Welcome to Enceladus Station
In the bathroom stall, the tablet came to life in front of her and she swiped the keycard over the screen. An image of the card spun in the center as a progress bar inched along the bottom.
09:00:00 [System] 📅 Reminder: 09:00 :: Date with the Devil. (Starts Now)
"Damn! Come on. Come on. Come-on-come-on-come-on." She whispered beneath the listening mics.
The bar hit the edge of the screen, and the tablet dinged. A location pin replaced the spinning card.
09:00:32 [System] 📍 Added: Storage Ring::Hangar B114
She closed her eyes and sighed until her chest shuddered empty.
When she looked again, a clock had appeared under the address, ticking down from one hour by seconds.
09:01:06 [System] ⏱ Added: 59:26
"Ohhh shit!"
The mics probably heard that.
She fumbled and shoved the tablet and card back into the satchel. Scrambled to her feet.
The storage ring was at the opposite end of Enceladus Station. On a good day, she might make it in an hour, but today she had to be careful, and careful meant slow.
She didn't have time for slow.
She bungled the latch, tumbled through the stall door and nearly stumbled into two women adjusting makeup in the mirror in front of her.
They turned and stared. Simonee smiled tight and gently closed the stall door.
They turned back. She hustled out into the thoroughfare.
The crowd was thick. She slowed to a brisk walk, sidestepping a big man staring at his smartcomm. Then she wove her way through a throng of commuters moving like cattle.
Bump. A disgruntled consultant in a saffron robe glowered over her.
She bowed. "Culture eats strategy for breakfast, amiright?"
He scowled. She grimaced, sidestepped and marched on.
Hustling past the lobby entrance, Simonee pulled out her smartcomm and whispered, "Keen Kite, tell me the route to storage is clear this morning."
A map of Enceladus Station appeared in the space in front of her with a dotted line marking a bracket-shaped path: up the spoke, through the spine, down another spoke. Simple but treacherous.
The station comprised eight rings, with LuxHab second in from the mushroom-shaped command ring at the tip. Storage was the seventh ring before Industrial capped the other end. All roads in between passed through the four-kilometer spine. Pinch points every step of the way.
Getting to the spine meant climbing up one of the four spokes on this ring, by elevator or stairs. Each spoke was a kilometer long.
09:03:31 [KeenKite] 🏃♀️if you're gonna make the 09:30 tram you'd better huff it.
Trams ran every quarter hour with a dwell time of one minute. But her biggest issue was the elevator.
09:03:51 [KeenKite] 😬 Elevator room looks packed. Go to lift C. Less of a crowd.
Each lift took five minutes round trip—two up, two down, thirty seconds to load on either end.
Each car fit a dozen passengers, and there could be a hundred waiting in the lobby.
But the alternative was 600 flights of stairs.
She beelined for the nearest spoke: a hundred meters down this corridor and up two levels; swift but not reckless—she didn't need the attention.
Enceladus Station was the economic hub of the outer system and home to a hundred thousand people—each a potential witness. Once security alerts started popping up on devices and screens, every face Simonee passed could tap the convenient Report button and security would place her in seconds.
And Ms. Aggy was still tracking her.
09:09:35 [AggyHook] -!- LUXHAB LEVEL 1: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) IN TRANSIT :: BEHAVIOR(Hurried) :: THREAT LEVEL **0.10 → 0.11
The Master Security Artificial General Intelligence—or Ms. Aggy to many a clever and lonely engineer—was the prime and unavoidable witness on this station. Cameras, microphones, spectrometers: each fed a perception engine which categorized patterns and triggered autonomous agents. Agents formed coalitions around curious patterns and raised them up into the global workspace of her distributed cognitive architecture.
There, an appraisal network weighed each pattern against her core needs: law, order, control. Those that tipped the balance triggered a swift response: officers dispatched, locks sealed, even ships denied docking.
Thus far, Simonee had been skirting the edge of perceptual significance. If her tracking coalition bubbled up into the global workspace though, she was cooked. She'd never make it to the drop-off.
That meant playing frantic but not suspicious, anxious but not guilty. It meant controlling every aspect of her behavior, down to the sweat on her brow, and her brow was dripping. She wiped it with her sleeve.
If she pissed off Ms. Aggy, she'd trap Simonee in an elevator or have a troop of officers waiting around the next corner.
09:10:32 [System] ⏱ 00:50:00 to Drop-off
The crowd waiting for the lift was enormous—at least a hundred. That could work in her favor. Packed bodies blurred into noise, harder for any intelligence to parse. She just had to disappear inside.
But as she slid into the mass, every eye felt fixed on her—the twitchy girl with the satchel full of guilt. Simonee kept her gaze on the deck. If every screen around her flashed red right now, this crowd would become no shelter at all.
One. Two. Three batches went up the spine before she could squeeze into a car. The doors shut her in with a dozen others pressed close. The air grew heavy. Her breath caught.
Soft music piped down from the ceiling, a lullaby of calm she didn’t feel. The two-minute ride stretched, each second dragging like a weight.
Her chest cinched tight. Breaths broke shallow. Sweat prickled down her temple. She scanned the car with her implant—anything to keep busy: camera, two microphones, a seismometer, even an olfactory spectrometer.
Always a camera.
09:26:35 [AggyHook] -!- LUXHAB SPOKE 2: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) ASCENDING :: BEHAVIOR(Distressed) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.11 → 0.15
The group shifted. Her ribcage compressed. A panic attack clawed up her throat, right under Ms. Aggy’s unblinking eye.
09:26:40 [PrimPeacock] 😌 Calm it down... You freak out now, EMTs will be waiting. Just breathe. Act casual.
She gasped sharp. What does casual even look like?
She closed her eyes and breathed.
Ding! The elevator doors opened. Simonee stumbled out into the spine, lighter in the chest—not relief, just lower gravity.
The spine was open and hollow—about a hundred meters wide with pathways and plazas laid out on the inner surface.
Moving walkways carried streams of commuters. Trams hissed along arched pylons. Plasma filaments glared down the center, a false daylight that made Simonee shield her eyes.
Up the escalator and onto the platform, Simonee stepped into the tram station.
The tram car slid to a stop at the edge of the platform and the doors opened for loading on one side and unloading on the other.
"Mind the gap." A kind voice warned from speakers mounted in the station pergola.
09:30:32 [System] ⏱ 00:30:00 to Drop-off
Simonee bolted into the car and strapped into the hard plastic seat nearest the door. Minutes seemed to pass as she tapped a restless foot while others boarded.
09:30:45 [AggyHook] -!- SPINE TRAM 5: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) IN TRANSIT :: BEHAVIOR(Agitated) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.15 → 0.17
Finally the tram sped off.
The tram stopped. She bolted to the elevator. The crowd here was lighter, but she wormed her way ahead, cutting in line.
She got a few huffs and grumbles from the workers and business owners headed down pushing flatbeds, but Ms. Aggy didn't seem to mind.
09:35:12 [AggyHook] -!- STORAGE SPOKE 3: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) IN QUEUE :: BEHAVIOR(Cutting|Rude) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.17 → 0.19
Ms. Aggy minded.
One load, two loads: Simonee boarded, squeezing to the back. Breathing. Holding steady. Totally not panicking.
09:40:32 [System] ⏱ 00:20:00 to Drop-off.
Loading took so much longer with all these flatbeds. The pressure mounted. So many bodies smothering her, closing her in. She wasn’t going to make it. Her breath came short and fast.
09:41:06 [AggyHook] -!- STORAGE SPOKE 3: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) DESCENDING :: BEHAVIOR(Hyperventilating) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.19 → 0.22 :: POTENTIAL MEDICAL SITUATION
She grabbed her chest. Tried to slow it, calm it, but she couldn't breathe. She wheezed and sank toward the floor.
09:41:09 [PrimPeacock] 🤔 New plan. Convert it. Channel the energy. Make it messy but normal.
Normal. Messy. What did she have? Dalia's face bathed in moonlight crashed into her mind—those eyes, cold with disgust. What must she think of her now? Trash. Failure. Fool.
Her wheezing hitched higher now. Her eyes stung. But... all these people?
09:41:36 [AggyHook] -!- STORAGE SPOKE 3: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) DESCENDING :: BEHAVIOR(Hyperventilating|Level 2) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.22 → 0.30 :: MEDICAL SITUATION IMMINENT
Use it. Use it. Use it.
She cracked. Her rapid breaths became sobs, tearing through her chest. Tears streaked hot down her cheeks. She collapsed into ugly, guttural wails, pouring every ounce of shame into the noise.
The other passengers recoiled into a ring around her. As the crowd dispersed, her lungs loosened. She was a mess, but she could breathe.
A hand touched her shoulder. “Uh… are you okay, miss?”
She shook her head but then nodded. “I’m sorry. Relationship troubles.”
09:41:24 [AggyHook] -!- STORAGE SPOKE 3: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) DESCENDING :: BEHAVIOR(Ugly Cry) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.30 → 0.10 :: NO MEDICAL INTERVENTION REQUIRED
The lift doors slid open. Simonee pushed through the crowd and stumbled onto the Storage Ring, deck B. She wiped her eyes. Mason’s location pin burned in her mind.
Dim corridors stretched out, signage faded, numbers scattered. She checked every hatch as she hurried past. Three-hundreds; she needed 114: wrong spoke.
09:45:32 [System] ⏱ 00:15:00 to Drop-off
Her chest clenched. Would Mason punish her for being even a minute late? His reputation said yes. People who disappointed him vanished—no bodies, just mysteries.
She forced more speed from her burning legs. Left. Right. Left again. Her boots rang against the metal decking, echoing against the walls.
09:50:06 [KeenKite] - Girl, stop! You’re running in circles. Projecting route. Follow the dots. Find the triangle.
An inverted white triangle lit the air before her. A dotted path wound through the maze. The distance ticked down with each stride.
Forward. Left. Right. Forward again. Until finally—there. The triangle bounced over a hatch ahead. Then it blinked out.
09:55:32 [System] ⏱ 00:05:00 to Drop-off
09:55:34 [KeenKite] 😳 Sim, where’d you go? I lost vis$@#35%42 :: MESSAGE CORRUPT.
Her smartcomm buzzed in her palm.
09:55:45 [System] 📶 Signal Lost: No Network. Please move to a different area.
Jamming.
She spun in place, waving the device. Nothing. Whoever controlled this space wanted silence.
She turned back to the hatch. Plain grey. No latch. The access panel gutted, wires dangling like electronic spaghetti.
Her pulse hammered. Was she supposed to just drop the card and run? No. She needed proof. Mason promised Dalia would be safe.
She pounded the metal with her fist. Fum-fum-fum. The sound echoed hollow down the deserted corridor.
She winced and shook her hand.
“Hello!” Her voice ricocheted back, lonely and thin.
No answer. Only the whine of air recyclers. Lights buzzed and flashed overhead, throwing shadows in fits. Stale air, astringent, tickled her nose.
“Hey!” She slapped her thigh, teeth grinding. “You dragged me through hell. Ruined my life. The least you can do is open the fucking door!”
Her voice broke. She twirled, hands on her head, breath ragged.
At last she dropped her hands and dug into the side pocket of her jeans. Out came a set of brass knuckles. Heavy. Familiar.
She slid her fingers in, gripping until the dull gold glimmered in the stuttering light. Spring-loaded spikes waited by a switch at her thumb, but she didn’t need them yet.
The weight steadied her. It felt like control.
Fear ebbed, leaving a sharp edge of defiance. For the first time since the morning began, her lips curved up on their own.
A smirk. Small, dangerous, uninvited.
These knuckles had been her way out—one of her tools of distraction, tools of survival. They’d spilled blood.
Like the day she first met Dalia in a place where neither of them belonged.