Naleth's contract is simple: twenty-four months on a military research platform, analyzing Integration data for the Integration Assessment Office. Straightforward research. Clean deliverables. A report the IAO already knows the shape of. The problem is the data.
Petra has worked at the Veldris Group for eleven years. She's good at her job — better than good, if the Integration's metrics are to be believed. She wouldn't know. She's never checked. Twenty-one unspent stat points. Four empty skill slots. An Integration Level that's advanced seven times without her participation. The system has been measuring her competence for over a decade, and she has responded by taking the stairs in a building with an elevator.
Reva restores degraded audio for a living. Old recordings, corrupted data, signal buried under noise. It's careful, quiet work — the kind the Integration doesn't reward with stat raises or skill unlocks. Then a Flux Rift opens in her archive lab, and the careful, quiet work becomes the only thing between her and a construct made of shattered glass cycling in a loop that's slowly tearing the space apart.
Senna has spent fourteen years minimizing her overlay. A small indicator at the edge of vision, easily ignored. Twenty-one unspent points. A designation she earned but never acknowledged. The Integration measures her constantly, and she has responded by refusing to look. Then a Category 3 Flux Storm pins her ship at Holdfast Station, and the navigation calibration node outside the hull starts corrupting. The storm is getting worse. Her cargo contract has a deadline. And the only path to the node runs through conditions her stats say she can survive — if she trusts the system she's spent fourteen years ignoring. Somewhere between the corroded latch and the wrong-colored sky, Senna discovers that resistance and trust aren't opposites. They're a negotiation.
The story of how the Integration began — and the soldier who was standing closest when it did.
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