The download did only take a minute, the whole time my stomach gurgled and growled at me. By the time my focus was coming back to me, the meeting was over, and the tech staff were moving across the base back here.

  Shit!

  A cold knot formed in my stomach.

  Everything I’d touched, I put back, and pocketed my chip, I’d dispose of it later so no one could track it. Then I snuck out the same way I came, and I practically ran to Alisee’s Noodles for my lunch.

  By the time I queued for my meal, I was out of breath, greeted by a bubbly young waitress who seemed determined to share every detail of her day.

  It took me way longer to walk back with my noodles too, I’d taken a wrong turn.

  Back at the small yard where I worked, my appetite had vanished. The untouched food sat beside me as my thoughts scattered, refusing to settle.

  Instead of eating, I turned my focus to the hovercar. The hours dragged, each one stretching into the next as my mind wandered to anything but the work in front of me.

  On the walk back to my apartment, thoughts of the spaceship filled my mind, spinning fantasies of adventures waiting in the dark reaches of space.

  Smart enough to dream big but stuck without wealth, I slogged through life, working my ass off to afford a crappy apartment on the city’s outskirts. Getting anywhere near the academy required a sponsor—someone with money, connections, and far more influence than Orla. Without schooling or backing, my only path into that world came with a price tag I couldn’t touch.

  I sat in silence, took a deep breath, trying to clear my mind and turned my attention to the Android program.

  They couldn’t fix this. Why?

  Idiots.

  Doli’s program sprawled like a labyrinth of half-finished ideas, tangled with patchwork repairs that screamed desperation. To me, it offered something far more compelling—a challenge, a puzzle demanding to be solved. By day, I scraped by as a mechanic at Marts and Sparks. By night, I transformed, diving into coding forums and hacking competitions, absorbing knowledge hidden from most. This wasn’t just a challenge—it defined me.

  At my computer, my fingers brushed the cold metal of my port before locking it in place. A sharp jolt surged through me as I connected, and then the real world faded, replaced by a 3D virtual reality space. Codes and scripts swirled like a storm, endless and chaotic.

  The scope of the task loomed large, but the thrill of it sparked in my veins. Piece by piece, I tore the code down to its foundations. Each flawed string unraveled another, buried deeper and more insidious.

  A mess of redundancies and fragmented loops cluttered the code, turning it into a maddening knot of inefficiency. Every pull exposed new tangles. I rewrote subroutines from scratch, carved clean neural pathways, and restructured her processing cores for maximum efficiency. Doli didn’t just need repairs—she demanded an upgrade. With every adjustment, doubt shadowed me. The academy’s engineers should have caught this. What made me think a few hours of work could fix what they had missed for years?

  Pain stabbed behind my eyes, sharp and relentless. My body screamed for rest, but the thought of failure drowned out the ache. Stopping wasn’t an option.

  Fixing Doli became my biggest challenge yet. The memory of kids jeering, teasing me as “Mr. Fixit,” echoed in my mind. Every time I moved to a new orphanage, the name followed. If something broke, it landed in my hands. Fixing things wasn’t just a habit—it consumed me.

  If I saw something broken, that was me - Mr. Fixit, I had to do it, nothing compelled me more than something that needed putting back together. When Orla took me in, it was a dream come true and a nightmare. She loved to bring all those unfixable things to me, and I would. I would fix all of them.

  Time became irrelevant. My world faded completely from my mind, replaced by the glowing lattice of virtual connections. My eyes burned, but I couldn’t stop. I was in the zone, building, reconstructing, breathing life into something that had once been broken. My hands moved without hesitation, driven by pure instinct.

  Then, the burning escalated to a dull throb, built until it felt like my skull was about to split open. I’d never had this much pain before? Was it the new chip? I tried to ignore it, tried to focus, but my vision blurred, the lines of code merging into a chaotic haze. Slowly, I became aware of the world outside again—the dim light of my apartment, the cramped feel of the chair beneath me. My head pounded, and a sticky warmth was spreading across my upper lip.

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  I yanked the port out, gasping as I returned fully to the real world. Blood dripped from my nose, a thick crimson stain soaking through my shirt. I touched my face, fingers coming away slick and red. “Shit,” I muttered, the word echoing in the stillness.

  My body swayed, the exhaustion crashing over me in waves. But it was done. It was fixed. And somehow, that made the blood worth it.

  After stripping off my bloodied shirt, I stepped into the shower, only then realizing how late it had gotten. Years had passed since my last nosebleed. Why now?

  Why now? Stress?

  No, I wasn’t that stressed, maybe working too hard... Fuck what if it’s their new tech? I cringed as I’d put it in my head without thinking.

  A question burned in my mind: could I return to Hangar 31 tonight? Could I sneak back? The thought itched at me, refusing to leave. My hands twitched at the idea, craving another chance to work with that ship, to see if Doli’s program could truly run smoothly after the hours I’d spent patching it together.

  I grabbed myself some water, downed it in one go, then poured another. My brain was still buzzing with possibilities, the rush of success and the nagging worry that I’d missed something important in the code. Doli was functional—but far from perfect. What if I could do more? What if I could finish what the original team couldn’t?

  I reheated and ate Alisee’s best noodles—not so best when reheated. Each bite was mechanical, a distraction as my thoughts stayed on the ship. My mind kept returning to the ship, to the idea of uploading the updated code directly to her systems, seeing her fully operational.

  What if this was my chance? Not just to fix Doli but to prove that I could take something beyond broken and make it extraordinary. To take my life and do the same.

  “By the time I finished my meal, the decision was made. I packed my datapad, ran a quick diagnostic on the new chip, and slipped out the door, my heart pounding with anticipation—and a little fear. Hangar 31 was calling, and this time, I wouldn’t leave until I knew what Doli was truly capable of.”

  Then with my datapad and hope in my heart, I headed back to hangar 31, making sure I turned off the city cameras this late too. They’d track me anywhere if they thought someone had been through their security.

  Again, it was easy, and though I put night lights on in the main building where the ship was, nothing, no alarms, no one was here. It was clear they were packing things up, and sadness washed over me.

  This time, instead of the main console having the program in my head, I approached the ship directly, instead of walking up to the hangar doors, I asked clearly, “Open.”

  With a hiss, the door dropped, and I smiled.

  The interior was even more impressive than I’d imagined as I stepped inside, moving without hesitation. This compartment housed two small fighters secured within the ship’s belly. The wealth of resources embedded in this place was staggering.

  Climbing the ship’s main ladder, my HUD mapped out the layout: bunks, security offices, cargo holds, and a mess hall. Each section was pristine yet eerily empty, the silence amplifying the sound of my footsteps.

  That’s when I saw her, she had moved from her earlier location. That meant she wasn’t decommissioned, turned off, not yet at least. “Doli?” I asked softly.

  No response.

  The ship’s CIC, Combat Information Centre, was my next stop and lights around me flicked on as I entered. Six chairs rounded the room out, and she stood there. I moved to what I thought was the command chair and sat. From here, I could clearly see her, “Doli, wake.” I ordered.

  Lights flickered in her eyes, but nothing. She didn’t wake.

  The keypads at either side of the console fit my hands perfectly, and a minute later I was loading up my new fixes to the main computer system.

  My fingers hovered over the console, nerves buzzing as I tried one last time. “Doli, wake.”

  For a moment, nothing happened again. Then, her head twitched, a jarring movement that made my breath catch.

  Her voice crackled through the silence like an old radio signal. “I a-m a-w-wake, Ca capta-in.” She stuttered, her words were flat, robotic—but there was something unsettlingly human in the way she said them.

  “HUD comms only.” I instructed.

  <>

  “Yes,” I replied and brought up her 3D image. “How do you feel?”

  <> she replied, <>

  “Yes,” I replied. “Show me on screen.”

  While she ran the system check, I noted the percentage she was operating at 22%. That was awful.

  There were still several strings of code that needed fixing. I flexed my hands, and once again dug back into her coding.

  This time it was much more fun because Doli announced every now and then, <> or <>

  Hours passed unnoticed until my dry lips smacked together, signaling an overdue need for a drink. Stretching stiffly, I rose from the command chair and wandered toward the ship’s mess hall.

  To my surprise, the mess hall was fully stocked, and I helped myself to some water and a protein pack. The faint hum of the ship’s systems provided a backdrop to the otherwise empty silence.

  Then it hit me—a sharp, searing pain behind my eyes. I gasped, dropping the water container as my vision flared white.

  <> Doli seemed distant, underwater.

  I gripped the edge of the table, trying to steady myself. Something warm trickled down my upper lip, and when I touched it, my fingers came away red.

  “I’m fine,” I managed, but my legs wobbled beneath me.

  <> Her voice cut out suddenly, replaced by a burst of static that pierced through my skull like shards of glass.

  For a moment, I saw... something. Code. Lines of it, streaming through my vision like falling rain. Numbers and symbols that weren’t Doli’s—something else. Something buried.

  <> Doli returned, sharper now, almost alarmed. <>

  The static returned, louder this time. My legs finally gave out, and I slid to the floor, my back against the cold metal wall.

  As quickly as it came, the pain receded, leaving only a dull throb and the metallic taste of blood in my mouth, I managed to stand leaning on the table once again, catching my breath.

  <> Doli’s staccato voice broke through, urgent.