Awareness returns amid the wreckage of a lab ship. Vines and pale fungal growths thread through dead consoles, ventilation grilles, and shattered specimen tanks, their leaves trembling in recycled air.
A young adult woman crouches beyond the broken glass, a lean figure in a stained gray coat with copper-red hair, a scar through one eyebrow, and a compact scanner glowing blue in her hand.
Mara Venn
There you are. Mara Venn, independent researcher. Try not to move until I understand what you are.
The scanner passes over Lokier's fused body and chirps sharply. Its display fills with layered diagrams, labeling him as an active laboratory system rather than a survivor.
Lokier
The air tastes of metal, wet soil, and something alive.
Mara Venn
That is impossible. The ship has a recovery signal running, and the authorities will sterilize this wreck when they arrive.
Mara reaches toward a small control implant beside Lokier's collar. Her fingers stop just short of it as the ship's distant transmitter pulses through the hull, and she waits to see whether the signal can be stopped.
✓ Quest Accepted
Have Mara Venn accept Lokier as a potential ally
✓ Quest Accepted
Prevent the authorities from sterilizing the wreck
“I look around trying to figure out what happened where am I who am I”
SUCCESS (Great Perception, rolled +0)
Lokier surveys the wreck through broken glass and flickering displays. Impact scoring shows the lab ship suffered a violent emergency descent, then lost power while its containment systems failed.
A cracked bulkhead bears the ship designation Asterion-6 and a quarantine warning. Nearby logs identify the chamber as a xenobiological fabrication bay, not a crew sleeping area.
The damaged console reconstructs fragments of an incident report: containment breach, unauthorized genetic modification, and emergency atmospheric cycling. The final minutes are missing from every surviving record.
Lokier
The system labels this body L-09, a human-derived laboratory organism with active fungal and neural integration. It does not contain a personal name or a creation record.
The answer arrives with a cost: maintaining the reconstruction occupies Lokier's attention long enough for several displays to dim, leaving the exact crash location and the missing report unresolved.
Mara Venn
You were made here, or altered here. I cannot tell which. The surviving records call you L-09.
Mara glances from the scanner to the transmitter controls, her expression tightening as another pulse travels through the hull. She keeps her hand poised beside the implant.
“I look to see if I can find anything more something that could at least be useful”
SUCCESS (Great Perception, rolled +0)
Lokier searches the fabrication bay with careful attention, tracing intact panels beneath dust and fungal mats. A maintenance locker remains sealed beside the emergency console, its status light still amber.
Behind a fallen diagnostic screen, he finds a compact emergency kit and a hardened data wafer marked with the Asterion-6 seal. Both are undamaged and accessible.
Lokier
The kit contains tools, sealant, nutrient gel, and a power cell.
Lokier takes the kit and wafer. The power cell fits the cracked auxiliary reader, while the wafer's encrypted index reveals quarantine procedures, fabrication records, and a partial map of the ship.
Mara Venn
Good. Anything with that seal may explain what happened here, or keep you alive long enough to find out.
Mara lowers her scanner slightly as Lokier secures the supplies. The transmitter pulses again, but the auxiliary reader now glows steadily, ready to expose the wafer's surviving records.
+ New Item Acquired
Emergency kit
+ New Item Acquired
Hardened data wafer
“I ask her if she knows what happened here or where we need to go”
FAILURE (Mediocre Diplomacy, rolled +0)
Lokier
Do you know what happened here, or where we need to go?
Mara Venn
I know the containment failure began in this bay. After that, the records fracture. I cannot tell you why you were made.
Mara turns the scanner toward the auxiliary reader, but the encrypted index rejects her first access attempt. Her certainty tightens into professional caution.
Mara Venn
The quarantine route leads toward the command spine. If the map is accurate, there may be a functioning navigation core there. The authorities will come for this wreck.
Lokier
The command spine is a usable direction, but the map may be incomplete.
Mara Venn
I can help you reach it, but I cannot promise answers. The wafer may show more once we restore a stronger reader, and that is no longer possible here.
She points past the broken containment doors toward a dim corridor marked COMMAND SPINE. The route is blocked by fallen equipment, but the emergency map marks a maintenance bypass nearby.
“I follow her looking for anything that might explain something along the way”
SUCCESS (Great Perception, rolled +1)
Lokier follows Mara through the maintenance bypass, stepping over buckled flooring while his attention sweeps the exposed conduits, damaged panels, and drifting diagnostic dust.
A service display flickers as they pass. Lokier reconstructs a cached transit record: the command spine was sealed from inside minutes after the containment failure, and a fabrication-bay access code was used beforehand.
Lokier
The access code was entered before the emergency seal engaged.
Mara Venn
You found something. The timing matters. If someone sealed the spine deliberately, they may have been trying to preserve the navigation core.
Mara pauses beside a ruptured maintenance cabinet. Inside, Lokier finds a narrow personnel tag fused to the wiring, its owner designation erased but its last destination intact: command spine, navigation access.
Mara Venn
Keep the tag. It may authenticate a terminal. We are close enough now to learn whether the core survived.
The bypass opens into the command spine. Emergency strips illuminate a row of dark consoles, while the navigation core emits a steady, low power tone beneath the deck.
“I try to see if I can look around with my spores by moving them to places we might not be able to reach”
SUCCESS (Fair Spores production, rolled +3)
Lokier releases a fine veil of spores from his fused skin. They drift across the command spine, slipping into ventilation seams, conduit gaps, and the narrow spaces beneath the consoles.
The spores carry fragments of sensation back through their shared network: cold metal, stagnant air, and the navigation core's vibration spreading through the deck supports.
Lokier
The spores can reach places my body cannot.
Beyond the nearest bulkhead, they map a sealed equipment alcove containing an intact auxiliary terminal. A maintenance shaft continues from it toward the ship's exterior sensor blister.
Other spores enter the navigation console through a cracked access seam. They detect active memory storage, a disconnected command interface, and a diagnostic relay still receiving power.
Mara Venn
You are sensing through them, not merely releasing them. What do they find?
The returning impressions settle into Lokier's awareness as a usable route: the equipment alcove, its auxiliary terminal, and the live relay inside the navigation core are all accessible from here.
“I tell her what I found let her decide the route”
SUCCESS (Good Reasoning, rolled +1)
Lokier
The spores found an intact auxiliary terminal in the sealed equipment alcove. A maintenance shaft leads from there to the exterior sensor blister, and the navigation core still has active memory and a powered diagnostic relay.
Mara Venn
He can survey the ship without opening a door. That makes the alcove the safest place to begin, and the relay may tell us who sealed the command spine.
Mara Venn
We take the alcove route. The auxiliary terminal can give us a physical interface, while your spores keep watch through the maintenance shaft.
Mara crosses to the sealed bulkhead and brushes dust from its access plate. She aligns the recovered personnel tag with the reader, and the lock accepts its authentication without resistance.
The bulkhead retracts into the wall, exposing the equipment alcove. Blue status lights awaken across the auxiliary terminal, revealing a direct diagnostic link to the navigation core.
Mara Venn
You lead with the spores. I will operate the terminal and record everything it gives us. If the relay is intact, we may finally see the last command entered here.
Mara steps into the alcove and powers the terminal. Lokier's dispersed network extends ahead through the shaft and consoles, carrying the core's steady vibration into the newly opened space.
Quest Complete
Have Mara Venn accept Lokier as a potential ally
Attribute Upgrade: Perception Great→Superb