“I never ripped apart a paying customer, but you could be the first,” hissed the Traaz skipper. Linuka kept her voice calm. “Let’s talk this through.” Around them, the Dark AIs’ empty hangar loomed—silent, airless, and waiting to see who would make the first move.

“Skipper says he can’t count all the weapon systems locked on us,” said Linuka Omga. A lone freighter, no fleet escort, drifting toward a Remnant battle cruiser. One misstep, and they’d be nothing but wreckage. Yet when the airlock opens and the Dark AI core hovers inside, dread gives way to something stranger—possibility.

Spin after spin went by, just standing there, unable to move, but fully conscious. It was so clean, sterile, antiseptic—like a sickbay stripped of life. Sometimes you just stood in an endless white open; other times they made a room, an office, a lab. It felt real, yet it wasn’t. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” Cha Dzeeny said. “I understand why your tutor would rather face the Dark AI than spend one more spin trapped like that.”