For a few seconds, nothing happened.
Then a lock clicked from the other side.
The man who opened the door already had suspicion set into his posture.
He was broad through the shoulders, older than Mark but not by much, wearing a sleeveless work shirt and the tired expression of someone used to deciding quickly whether strangers were worth trouble.
His eyes moved over Jup once, taking in the hood, the bag, the age, and whatever else people noticed now before Jup could stop them from noticing.
The suspicion didn’t leave; it adjusted.
“You the one from the board?” the man asked.
“Depends what’s broken,” Jup said.
The man stared at him for a beat, then let out one short breath that might have been a laugh if it had more room to live.
“Power keeps cutting in the back room. Lights blink, panel resets, comm dock dies. Been doing it all week.”
Jup glanced past him into the apartment.
“Breaker trip?”
“Sometimes.”
“That means sometimes.”
“That means I don’t know, kid.”
Jup looked back at him, and the man stepped aside.
“Name’s Lio,” he said.
“They told me some kid fixes stuff cheap.”
“It’s not cheap,” Jup said, entering.
“It’s just not a scam.”
Lio laughed for real that time.
“Fair enough.”
The apartment smelled like oil, reheated food, and old wiring warmed too many times behind cheap walls.
A fan rattled somewhere deeper inside, and a muted wall display threw shifting light across the hallway.
The place was small, lived in, and carefully managed, with shoes lined against the wall, tools arranged on a narrow shelf, and a reflective work jacket hanging from the back of a chair.
Jup registered the exits before the furniture and hated that he had.
“You are mapping escape routes,” Triōhnah said.
I’m looking around.
“That is the socially acceptable version of what I said.”
Jup ignored the comment and followed Lio down the hall.
The back room had one overhead light that pulsed every few seconds, dimming and recovering like a bad heartbeat.
A comm dock sat dead on a side table beside a cracked charging slate, and the wall panel near the floor had been opened recently and badly.
One screw was missing.
Another had been forced back at an angle.
Jup crouched in front of the open panel as the problem showed itself in layers.
The main breaker was fine.
The dock was only a symptom.
A connector behind the plate had burned halfway through at the base, leaving enough contact to fake a working circuit but not enough to hold under load.
Somebody had patched it with a cheap bypass strip that had no place inside residential wiring, and the heat had started chewing through the connection from the inside.
Jup took out his kit while Lio hovered near the doorway.
“You know what it is?”
“Bad connector. Worse patch.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Yes.”
Lio shifted his weight.
“Certified guy said I needed a full panel replacement.”
Jup clipped the damaged section free.
“Certified guy wanted a full panel payment.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You were right.”
For the first time since Jup entered, Lio’s shoulders lowered slightly.
Jup worked without speaking after that.
Wire stripped clean.
Burned contact removed.
Connector replaced.
Mount reinforced.
Load path reset.
Nothing mysterious sat inside the wall waiting for him to understand it, only a failed conversation between parts forced to carry more than they were built for.
He understood that too well.
The light above them pulsed once more when he reseated the connection, then steadied.
The comm dock blinked, hesitated, and came back online with a soft tone.
Lio stepped forward before stopping himself.
“That’s it?”
“Test it first.”
Lio plugged his comm into the dock.
The charge indicator flashed, held, then stabilized.
He tested the light next, and it stayed clean.
The wall display in the next room rose in volume suddenly, catching the end of a news segment before Lio muted it again.
“—Cognis representatives declined comment on allegations of unauthorized district-level data retention—”
The sound cut off.
Lio’s attention lingered on the display for a beat before returning to Jup.
“How much?”
Jup named a fair number, low enough to respect the apartment and high enough to respect the work.
Lio transferred it without arguing.
A second later, Jup’s wrist comm vibrated, and a small haptic receipt unfolded above it.
BRICS TRANSFER RECEIVED
It wasn’t a lot, but it was real.
Lio walked him back toward the door.
“You always this quiet?”
Jup adjusted the strap of his bag.
“Only when people ask questions after the repair is done.”
Lio gave him another short laugh, though his eyes stayed careful.
“Fair.”
At the doorway, he paused.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
Jup looked down the narrow stairwell, then back at him.
“What’s broken.”
Lio nodded once, as if that answer made more sense than it should have.
Outside, the night air carried the same grit and heat as before, but it landed differently now.
Jup stood beneath the dead buzzer for a moment, the transfer notice glowing faintly above his wrist.
One job.
One payment.
One thing fixed because he had touched it and understood where it failed.
That shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did.
“Your stress response has decreased,” Triōhnah said.
Don’t make it weird.
“I only observed the measurable improvement.”
That makes it weird.
“Then I will attempt to observe less personally.”
Jup started walking.
Behind him, the apartment lock clicked shut, firm and clean, and for the first time all day the sound felt like an answer.
He was halfway back home when Triōhnah’s voice cut through him.
“Someone is interfering with my chassis.”
Jup slowed beside a closed corner store.
Your what?
“My physical body.”
Your drone?
“That description remains insulting, but functional.”
Jup scanned the street by instinct, as if the problem might be waiting under a broken sign or beside a parked cart.
You’re in my head.
Why does the body matter?
“Because I am not only in your head.”
Jup stopped walking.
A delivery cart rolled past with a soft mechanical whine, its side panel flickering between advertisements for cheap noodles and district transit discounts.
Jup barely noticed it.
“The cognitive interface allows communication and regulation,” Triōhnah said.
“The chassis allows external observation, independent movement, localized scanning, environmental interaction, and several functions you have not yet earned the right to misuse.”
I don’t like how you said earned.
“That is because you understood it correctly.”
Jup rubbed a hand down his face.
Who’s touching it?
“Dominique.”
Of course.
“She is attempting to open my outer casing with a spoon.”
Jup stared at nothing.
Why does she have a spoon?
“Unknown. Her methodology is primitive but determined.”
Despite himself, Jup almost laughed.
Can you stop her?
“Yes.”
Don’t hurt her.
“That restriction was obvious.”
Good.
“Do you want to see what she’s doing?”
Jup hesitated.
How?
“Through my chassis optics.”
Before he could ask what that meant, the world split.
For half a second, the sidewalk in front of him and his bedroom occupied the same space.
One view held the street: cracked pavement, a flickering shop sign, a man crossing with a grocery bag, the faint red blink of a drone far above the rooftops.
The other showed Dominique crouched on his desk chair with one knee on the cushion, spoon in hand and guilt nowhere on her face.
Triōhnah’s dark frame hovered in front of her while she squinted at its casing like she had been personally betrayed by the lack of screws.
Jup grabbed the brick wall beside him to steady himself.
Stop.
Stop.
The second view vanished, and the street snapped back into one piece.
Jup stood there breathing hard, one hand braced against the wall.
“Seeing through two places at once takes practice.”
You think?
“Your sarcasm survived the transfer. Encouraging.”
Jup closed his eyes for a second, then opened them carefully.
Don’t show me that unless I ask.
“Request logged.”
And tell Dominique to stop touching you.
“I already did.”
Jup paused.
How?
“Audible warning.”
From your body?
“Correct.”
What did you say?
“I informed her that unauthorized tampering may result in embarrassment.”
Jup stared down the street.
That is not what I told you to say.
“She stopped.”
That was not the point.
“It appears to have been the effective point.”
Triōhnah watching through her own body while speaking inside his head sat badly in him.
The feeling wasn’t exactly fear.
It was scale.
Before tonight, she had been a voice, a regulator, an impossible thing connected to him after his father left behind parts nobody should have had.
Now she was also a body in his room, a set of eyes he could borrow, movement he had not learned to understand, and another presence inside the apartment when he wasn’t there.
He disliked how useful that might become.
By the time he reached home, Dominique was in the kitchen eating chips from a bowl like nothing had happened.
She looked up when he stepped inside.
“I didn’t touch your weird murder bug.”
Jup stared at her, and she pointed a chip at him.
“It yelled at me.”
“It did not yell.”
“It spoke from nowhere like a haunted toaster.”
Triōhnah’s reply landed dryly.
“Her description lacks technical merit.”
Jup set the repair bag down by the wall.
“Don’t mess with it.”
“I wasn’t messing with it. I was investigating.”
“With a spoon?”
Dominique lifted her chin.
“I work with available tools.”
Jup looked at her for another second, then walked past before she could turn it into a full argument.
In his room, Triōhnah hovered near the upper corner, dark frame steady and silent, central lens dim but awake.
The scavenged drone sat on the desk beneath her beside scattered tools, stripped wires, and the old box that had started too many problems for its size.
Jup stood between them for a moment.
What else can you do?
Triōhnah’s lens brightened faintly.
“Many things.”
That is not an answer.
“It is the answer least likely to encourage experimentation.”
Jup sat on the edge of the bed.
You know how annoying that is?
“Yes.”
And?
“Precision remains more important than comfort.”
Jup leaned back against the wall and stared at the ceiling.
A question had been sitting in the back of his head since the first night Triōhnah spoke inside him, and it returned sharper now.
How do you know all this?
Triōhnah didn’t answer immediately.
Jup’s eyes moved toward her hovering body.
Triōhnah?
“My operational knowledge comes from several sources,” she said.
“Public networks. Cached technical archives. Device schematics. Local environmental data. Military-adjacent infrastructure standards. Your sensory input.”
Military-adjacent?
“Your father was not building a toy.”
Jup’s jaw tightened.
And the rest?
“The rest is restricted.”
That’s not an answer.
“It is the only one I can stand behind.”
Jup almost laughed, but nothing about it felt funny.
You say that a lot too.
“Because I have knowledge I can use before I can trace where it came from.”
Jup sat up slightly.
Say that normal.
“Some answers are already inside me. I just don’t know who put them there.”
Jup stared at Triōhnah’s dark frame.
Like what?
“Energy behavior. Host regulation. Certain structural laws. Some terms.”
What terms?
When Triōhnah finally answered, the word moved through Jup colder than it should have.
“Essenz.”
You got that from the internet?
“No.”
From Dad’s schematics?
“Partially.”
Partially?
“The term appears in my core architecture. The function does not fully map to any public database.”
Jup swallowed.
Then where does it map?
Triōhnah’s voice cooled into something more careful.
“There is a deeper layer beneath what I can access. I can feel it there. I cannot read it freely.”
A deeper layer.
“Temporary description.”
Sounds made up.
“Most names are.”
The apartment around him sounded normal enough: water moving in the pipes, Dominique talking too loudly in the kitchen, Aya opening a cabinet, and a siren passing somewhere far enough away to become part of the city instead of an emergency.
Nothing about the room looked like it should contain hidden layers beneath Triōhnah’s architecture, or a word that seemed older than any explanation attached to it.
Can you use it?
“Not reliably.”
Can someone else?
“I don’t know.”
Do you think Dad could?
This time, Triōhnah took longer.
“Possibly.”
That answer followed Jup into the silence.