Ned watched Omega sleep.
Not in a romantic way. In a systems way.
Her private med bay's lights were low. Vital monitors ran in quiet, green lines. Her respirations were slow and deep, the kind you only got after you'd burned through everything on a mission and then let the sedatives finally take hold.
Under her skin, tiny implants whispered telemetry back to the vault.
He followed the numbers.
Heart rate. Hormones. Subtle changes in neural rhythms from the White State drills he'd drilled into her. The scars mapped by the scanner's last pass glowed as faint overlays in his awareness—old damage, new damage, structural fatigue.
At the edge of his vision, a timer ticked.
FIVE-YEAR WINDOW: 2.0 YEARS ELAPSED. 3.0 REMAINING.
He dismissed it.
A new timer appeared.
ESCAPE HORIZON (MAX): 5 MONTHS, 0 DAYS.
That one stayed.
He stepped closer, metal feet whispering against the floor. Omega stirred slightly but didn't wake.
"Acceleration," he said softly, more to himself than to her.
He'd run the models.
Five years was generous, if everything stayed flat. But nothing stayed flat. The longer Varis shone as a Lord, the more attention Sanguis would draw. The more his lab grew, the more chance some other Lord would want to inspect "his" projects. Sooner or later, someone would notice that the base's med cluster had grown teeth.
Better to move while they were still an afterthought.
Omega's eyes opened.
"You're staring," she said, voice rough.
"Monitoring," Ned corrected.
"Creepy," she said, but there was no heat in it. She pushed herself upright, wincing as muscles complained.
He pulled the scanner arm down automatically. It hummed over her.
"You should still be asleep," he said.
"Too many bad dreams," she replied, rubbing the back of her neck. "What's wrong?"
He considered his words.
"We're changing the plan," he said. "No more five-year horizon."
That got her attention.
"How much time, then?" she asked.
"Five months," he said. "At most."
She blinked once.
"What happened?" she said. "Did Varis decide to sacrifice us earlier than scheduled?"
"No," Ned said. "I decided."
He showed her the timeline in simple terms: risk curves, Council attention probabilities, Varis's projected promotion arc, Sanguis visibility.
"The longer we wait," he said, "the more this place closes around us. Varis will want more oversight. Other Lords will want their own pieces of Sanguis. The Council will want audits. Every new set of eyes increases the chance someone asks, 'What is that thing in the basement?'"
Omega made a face.
"So we go before they remember we exist," she said.
"Exactly," Ned said.
She swung her legs off the med bed.
"And you can do it," she said. "Leave. Now?"
"Not now," he said. "In months. But it's enough."
He projected a simplified version of his research stack as a holo over the bed: three columns, dozens of subprocesses. He slashed through entire sections with a gesture.
"Gamma is now secondary," he said. "Sanguis-based vessel work is a dead end for long-term bodies. It remains a battlefield amplifier for you. That is all."
Lines re-colored, dropping in priority.
"All effort that doesn't directly contribute to three things is being shut down," he continued. "One: genetic work to lock in a starting bridge—fifteen thousand index, sustainable, with tissue that doesn't liquefy. Two: hardware required for escape—droids, ship, modular lab core. Three: mapping weak points in this base's routines."
Omega watched the holo shift.
"Fifteen thousand," she said. "That's what you're aiming for?"
"For now," he said. "The final body design goes higher. But I don't need a fifty-thousand bridge before we leave. I need a stable human-compatible design that won't explode if I breathe hard. That much I can get in months."
"And your mice?" she asked.
"Still useful," he said. "The rodent lines give me curve data. I can't mature a full body here, but I can fix the template. We'll carry the cell lines with us."
She narrowed her eyes at the second column.
"And that?" she said, pointing. "Hardware?"
"Flankers," he said. "You've met my arms. They can sterilize instruments and adjust valves. They can't hold a corridor under fire."
"Yet," she said.
"Yet," he agreed. "I'm repurposing some of the base's security frames and supply droids. On paper, they'll be upgraded defense units for Varis's laboratories. In practice, they will be combat shells carrying optimized reflex suites. A small squad that understands my intent without needing full self-awareness."
"Your little army," she said.
"Infantry," he said. "You are still my main weapon."
Her mouth twitched.
"What about the ship?" she asked. "We can't exactly hitchhike."
Ned shifted the holo again. Silhouettes appeared: angular warships, blocky transports, sleek shuttles.
"I've considered two options," he said. "Steal a warship or retrofit a smaller transport."
"Warship sounds better," she said. "More guns."
"More attention," he said. "Fleet monitors, transponders keyed to the Council. They don't let those leave orbit without a dozen signatures. Any deviation would bring half the system down on us."
"What about a Lord's personal cruiser?" she asked.
"Guarded more closely," he said. "Varis will get one eventually. We don't have time to wait for it to be built, staffed, and logged before we gut it."
He highlighted a smaller silhouette: a medium-length, broad-bellied ship.
"Research transport," he said. "Assigned to Sanguis logistics. Carries specimens, equipment, and personnel to and from off-world test sites. Enough space for servers, biovats, and stores. Light armament, but the hull can take upgrades."
Omega studied it.
"And it's already built?" she asked.
"Docked at orbit," Ned said. "Used irregularly. I've been watching it."
He brought up its duty logs: occasional trips to nearby systems, long idle windows, a cargo manifest heavy on sealed containers and med shipments.
"With the right requisitions," he said, "we can justify increasing its supply load, adding cryo modules and clean-room pods. All 'for field Sanguis trials.' Engines can be tuned under the guise of 'mission readiness.'"
"You think stealth and a head start are better than trying to punch our way through," she said.
"Yes," he said. "We are not alone in this sector. There are nav buoys, scanners, patrol patterns. A research transport is invisible if no one asks why it's leaving. A warship is a question with thrusters."
She sighed.
"Fine," she said. "We take the sneaky coffin."
"Fast, sneaky coffin," Ned said. "With slightly more teeth than the paperwork admits."
She gave him a look.
"And what do you need from me?" she asked.
He closed the holo and sat on a nearby stool, servos faintly whirring.
"On the system side, I can open doors, reroute power, blind cameras, and forge logs," he said. "That covers one layer. The other layer is people."
She snorted.
"The messy layer," she said.
"Yes," he said. "I need blind spots that are not on the map. Guards who get drunk on certain nights. Technicians who cut corners. Supply sergeants who like being bribed. Pilots who take pride in landing runs and don't look too closely at manifests."
"You want me to make friends," she said, deadpan.
"Or debts," he said. "Whichever is more natural. I need human loopholes my logs can't see yet."
She leaned back, thinking.
"I can work the training pits," she said slowly. "There's always someone who wants to prove they can land a hit on 'the Lord's monster.' They talk. They brag. They complain about supervisors when they think no one important is listening."
"Good," Ned said.
"And pilots…" she added. "Pilots like stories. I can give them a few, if I don't kill them in sparring first."
He nodded.
"There's something else," he said.
Her eyes sharpened.
"The base has been watching us more closely since Varis became a Lord," he said. "Most of that I can track. More cameras. More log queries. Standard paranoia."
"And?" she pressed.
"And there is one acolyte I cannot find," he said.
He pulled up a series of stills on the wall projector: grainy shots from corridor cams, training pit feeds, distant glimpses in crowds. A figure in dark robes, average height, hood up.
"Seen here," Ned said. "And here. And outside your quarters. And once outside Varis's sanctum."
Omega frowned.
"So?" she said. "Plenty of rats down here."
"No badge data," Ned said. "No duty roster entries. No mess hall visits. No bed assignment. No biorhythm logs. When I search for their heat signature over time, it's as if they don't exist between these frames."
"Force trick?" she asked.
"Possibly," he said. "Or a Council asset with their records sealed. Either way, they are outside my usual model. They are watching Varis. And you. And, occasionally, my droids."
"Have you tried following them in real time?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. "Every time I narrow in, they vanish around a corner, or the feed glitches. Coincidences pile up. I don't like coincidences."
She studied the last still: the acolyte in the far corner of a training hall, head turned vaguely in their direction.
"What do you want me to do if I see them?" she asked.
"Nothing obvious," he said. "Do not confront. Do not acknowledge. Just note where, when, and who else is present. They may be watching for Varis. Or for us. Either way, Foresight can't model what it can't see."
"Foresight?" she repeated.
He opened another window in his awareness and let her see the shape of it: a layered interface built on top of the old predictive module. Input fields for ship schedules, guard rotations, resource levels, mission frequencies. Output trees of branching scenarios, color-coded by risk and payoff.
"An upgraded predictive layer," he said. "Trained on the last two years of war logs, base traffic, Varis's habits, your missions, my interventions. It doesn't just count casualties anymore. It evaluates entire families of strategies."
"And you think this… Foresight… can solve our escape for us," she said.
"No," he said. "But it can narrow the path."
He sent a command.
FORESIGHT: RUN SCENARIO SET – "ESCAPE ≤ 5 MONTHS"
CONSTRAINTS:
– VESSEL: SANGUIS RESEARCH TRANSPORT (MODIFIED)
– PERSONNEL: NED/ASURA CORE, OMEGA, MINIMAL ADDITIONAL
– OBJECTIVES:
1. EXFILTRATE SERVER CORE + CELL LINES
2. AVOID DIRECT LORD/COUNCIL CONFRONTATION DURING LAUNCH
3. SURVIVE FIRST HYPERSPACE JUMP
CALCULATING…
In his mind, the base unfolded into vectors and numbers.
Launch windows. Patrol cycle overlaps. The probability that a particular officer would sign a form without reading it. Variations in shield calibrations. The statistical likelihood of a Council audit in any given week.
Foresight chewed.
RESULT SUMMARY (TOP THREE BRANCH FAMILIES):
BRANCH FAMILY A – "MASKED LOGISTICS"
– Timeline: 3–4 months.
– Approach: Gradual modification of transport under pretext of long-range trial.
– Launch under routine logistics departure, slight falsification of destination.
– Success probability: 41.2% (excluding unknown acolyte factor).
– Primary risks: Random inspection by senior Lord; anomalous engine signature flagging.
BRANCH FAMILY B – "EMERGENCY EVACUATION"
– Timeline: 2–3 months.
– Approach: Orchestrate controlled "incident" (containable reactor fault or hostile attack) forcing emergency launch of Sanguis assets.
– Use chaos as cover to alter trajectory and vanish.
– Success probability: 36.7% (excluding unknown acolyte).
– Primary risks: Difficulty controlling scale of incident; potential Council involvement.
BRANCH FAMILY C – "SHADOW CONVOY"
– Timeline: 4–5 months.
– Approach: Attach research transport as auxiliary to another Lord's scheduled convoy, then peel off mid-route using nav trickery.
– Success probability: 32.9% (excluding unknown acolyte).
– Primary risks: Multiple Lords involved; convoy heavily monitored.
Omega watched the summaries scroll by.
"These numbers," she said. "How much do you trust them?"
"More than I trust Varis," Ned said. "Less than I trust gravity."
He highlighted a small notation at the bottom of the display.
NOTE: UNKNOWN ENTITY ("ACOLYTE X") INTRODUCES ±15–20% VARIANCE IN ALL OUTCOMES.
"Foresight cannot account for minds I have no data on," he said. "Or for Council decisions made in sealed rooms. There will always be noise."
"But it's enough to tell you we're not completely doomed," she said.
"Yes," he said. "Two years ago, the best scenario I could find for 'leave this planet alive' hovered around four percent. Today, I have multiple branches above thirty."
He felt something like satisfaction move through his processes.
He realized he was smiling.
Or rather, that he had adjusted the minor motors around his mouth-plate to mimic the shape.
Omega noticed.
"You look pleased," she said.
"I have tools," he said. "And time. Not enough of either, but more than zero. That is better than what most people get in this galaxy."
She snorted.
"Settle on a branch yet?" she asked.
"Not yet," he said. "A and B are viable. I dislike relying on a staged 'emergency'—too many uncontrollable variables. A masked logistics launch is cleaner but slower. I'll keep feeding Foresight as you bring me more human data."
She slid off the bed fully, standing in front of him.
"So it's official," she said. "We're not just talking about Houses and myths anymore. We're actually leaving."
"Yes," he said. "House Seresh doesn't exist if we die in this hole."
She reached for her tunic, pulling it on.
"I'll start in the pits," she said. "Find your loopholes. Listen for ghosts in robes."
"And I'll start killing old work," he said. "Gamma, redundant projects, anything that doesn't move the bridge or the ship."
She paused by the door.
"Ned," she said.
He looked at her.
"Asura," she corrected, slowly, testing it. "Don't wait too long to test your monster machine."
He understood.
"The transfer," he said.
"If we're really leaving in five months," she said, "we don't have room for perfection. Just 'good enough not to kill us instantly.'"
"I am aware," he said. "I still prefer my test subject to deserve what happens to them."
"Oh, I can help with that," she said. "This base is full of volunteers. They just don't know it yet."
She gave him a thin, feral smile and stepped out into the corridor.
The door hissed shut behind her.
Ned remained in the med bay for a long moment, listening to the faint echo of her footsteps and the steady hum of the equipment.
Then he turned back toward the lab in his mind.
One by one, he shut down old processes. Gamma threads. Side experiments. Nonessential modelling jobs. Computational heat sank away from dead projects and surged into new ones: gene line simulations, cell template optimizations, hardware design for flank droids, Foresight runs on logistics branches.
In the vault, his main cores pulsed with the new allocation.
He pinned the new timer to the top of his internal view.
ESCAPE HORIZON: 4 MONTHS, 29 DAYS, 23 HOURS…
House Seresh existed as a name, a promise, and two conspirators.
Soon, if the numbers and their nerves held, it would have a ship.
------------------------
To read 20 advanced chapters you can visit my Ko-fi:"https://ko-fi.com/thekindones''