You flick the manual override.
Sabine doesn’t protest—but you feel her withdraw, monitoring. Calculating. Ready.

“Course rerouted. Altitude adjusted.”

The stowaway exhales—not in relief, but in readiness.
He doesn’t lower the weapon.
He just says,

“They’ll track us for a while. But not where we’re going.”

---

The ship descends into dry emerald terrain, veined with old cargo routes and utility tunnels half-swallowed by soil.
It looks like nothing. But then you see the shape—a perimeter of monolith stones, arranged with laser-cut precision. Inside: a cluster of habitat domes overgrown with engineered moss, photovoltaic panels embedded in roots, and biofabricated water towers rising like sunflowers.

It’s quiet. Too quiet.
Then:

“Stop there.”

They appear like ghosts. Camouflaged in adaptive cloth.
Eyes behind mineral goggles.
Weapons not pointed—but not lowered either.

The stowaway raises his hands.

“He’s the one I told you about.”
“The Builder.”

A pause. Then a single voice answers—flat and dry:

“Then he’d better not waste our time.”

You step out into the dust.
The wind tastes of minerals. Recycled air and real soil.
You’ve arrived in the Fractured Collective—the off-grid, unlicensed survival community once exiled from Orna’s central hive.

And they do not welcome visitors.