On 150th day, the three new kits birthed by Kai were simply put, pure disasters, and pretending otherwise was not helping anyone.
Tense checked the den's cold stony entrance again. And again. And again. One, two, three. Touch the left wall. Touch the right wall. Glance at the ceiling for cracks that had not existed five breaths ago. Start over and finish, then, repeat. Weeks of patrolling had worn shallow grooves into the stone where Tense's paws always turned. The new kits were the personification of tension and anxiety, a reality that would be brutally hard to overcome and one Twitchy knew all too well, having battled it in the past and still battling it today.
"Hey Tense," Twitchy said, settling nearby with careful gentleness. "I already swept the perimeter. Twice. Nothing changed."
But what if something changed between your second sweep and now? Tense's thought buzzed through Shadow's relay, thin and fast. What if I missed the exact moment when safe turned into dangerous? That is how you die. That is how everyone dies.
Twitchy did not try to reason the panic away. He stayed. Sometimes witnessing was the only thing that worked.
Across the chamber, Rend worked a practice stone until chips jumped like sparks. The combat kit had been born with heat in the nerves. Not much dissimilar to a child born to parents abusing drugs, he was tainted from birth. Now every quiet moment felt like suffocation, so Rend filled it with noise in the form of never ending strikes against the wall, stones, and anything else nearby.
"You need rest," Bitey said from the observation ledge. The older season fighter watched with a coach's stillness.
"I cannot," Rend said, breath scraping his dry throat. "If I stop, what is the point!? What good is being like this if I am not useful?"
"Breaking rocks is not useful," Bitey said. "You are only tiring yourself out Rend."
"I would rather tire myself out then rest and do nothing."
Near the far wall, Archive sat inside a maze of fragments arranged in sharp patterns. The analyst spoke to no one in particular but constantly whispered under his breath.
"The northern tunnel needs reinforcement. Moisture in the east chamber means mold within fourteen days. Food storage is the wrong temperature for long holds. Everything is breaking and I can see all of it and no one fixes any of it. I cannot make the problems stop existing."
Whisper crouched beside Archive, careful to keep paws outside the grid. "Want to analyze inscriptions with me? The stone lines fight back less than walls do. Might be a better puzzle."
"The whole world is structural defects," Archive said, flat as cold water. "Just problems stacked on problems while everyone pretends not to notice. How do you stand it?"
Three kits. Three kinds of suffering. All of it deliberate. All of it designed into their bodies before their eyes opened.
All of it on Kai.
Kai sat in the stone chamber and stared at eleven carved warnings for the sixty-third hour in a row.
The body was recovering. The foreleg no longer stabbed each time he shifted weight. Thoughts, once shattering mid-stride, were starting to hold. The ambush had not ended him. It had left cracks.
Shadow's presence reached for him with care. You have not eaten in two days. You have not checked on the colony in four. Twitchy is managing everything and starting to splinter under the load.
"The stones are saying something important," Kai said without looking away. "If I find the pattern, we will know how to live through what is coming. That matters more than today's small fires."
The colony is a big fire right now, Shadow said. A future flood matters less than the present collapse you are causing.
"I created three kits designed to suffer," Kai said. "Tense will never feel safe. Rend will never feel peaceful. Archive will never feel satisfied. I did that. I told myself tactics mattered more than... That makes me a monster- something I accepted."
Shadow sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder. "Then be a monster who makes breakfast," Shadow said. "Guilt will not feed anyone. Abandonment does not fix creation. If the ambush broke something in you, lead while broken. Fake leadership is still better than none. Get up."
Kai breathed in, breathed out. The stones stayed silent. Shadow did not. "Okay," Kai said begrudgingly, "I will try but don't expect expect any miracles."
He moved. He ate a little. He slept a little. Between those small things, the drumbeat under his ribs kept time with a wordless push: higher, prepare, be ready. He wanted the stones to translate it for him. They did not. They could not not.
Twitchy walked the upper path with Scout and Current, counting out loud to pin the anxiety to numbers. "Vent. Bend. Gate. Three."
"The flow is changing," Scout said. "Water-species are climbing up. Lower chambers are already empty. The pressure feels wrong, to be honest, the whole thing feels wrong."
"Cycles," Current said, eyes bright with what they had learned. "Or the start of something worse."
They brought the news back to Kai and found him still in the chamber, but not frozen. He was standing. He was listening.
"I know they are struggling," Kai said when Scout asked to talk about the new kits. "I know it is my fault."
"This is not about fault," Scout said. "This is about next. Tense is wearing grooves in the entrance. Rend destroyed three targets and wants something living. Archive is drowning in problems and cannot pick one to fix. They need an architect. You designed them. You explain the blueprints."
Kai nodded. The truth slid in easily because Shadow had already cut the path. "Then I start there, i guess," he said.
He touched the stones once more on his way out. Feeling its grooves, its shapes- almost like he was trying to imprint them into his memory.
They were cold and patient, like old bones.