The dropship moves above the clouds.
They part beneath its hull, swell, then close again—as if trying to erase the very fact that we were ever here. Like water that refuses to remember someone walked across it.
Inside, it's cramped. The metal is warm. The air is thick and heavy—ozone, overheated systems, and someone else's fear. Not sharp. Not panicked.
The deep kind. The kind that lives inside you and twitches every time you pretend everything is under control.
I pretend.
We need to look like refugees, I think.
And the armor hears me.
The panels begin to move—softly, almost politely. Not with a jerk, but with such careful precision it makes my skin crawl. Like being undressed without permission, but with professional delicacy. Rigid segments retract inward, lines smooth out, combat nodes power down. The material dulls, lightens, loses its sheen.
A few seconds later, it's no longer armor.
A civilian jumpsuit from Elindra Prime. Worn. Gray-sand colored. With traces of "repairs," "wear," small tears. Perfectly imperfect.
"Too perfect," I mutter under my breath. "I'll have to suffer more convincingly."
The weapon disappears.
Or rather—it pretends to. It spreads across my palm, seeps into bone, tendons, skin. Becomes part of me. Clench my fingers—it comes back. Relax—and it dissolves again.
The sensation is cold beneath my ribs. I note it and move on. Panic later. If I'm lucky.
I look up.
Eighteen pairs of eyes are fixed on me.
Alive. Real.
There's astonishment in them. Almost childlike. Someone smiles without realizing it. Someone frowns. One blinks too often—as if afraid that if he blinks slowly, reality will finally slip off its rails.
Perfect, I think. Now I'm either a magician or a god. And both options are bad ideas.
I don't say anything out loud.
I just think.
And give the command.
The squad's armor responds instantly. In sync. Too beautifully. Combat suits flow like living metal, losing shape, colors shifting. The metal recedes. What remains is fabric, dust, dirt, scuffs.
A second later, standing before me are no longer strike cells of the Dark Mind.
But a group of refugees.
Different cuts. Different shades. Traces of "dirt," "fatigue," "life." Too convincing.
They look at each other. Then at themselves. Then back at me.
"Axiom-126. Permission to speak?"
A male voice. Young, but steady. No tremor. I register it automatically—the habit of a commander I officially shouldn't be.
"Go ahead."
"What exactly are these…" he searches for the word, "…changes to our armor?"
I barely suppress a smirk.
"Neumae," I answer calmly. "Nanobots. They can alter visible structure. Shape. Color. Function."
"And can we…" he presses on, "…control them the way you do?"
Something clicks inside me then. Cold. Clear.
Too good a question.
"I don't know," I say honestly. "Try."
And the world expands.
The link bursts outward like a dam under pressure. I feel all of them at once—not in words, but in impulses. Fear. Excitement. Curiosity. Chaos.
My commands become shared.
And they try.
All eighteen.
The jumpsuits begin to "swim." Colors jump, textures jitter. Someone makes himself too tall. Someone else—unnervingly thin. One turns a sleeve into something like a cloak.
"Stop."
The command snaps out sharp—but not loud. Like braking.
The changes freeze.
Silence drops inside the dropship, as if someone cut the sound.
I quickly stabilize the images: refugees. Tired. Frightened. Too ordinary to be a threat.
"What else can we do with the neumae?" the same young man asks, undeterred.
I sigh. Internally. Out loud—not worth it.
"That's probably why Noxaris fully subordinates the cells' consciousness to himself," I say. "So he doesn't have to answer billions of questions at once."
Silence.
Someone lets out a quiet huff. Almost a laugh. I file that away. Humor at the right moment is a sign of survivability.
The dropship keeps flying. I feel the descent. The turbines shift tone. Somewhere below—a mountain valley. Resistance headquarters.
They're close.
I feel it in my skin. In my thoughts. In a mistake that hasn't happened yet.
And suddenly a simple, unpleasantly clear realization settles in:
If one of us plays the refugee too well—
if someone believes the mask—
we might forget who we were.
The dropship enters a cloud. The link crackles for a second.
I hold control. Breath. Thought.
And catch myself on a final, surprisingly calm idea:
Alright. If the mask survives the mission—
then I'll have to answer for it too.
**
The alarm hits without warning.
It doesn't sound—it takes up residence in my head. Like a чужая мысль. Like a scream you didn't stop in time.
For a fraction of a second, the world collapses into one simple fact:
Something has gone off-script.
The dropship shudders.
Then—impact.
Metal howls. The hull bends, as if something far too large for this sky just kicked us from the outside. Not a weapon—a decision.
"Contact!" someone yells.
The second hit comes from the side. The ship spins, bodies snap against restraints, air is ripped from my lungs—as if the planet itself has decided to spit us back out.
Well then, I think. Guess flying really is dangerous after all.
"Control lost."
The message appears in my mind—flat, emotionless. Like a medical report issued after the patient is already dead.
Another follows immediately.
"Assume pilot position."
Of course.
Dying closer to the console is clearly the most logical option.
I launch myself forward. The body moves faster than thought. A jump. My shoulder slams into a bulkhead. Someone swears, muffled. The pilot's seat catches me hard, without ceremony, as if it doubts I'll be here long.
My hands hit the panel.
And then the neumae connect.
My consciousness spreads. The console vanishes. The dropship stops being an object.
It is me.
I feel every fracture in the hull, every vibration, every system failure—as spasms in my own muscles.
"Engines offline."
We're falling.
Not just falling—spinning.
Outside the viewport, the world smears into a blurred spiral. Clouds tear apart, the horizon disappears, my stomach desperately tries to relocate.
Easy.
Panic would look unprofessional right now.
Besides—I am literally the control system.
We burst through the cloud layer, rotating like a ride designed by someone with severe moral issues.
The surface rushes closer.
Too close.
Indecently close.
I think in commands. Not words—vectors. Constraints. Compromises between "possible" and "too late."
The spin shudders. Resists. Then breaks.
We come out of rotation.
The horizon snaps back into place. The world remembers where up and down belong. It's oddly comforting.
"Velocity remains excessive," I note coolly. "Survivability on impact: zero."
Great. I appreciate an honest forecast.
The dropship deploys its wings.
Not gracefully. Not heroically. Brutally. With a crack—like it remembered at the last second that it's supposed to be an aircraft.
We begin to glide.
We arc upward, bleeding speed. My body presses into the seat, bones aching like old acquaintances dragged back to work.
Apex.
Almost silence for one second.
Then—down again. The air screams.
Knowledge pours in without pause. I'm not recalling it—I've always known how to do this. Flows. Angles of attack. Structural limits.
So this is what it means to be plugged into the noetic network, a thought flickers. Convenient. Too bad the user manual usually ends with the user's death.
I choose the surface.
Sand. Light-colored. Loose—about as loose as a planet actively hostile to you can manage.
"Final maneuver."
Braking thrusters fire.
Impact. Roar. The ship slams into the sand, throwing up a wall of dust, skids, bounces, skids again. The hull shrieks, as if it hurts too.
Stop.
Silence.
For a moment, no one breathes.
I reach for the squad.
The link holds.
All alive.
No injuries.
Good. Statistics are on our side today.
The ramp drops.
We step outside.
Heat. Sand. Dust hangs like a solid curtain, as if the world has been erased, leaving only rough outlines. Visibility is almost zero.
And then I feel them.
Movement.
The realization arrives calmly, without urgency:
The resistance.
They're coming toward us.
I pass it to all eighteen—without words, without emotion, without extra detail.
If they realize who we serve, we'll be erased—quickly and efficiently.
Inside the squad, it goes quiet. Not empty—focused.
Everyone is waiting.
Not for orders.
Not for rescue.
For the moment when the first step has to be taken.
The dust begins to thin.
And somewhere ahead, in the gray-yellow haze,
someone takes that step toward us.
I straighten, check my grip, feel the pain politely remind me it's still there—no hysteria, no drama.
"Well then," I think, "let's see which of us lies better."