AETHER MIDNIGHT

Blue sparks sprayed, reflecting off my welding helmet. I held my breath, stabilizing the energy pipe on this junk drift engine’s motivator. If my hand trembled even one millimeter, it would explode and level half of The Garage, my workshop.

But my hands never tremble.

I lowered the welder, wiping sweat with an oil-stained hand. The air on Level 1313 of Noctis Reach was a pure combination of refinery smoke, reactor leaks, and despair. But in this lawless, neon-lit vertical district, the scent of rust and cheap lubricant was the scent of freedom. A hiding place. I am L, a mechanic with no last name who fixes anything, no questions asked.

Heavy, dragging footsteps vibrated through the metal floor.

"L! My constantly frowning friend!"

The raspy voice made me sigh. Lifting my visor, I saw Grox standing in the half-open doorway, blocking the hallway's light. He was a stocky Brakkar smuggler with immense strength and four constantly busy arms, currently wearing a half-burnt purple synthetic coat and yellow goggles.

"That door doesn't open for people who yell, Grox," I said flatly.

Grox burst into booming laughter that rattled the scrap metal shelves. His lower arms patted his belly while his upper arms hoisted a rattling cooler.

"Come on, L! I brought a cure for your miserable day. Double-fermented beer from Veyra. Guaranteed to numb your brain to the noise of this sector."

I crossed my arms, leaning against a half-assembled Skimmer hovercraft. "Keep your poison, Grox," I interrupted, my tone low but firm. "I prefer coffee. Especially quality coffee beans from the Lunacea highlands, which are very hard to come by right now. Your cheap beer will only ruin my focus."

Grox’s four shoulders slumped. "Coffee? On a moon of criminals, you want premium beans? Are you a mechanic or some lost Aethera noble?" Seeing my deadpan stare, he cleared his throat and looked around my organized chaos of a workshop. His eyes locked onto a suspiciously clean corner.

"What is... that?"

He stepped toward a small workbench holding an unusual, neatly coiled copper-pipe contraption attached to a high-pressure glass tube.

"That's my coffee brewer," I said. "Built from a Railskiff compressor and an isolation suit's heating system."

Grox stared, then began to roar with laughter, wiping a tear with a massive hand.

"You turned down beer because you built a coffee brewer from a space compressor?! You're crazy, L. But the design is incredibly neat. You've got magic hands."

"I call it precision," I replied. "So, why are you really here? You didn't bring my ordered parts."

Grox’s goofy demeanor vanished. Checking the hallway, he pressed the panel to completely seal The Garage's steel doors. The hiss of hydraulics locked us in under the neon glow.

"I found something," Grox whispered roughly. From a musty burlap sack, he pulled a fist-sized cylindrical metal box. The material seemed to suck the air from the room—obsidian black, reflecting light unnaturally.

"A scavenger found it near the wreckage of a Khelos Freighter in Sector 4," Grox explained. "I figured you could extract its power core..."

"Put that down." My voice was as cold and sharp as a scalpel.

Grox froze, his eyes widening behind his goggles. My knuckles were white. My heart hammered, awakening something in my chest I had suppressed for years.

Instinct. Anger. The Veil, the invisible cosmic energy connecting life and machines surged wildly inside me. The room grew cold; tools on the table began vibrating.

"L? You okay?" Grox carefully set the cylinder down, raising all four hands. "Relax. We can toss it in the furnace."

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and visualized an imaginary brick wall inside my mind, caging the monster that was starting to thrash. Calm down. You are L. You're just a mechanic. Breathe.

The vibrations on the table stopped. The room returned to normal.

I opened my eyes and stared at the object. A black cylinder with fading red geometric carvings on its side. I didn't need to dismantle it to know what it was. A phantom scar on my shoulder throbbed with pain.

That object was a memory cylinder from a Scout Synth, the signature unmanned reconnaissance series unit of the Eclipse Agents. They were the elite executioners of the Imperium Nexus, an authoritarian star-ruling regime that controlled the galactic sector through brutal surveillance, tasked with hunting down Veilbound and rogue Veil users like me.

"Where did the Khelos come from, Grox?" I asked, stepping closer, my eyes never leaving the cylinder.

"Buried under the underground trash heaps for years," Grox said. "Yesterday's tectonic tremors forced it up. Why?"

If this thing had been buried that long, it meant an Eclipse Agent had been on Noctis Reach. This close to me. Or even worse... this object was still actively recording and transmitting a passive signal.

I grabbed a sonic screwdriver from my belt, aiming it at the surface of the black cylinder. "Grox, step away from the table."

"Hey, L, don't do anything stupid..."

BEEP.

The second my screwdriver touched its energy port, the cylinder powered up. Blood-red Auxscript code projected into the air. But the hologram didn't freeze my blood; it was the repeating beep that grew faster by the second. An active location transmission.

However, it wasn't the hologram of metropolitan alphabets that made my blood run cold.

It was the repeating beep that suddenly echoed from the object. Its rhythm grew faster.

Transmission location. Active.

Before I could grab a sledgehammer to smash it, a loud booming sound rang out. Not from the cylinder, but from the direction of The Garage's steel door.

BOOM!

The five-inch-thick steel door dented inward. Something was forcing its way in with pure, terrifying brute force. I glanced at my tools, then toward a hidden shelf in the corner. Behind a toolbox sat a long case I hadn't touched in years—a case smelling of Veil Shard and burning flesh.

The heavy steel door finally tore open, splitting completely in two.