'd done, there was a mutual recognition between us in that moment. A shared… advantage.
Finally, she asked, in both voice and thought:
"Why are you here?"
Uploading this chapter I never completed just for the people who prolly want to know