Adventure of Jostan Ordomo 1

The manual bypass snaps open, revealing Orin Vale’s cluttered underground laboratory. Jostan enters still moving, the authentication shard secured and the Jimmy ready, while the pink-haired woman remains behind in the service corridor.

Orin rises from a nest of patched consoles, his respirator grille catching the monitor glow. His eyes track the shard first, then the scorched weapon housing and Jostan’s alert posture.

The laboratory’s lights dim as the hatch seals, muting the corridor behind him. Diagnostic arms unfold around the nearest console, but none approaches Jostan without Orin’s command.

The bench waits beneath a cold inspection lamp. Orin keeps one hand near his coat while the laboratory settles into guarded silence, leaving the next move to Jostan.

Jostan sets the eolite reserve on the bench and cracks it into pale grit. He strips a bullet from the Jimmy, spills its powder, and blends the materials with careful, practiced fingers.

The compound loses its crystalline behavior as the powder eats through the eolite cells. The mixture is crude and sharply contaminated, but it is no longer eolite. Jostan inhales it.

A harsh chemical rush floods Jostan’s senses. His vision blooms white at the edges, and the cybernetic filter chokes on the residue, leaving a sticky fouling across its intake. The reserve and bullet are spent.

Orin studies the emptied reserve and the fouled filter, then looks to the authentication shard. He does not ask who helped Jostan reach the laboratory, but his silence records the omission.

Jostan opens his hand, but nothing remains to offer. The eolite and bullet powder are gone, leaving only chemical residue on his fingers and the fouled interface filter.

Jostan settles into the chair and studies the diagnostic arm. Its joints track him with precise servo clicks, while Orin watches the empty hand, then the machine.

Orin enters an authorization string. The diagnostic arm unlocks, unfolds its protective casing, and extends its exposed actuators toward Jostan. He has access, but the favor now belongs to Orin.

The arm’s exposed actuators hover within reach, but its interface remains a diagnostic lattice, not a training rig. Symbols crawl across its casing without adapting to Jostan’s presence.

A diagnostic pulse passes through the arm. It maps Jostan’s fouled interface filter and flags the damage, but offers no upgrade, shortcut, or hidden lesson.

The arm holds steady before him, precise and indifferent. Its open housing exposes mechanisms to examine, not a challenge designed to reward improvisation.

The laboratory settles around the unlocked arm and the untouched shard. Nothing in the machine changes Jostan’s skill, and Orin waits to see whether the distinction survives the next impulse.

Jostan bends over the open diagnostic arm, clipping neighboring wires into a cleaner circuit. He strips a sensor wafer from the housing and fits it around the Eye of Anylasis.

His fingers reorganize the exposed components into a thumb-sized configurator. The work takes longer than expected, and the arm’s diagnostic map remains partly untranslated in his memory.

Jostan seats the configurator against his cybernetic eye. A thin blue lattice unfolds across his vision, matching the arm’s scan pattern and resolving the bench, the shard, and the fouled filter into layered readouts.

The new eye scanner functions, but its confidence markers flicker around unfamiliar systems. Jostan can scan as the arm does, though every result now carries a visible margin he must interpret.

The configurator settles beneath Jostan’s eye, feeding him diagnostic layers in real time. The arm remains open and altered, while the authentication shard waits untouched on the bench.

Orin studies the scanner beneath Jostan’s eye, then the altered diagnostic arm. The question earns a measured pause instead of dismissal.

Orin pulls a compact power schematic onto the bench display. Its coils resemble a firearm’s acceleration chamber, while the input channel is marked solar conversion.

The schematic resolves into a clear design path: solar capture, regulated conversion, and a controlled firing chamber. Jostan now has both the improvement method and the answer.

Jostan takes the authentication shard from the bench and places it in Orin’s waiting hand. The transfer is complete, leaving the evidence under Orin’s control.

A flash of Rodney’s pink hair and calm chewing crosses Jostan’s perception, then dissolves beneath the Eye of Anylasis as the scanner wakes. The laboratory becomes layers of light, heat, circuitry, and concealed power paths.

Jostan’s scan resolves the laboratory’s systems and records their uncertain readings: the altered arm’s calibration, the shard’s permissions, the hidden power draw, and Orin’s encrypted archives. The work succeeds, but costs him several minutes of attention and leaves the unfamiliar readings demanding later verification.

Orin secures the shard and gestures toward a service door. The scanner keeps its uncertain log beneath Jostan’s eye as the laboratory gives way to the promise of a meal.

Orin leads Jostan through the service door toward the kitchen. The scanner beneath Jostan’s eye keeps logging uncertain readings as the laboratory lights recede behind them.

The passage bends toward a food market, then every wall display switches to a silent blue diagnostic grid. A service tram glides from the darkness and stops beside them without announcing its destination.

The tram’s doors open anyway. Inside, an empty passenger compartment glows with warm cabin lights, while one neglected dispenser displays a fresh meal and a single blinking prompt: CLAIM.

The prompt changes. A second line appears beneath it: ORIN VALE, ACCEPTANCE REQUIRED. Orin’s expression hardens as the tram’s engines begin preparing to depart.

Jostan grabs Orin’s arm and hauls him toward the open tram. The doors begin closing; Jostan gets inside, but Orin’s shoulder catches the seam and his grip slips free.

The tram pulls away before Jostan can reach back. The Eye of Anylasis organizes the compartment into clean layers: dormant controls, a restricted route core, and a meal dispenser tied to the CLAIM prompt.

A blue reflection slides across the window. Outside, Rodney Sherman stands beside the service passage, vivid pink hair bright against the dark, waving calmly as the tram carries Jostan past.

Jostan sits beneath the tram’s warm cabin lights and scans for five minutes. The route core stays isolated, while the dispenser’s return address resolves into layered transit metadata.

Boredom wins. Jostan rises and works the narrow compartment, punching the air, driving in leg kicks, and keeping his breath anchored to the present. His right thigh begins to throb.

Memory breaks through in jagged flashes. Jostan swings harder, his fists hammering the empty air until his balance goes, his vision collapses, and consciousness cuts out.

He wakes against the tram wall with both windows starred by fresh bullet impacts. Orin Vale has him locked in a full nelson, one forearm braced beneath his chin and the other pinning his shoulders.

Jostan slows his breathing until Orin’s hold no longer meets resistance. Orin releases him, steps back, and keeps his hands visible while the tram hums around them.

Jostan moves through the compartment, touching panels, tracing seams, and feeding the tram’s maintenance logic through his new scanner. The system yields without a struggle.

His access reaches the route core and halts the tram at once. A hidden maintenance layer opens a complete return control, plus a live map of the hall beyond the doors.

The doors part onto a disturbing hall: bare walls ripple with dim sensor lights, doors stand at uneven angles, and silent displays show distorted silhouettes that do not match anyone in the tram.

Jostan feeds the tram’s compromised maintenance layer through the Eye of Anylasis, isolating false routing data from the genuine transaction trail. The sender resolves cleanly: the woman on the maintenance display’s remote relay authorized the invitation, while the tram altered its own path to conceal her hand.

The tram departs behind them, vanishing into the hall’s warped geometry. Jostan steps forward as a ceiling display wakes, revealing the pale, blue-threaded face from the maintenance channel.

A broad-shouldered adult man in a matte gray impact jacket steps from a crooked doorway and drives a punch into Jostan’s left jaw. Jostan flies across the hall, while the display woman’s expression snaps from control to alarm.

Survive the attack in the warped transit hall