As Lahani begins the supplier intake, several nonessential facility systems drop offline. An old maintenance bay unlocks beneath a local timer, exposing a preassembled resilience unit wired only to a dead test stand.
Meral Voss
That unit was never on my manifest. Not in the cargo record, not in the intake notices, nowhere.
Meral keeps to the threshold, watching the darkened facility lights. Serafina leans toward the open bay, her attention fixed on the unit’s couplers and hand-finished shielding.
Serafina
I recognize that workmanship. It is good, careful work, but accepting it may mean accepting an obligation nobody bothered to document.
The resilience unit matches Amber Wing’s approved specifications: independent distribution, protected cooling, and reversible isolation points. Its dead test stand shows no live command path or active power draw.
Meral Voss
We can leave it sealed and finish the intake, or test the provenance before anyone calls it a gift.
Behind Lahani, Amber Wing holds its quiet relay route and abort lane. The first resilience upgrade waits in the unlocked bay, harmless for now but carrying a price no manifest names.
Verify the resilience unit's provenance