The ship's engine hummed — low, constant, almost patient — as if it had all the time in the galaxy to deliver him to whatever waited ahead.
Dusty sat alone in the dark cell. His wrists and ankles were shackled to rings bolted into the floor, the metal cutting cold crescents into his skin each time he moved. He didn't move much.
His head hung forward, chin nearly touching his chest. Every breath felt like a decision he wasn't sure he had the right to make.
The walls were wood — old, mismatched planks reinforced with metal ribs. They carried a sour, heavy stench: sweat, fear, the kind of hopelessness that seeps from skin when a person realizes they're not going home.
Dusty could tell how many had sat here before him. Not the exact number.
But enough that the smell was no longer a smell at all, but a part of a sad history.
And now, he was part of it.
Dusty swallowed hard, guilt and fear twisting together in his throat. He squeezed his hands into fists, the shackles biting his skin.
"Dad…" he managed to mutter.
Gunther's gesture — that warm, calloused hand guiding Dusty's smaller one to his heart — flickered in his memory like a dying ember.
He'd held onto that memory for years. Now it was the last warm thing he had.
A sudden clank echoed through the hull — sharp and metallic.
Dusty lifted his head just an inch.
Footsteps approached, slow and deliberate, the kind taken by someone who didn't need to hurry because nothing inside this corridor had anywhere to go. A faint strip of light appeared at the base of the cell door as shadows moved on the other side.
A voice murmured. Too muffled to make out the words. Too calm to belong to a guard who cared.
A panel slid open with a tired groan. Cold light spilled into the cell, cutting across the wooden floor in a pale rectangle.
Dusty winced and turned his face away, eyes watering.
A silhouette filled the doorway — tall, angular, coat brushing the floor.
Lieutenant Harrow.
He stepped inside, letting the door grind shut behind him, swallowing the hallway sounds. The cell dimmed again, but not as fully as before. Harrow's deep green coat carried a faint white glow across its seams, Practum circuitry humming quietly like a second heartbeat.
Dusty couldn't look at him.
Harrow stood there for a long moment, neither speaking nor moving. The humming of the ship filled the silence between them.
"Dustan Raiz," Harrow said at last.
Dusty didn't lift his head. "Why are you here?"
Harrow exhaled — not annoyed, not sympathetic, something in-between. "Protocol says I'm to inform you of your transfer. And start the preparation process."
Dusty's throat tightened. "What do you mean?"
Harrow crouched, bringing himself just barely to Dusty's level. "Your case was expedited. It's been discovered that information regarding high-level weaponry had been leaked."
Dusty brought his head up, looking Harrow in the eyes. "How many times do I have to tell you people? It wasn't me."
Harrow didn't flinch at Dusty's outburst. He didn't lash back.
He just watched him — the way someone watches the last embers of a fire burn out.
"I know that," Harrow replied quietly. "But Command doesn't care what you say. They care what their systems show. And right now, every trail they're following circles back to you."
Dusty shook his head, jaw trembling with a mix of anger and fear he couldn't swallow down. "Then their systems are wrong."
Harrow studied him for a beat.
"Look, I like you, kid. And honestly, I believe you. It doesn't make sense at the end of the day."
Harrow sat down onto the floorboards, the wooden planks creaking beneath the weight of both his body and the burden of holding onto lies.
"But…" Dusty whispered, searching his face. "Then why am I here?"
"Because," Harrow said, resting his elbows on his knees, "Command doesn't operate on sense. It operates on pressure. On optics. On whoever is easiest to blame while they scramble behind the scenes."
"B…But that's not fair," Dusty said, and the words came out too soft, too young. "I didn't do anything."
Harrow's expression didn't shift, but something in his shoulders did — a tiny sag, as if Dusty's pain pressed against a bruise of his own.
"Listen," Harrow said, "they are going to kill you."
The words hit Dusty like a gut punch. He wanted to speak, but no words could describe how he was feeling.
"You'll be transported to MissanHam Prison in Viora. There, your flesh will be replaced with metal and your memories altered," Harrow continued.
Dusty stared at him, unable to breathe.
His lungs worked, but the air didn't seem to make it in. It hovered somewhere in his chest and turned to stone.
"M…metal?" Dusty finally forced out, his voice cracking like he was younger again — ten years old and holding a cloth bag in the forest. "What—why would they do that? I didn't— I'm not—"
"That's the point. Make the galaxy think they are natural. But a machine can't be natural. They're man-made."
Harrow's voice stayed steady, but his eyes didn't. They drifted — past Dusty, past the cell, past the humming ship — as if tracking ghosts he'd hoped never to see again.
Dusty's heartbeat thudded so hard he felt it in his teeth.
"You're saying…" He swallowed, throat tight. "Flipads were… people?"
Harrow didn't look away this time.
"Started out as prisoners serving multiple life sentences," he said. "The worst of the worst. Murderers. Traffickers. War criminals. People no one missed."
He paused. His jaw clenched once.
"And now?" He exhaled through his nose, bitter. "Now it's whoever knows too much. Whoever sees a file they shouldn't. Whoever gets in the way of Command's story."
Dusty's mouth hung open, unshaped sound catching in his throat.
"But Flipads act— they think—"
"Like people?" Harrow cut in gently. "They were people. Before the surgeries. Before the neural rewriting. Before they burned out everything that made them someone and replaced it with code."
Dusty pulled instinctively at his shackles, metal slicing into his wrists.
"I'm not— I'm not a criminal. I didn't hurt anyone."
"I know," Harrow said.
And he said it like it cost him something.
For a moment, only the hum of the ship answered them — low, steady, the sound of inevitability.
Dusty's breathing hitched. His chest tightened until it hurt just to exist.
"But if you know," he whispered, voice softly cracking, "then stop them. Tell them. Show them the logs don't make sense — or that my badge shouldn't even open a Tier Three lab — or— or that I wasn't there—"
Harrow lifted a hand.
It wasn't a harsh gesture.
It wasn't even firm.
Just… tired.
"Dustan," he said quietly, "you're a smart kid, just like your pops. But you know I can't do anything. You're probably looking for someone — anything — to blame. But the thing is, the blame goes deeper than you'll ever know."
Dusty shook violently, the chains scraping against the floor. "Then why are you telling me all this? Why even come down here?"
Harrow didn't answer right away. His jaw shifted like he was chewing on a truth that tasted wrong.
"Can you act?" he finally asked.
Dusty blinked, tears slipping down his cheeks before he could stop them.
"Act?" His voice cracked. "What—what does that mean? Act how?"
Harrow leaned back slightly, studying him with that sharp, measuring stare Dusty had always hated. Except now… it wasn't cruel. It was calculating. Urgent.
"I came here," Harrow said, voice low, "to begin the memory-wipe evaluation. Protocol requires a field officer to determine whether a prisoner is mentally 'viable' before sedation. In plain terms: if I'd started the process, you'd already be one step from legally classified as brain-dead."
Dusty's entire body went rigid.
"Brain…dead?" His breath quickened, shallow and panicked. "You mean— I… I don't wanna die."
"That's exactly why you have to act," Harrow replied, leaning closer. "Act like you're already slipping. Like the stress cracked you. Like you're dissociating. Fading. Vacant. If they think you're already halfway gone, they'll accelerate your transfer and skip the deeper scans."
Dusty shook his head, terrified.
"I don't understand— why would that help?"
Harrow swallowed, jaw tightening.
"Because I can't intervene openly," he said. "I'm too deep in the system. My signature is on half the forms that put you here. If I make one wrong move, you and I both vanish."
He hesitated before finishing, quieter:
"But paperwork can vanish too. Or change."
Dusty stared at him, confused, desperate.
"What did you do?"
Harrow brushed his thumb along the glowing seam of his coat — a nervous gesture, or the closest thing he had to one.
"I slipped a different designation into your file," he said. "You were bound to be a farm worker until you broke."
Dusty's heart thudded. "So… what does that mean for me?"
Harrow exhaled, the breath shaking for the first time. "A bounty hunter," he said.
Dusty's eyes widened, confusion flickering with fear.
"A wh— what? Why— how does that even—"
Harrow lifted a hand, stopping him before panic could spiral.
"Because bounty hunters," he said, "are given top-tier equipment. Weapons. Mobility rigs. Access to places most never get near."
Dusty stared, breath shaking, shackles rattling softly against the floor.
"But I'm not a bounty hunter. I don't even know how—"
"You don't need to know," Harrow cut in, voice tight. "You just need the designation. The system will handle the rest."
He hesitated, something tired passing through his eyes.
"I'm sorry I couldn't do more," he added, quieter. "But your—" he sighed, jaw tensing, "your dad will be visiting you once you're at MissanHam."
Dusty's heart lurched. "He… he will?"
Harrow didn't confirm. He just pushed himself up from the floorboards with a low groan, the wood creaking beneath his boots.
"And I'm sorry," he said, "but I have to do this."
He drew a baton from his belt and flicked a switch. The tip crackled to life, spitting arcs of pale-white electricity.
Dusty jerked back on instinct, chains snapping taut.
"Harrow—"
The first strike hit his shoulder.
Lightning tore through muscle and bone. Dusty's shout broke off into a strangled sound as his body spasmed against the restraints. The smell of scorched cloth and burning hair filled the cramped cell.
A second strike crashed into his ribs. His vision burst with white stars.
A third, across his back.
By the fourth, his screams had dwindled into hoarse, choked gasps. Each blow painted another dark scorch along his shirt, another patch of angry red on his skin.
Harrow's jaw was clenched so hard a vein stood out in his neck.
"I'm sorry, kid," he muttered between strikes, just loud enough for Dusty to hear over the crackle. "But our conversation stays between us."
He cut the baton's power with a snap, the sudden silence almost as jarring as the blows had been. Dusty sagged in his chains, chest heaving, the taste of copper thick on his tongue.
"Remember," Harrow said, straightening his coat, forcing his voice back into something cold and official. "Act."
He smoothed the front of his uniform, adjusted the Practum crest on his shoulder, then tapped a small device clipped to his chest.
A red light winked on.
"I'm turning my camera on," he said without looking at Dusty. "So zip it."
The ship's hum filled the cell again as Harrow's expression hardened into something the system would recognize: practiced disgust, distant duty.
The performance had started.
Many Days Later in MissanHam Prison
Gunther walked through a black cobbled hallway, escorted by two prison guards.
The stones beneath his boots looked wet, but they weren't. They just had that kind of shine — like old blood scrubbed so many times it turned into a permanent sheen.
Pipes ran along the ceiling in cramped, tangled veins. Every few seconds, one hissed, releasing a thin breath of steam that smelled faintly of antiseptic and burnt oil.
"Gods, I hate coming here," Gunther muttered.
"You come here often?" one of the guards asked.
"Eh, not too often. It's always just work stuff, adding or fixing up runes," Gunther replied.
The second guard snorted. "Could've fooled me. Most rune-smiths refuse contracts with MissanHam. Bad for the conscience, they say."
"You two must be new here. I work for Practum. I'm the go-to when it comes to runes. I've been coming here for over fifteen years now," Gunther grunted.
For a few steps, the only sound was the echo of their boots and the slow drip of something unseen, somewhere far down the corridor.
They stopped outside a door. One of the guards grabbed a clipboard and read it over. "Raiz, Dustan," he hesitated. "Didn't know Practum kept… family visits on the payroll."
Gunther's jaw flexed. "They don't," he said. "I'm working just like you."
He swiped the clipboard out of the guard's hands and opened the door, closing it behind him.
Gunther picked up the chair next to the door and brought it to the side of Dusty's bed.
The legs scraped against the stone as he dragged it, a harsh, grating sound that made Dusty's fingers twitch—barely.
The boy lay strapped to the thin mattress. Leather bands circled his wrists and ankles, another across his chest. A line of dull metal ports ran along the side of his neck, each one ringed with faintly glowing runes. His eyes were half-open, unfocused, staring past the cracked ceiling as if it wasn't there.
Pretend. You need to act brain-dead. Just don't react.
He repeated it to himself over and over.
Dusty let his gaze slide past the ceiling, past the room, past the world. He let his eyes go loose, his mouth slack, muscles heavy. Every instinct screamed at him to move, to sit up, to say something when the door opened.
He didn't.
The chair creaked as Gunther shifted his weight, elbows on his knees, hands clasped like he was waiting for a meeting to start.
"There's so much I wish I could tell you," he murmured. "Hell, I still can't talk about my job, even with you like this."
He let out a small breath through his nose—not a laugh. More like impatience.
"Practum contracts. Security clearances. This rune for that device, this circuit for that machine…" He shook his head. "You'd hate it. You always wanted things simple. Fix the gear, fix the problem. No paperwork."
Dusty stared past him, eyes glassy, unfocused.
Gunther watched his face anyway, like he was inspecting a gauge.
Nothing.
"But there is something you deserve to know," he said, almost brisk. "Something I should've told you years ago."
He rubbed the back of his neck—not nervous. Just thinking.
"This is the part where you'd usually get angry," he added. "Or cry. Or do that thing where you think emotion changes math."
Gunther leaned back, eyes drifting up to the cracked ceiling.
"Malorie," he said, like he was testing the name in his mouth. "Your mother. She used to look at me like I was… small."
A pause.
"She wasn't wrong."
His gaze slid back to Dusty—flat, assessing.
"I'm the reason she's a Flipad," he said. "The first time they told you it was an accident? That they couldn't recover the body?"
He shrugged.
"That story was cleaner."
He leaned forward a little, voice lowering—not with shame. With certainty.
"They gave me a choice. Step off the project, vanish with you to some nowhere farm planet… or stay. Keep my clearance. Keep my work." His mouth twitched, almost amused. "And let them repurpose her."
Gunther held Dusty's empty stare for a beat.
"And I chose to live," he said, like he was stating his rank. "I didn't want to die. And I didn't want to be nobody."
He gestured vaguely around the room—the straps, the ports, the stained floor—like it was a chapel.
"You don't understand what we're building," he said. "You never did. It's bigger than you. Bigger than her. Bigger than whatever grief you think you're owed."
He tilted his head, studying Dusty again.
"Losing her hurt," he added, after a moment. Not softer—colder. "In the way a setback hurts."
He exhaled.
"But pain isn't the point. Purpose is."
His eyes flicked to the metal ports along Dusty's neck, faintly glowing.
"At least this way," Gunther continued, voice smooth and satisfied, "her life wasn't wasted. And neither is yours. You two are… proof. The price tag that makes the project real."
He nodded once, as if pleased with the logic.
"If it didn't cost us anything," he said, "what would it even be worth?"
Gunther stood, straightening his sleeves.
"Alright," he said, reaching for the syringe like it was a pen. "Enough blabbering."
He slid the needle into Dusty's arm and pressed the plunger. A light pink liquid disappeared into Dusty's vein.
And the world around Dusty went dark.