Yellow Jacket

The doors groaned open with a pressure seal long dead. Not rusted. Maintained. The interior beyond was dark, humming. Alive in a way most ruins weren't. This wasn't a tomb. It was sleeping.

Florence stepped inside like she belonged there. Not with fear. Not with caution. But with the kind of grace Warren had only ever seen in Wren when she walked through she was treating a patient. Every step Florence took was familiar. Trusted. As though the machines could smell her coming and adjusted their breathing to match.

The first drone appeared almost immediately. Sleek, rounded, silent. It hovered out from the corner near a ceiling vent and glided toward them. Warren and Wren froze as it drew close, instincts tensing. But the drone didn't scan them. It stopped in front of Florence like a curious pet. She raised a hand, and the drone dipped, letting her adjust a small panel along its undercarriage.

"I thought you said this place was dangerous," Warren said.

Florence smiled faintly. "It is. Just not to me."

She tapped the drone twice, and it blinked green before floating away.

A soft rustle echoed behind them. One by one, the cats padded in, silent as ghosts. Bastard first, his tail held high. Then the other three. Styll slipped out from Warren's coat a moment later, flicking her ears. The bots didn't react. Not even a scan. They simply moved around the creatures like they were native to the environment.

Wren watched, wide-eyed. "Is that… okay?"

Florence glanced at the animals, then back to her panel. "They're fine. The machines know what belongs."

Another drone emerged. A bipedal repair unit with one limp actuator. Florence waved it over. It lowered itself obligingly and let her dig into the casing with a screwdriver. She worked in silence, her motions practiced, fluid. It was like watching someone tend a garden, not fix a combat machine.

"So the sentinels still work?" Wren asked.

"Most of them. I've been repairing what I can. The mainframe is mostly stable. Few areas are still critical, but I've routed the diagnostics into loops so the automated defenses don't spike."

Florence knelt beside another drone. This one was triangular, with scorched wiring curled like black veins around its side vents. She murmured something low under her breath as she rewired its leads, her hands never hesitating. Her fingers moved like she was playing an instrument only she could hear, each motion deliberate, refined. Sparks kicked off the panel once, then died. The drone flickered. Then hummed. Then floated upright and blinked blue.

Another unit rolled by, one of the low wide-bodied cleaning crawlers, its sensor bank clicking softly as it scanned the cats. It bypassed them entirely. Bastard hissed at it anyway and leapt up onto a conduit pipe above, his tail lashing like a whip. The others followed suit, slinking between machines and flickering wall vents like they owned the place. Even Styll padded along without concern, weaving around sentry tripods and venting stacks that should have targeted anything untagged.

Wren raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure it's safe to just let them wander like that?"

"It's fine," Florence said, already elbow-deep in another maintenance hatch. "The machines recognize patterns. They're smart enough to know what isn't a threat."

The repair drone beside her let out a series of tonal pings as it synced. Florence nodded, patted the top of its casing, and sent it rolling away.

"They know who feeds them," she added. "And they remember who doesn't."

Warren tilted his head. "Why are you fixing them?"

"Because the place is still functional," she said, voice flat but not cold. "And because I'm making it more than that. Once it's stabilized, I can start providing chip service to the Yellow again. Real service."

Wren blinked. "You're going to run a chip lab out of here?"

"I already am."

Florence stood, wiping her hands off on a strip of cloth. "I scrubbed the corp database years ago. As far as the Green's concerned, this sector node burned out with the rest. They don't even know I kept the primary processor online during the shutdown. This is the only functioning chip manufacturing site left outside The Green."

Wren whistled low. "How the hell'd you pull that off?"

"I was head systems engineer. This place was mine before the war started."

Wren frowned. "If you had all that, why leave? Why walk away from a place like this?"

Florence paused. Her expression didn't shift, but something behind it quieted.

"The job paid well," she said. "But it cost a lot more."

She didn't elaborate.

Warren watched as another sentinel stalked into view from the shadows. Tall, heavy-plated, sleek like a predatory animal. It turned toward them, lenses scanning. But it didn't move forward.

"And if I walked five feet in the wrong direction?"

"It'd kill you," Florence said, tapping another diagnostic pad. "Or try. I've only ever let one person follow me in before."

She pointed casually to the far end of the corridor. There, slumped against a half-collapsed wall, was the wreck of a massive security sentinel. Its core shattered clean through, a blackened hole the size of a man's torso burned into its chest plate.

"Car got a little too close once. Didn't go well."

Car shrugged. "I lived."

"Barely."

Wren stared at the wreckage. "And you just kept coming back here?"

Florence smiled without humor. "Someone had to take care of the machines. They remember better than people do."

The cats wandered ahead now, unbothered by the hum of machines or the green blinks of sentry eyes. Styll followed them, occasionally pausing to sniff a vent or paw at a flickering wall panel. One of the drones slowed to observe, but did nothing.

The facility exhaled around them. Quiet fans turning, data lines sparking low like whispers in metal. It wasn't empty. It was waiting.

And for Florence, it had never stopped listening.

Florence stopped beside a console, running a diagnostics scan. The soft green of intact systems pulsed through the screen, casting her in half-light.

She turned to Warren. "What level are you?"

Warren hesitated. His eyes flicked between the console and the floor. "Level six."

Wren elbowed him. "Louder. Don't mumble like it's shameful."

"Level six," he repeated, clearer.

Florence looked at Car. Their eyes met, confusion clear.

"Sixteen, you mean?" Car asked.

Warren shook his head. "No. Just six."

That earned a slow silence. Car leaned back with a grunt. Florence folded her arms.

"Warren," she said. "What is your Skill?"

He tilted his head. "I've got four. Examine, Scavenger's Eye, Quick Reflexes, and Crafting."

Car waved that off. "Those are skills. Little 's'. Everyone's got skills. I'm talking about your Skill. Capital S. The one that belongs to you."

Wren furrowed her brow. "You mean... like a personal skill?"

"Exactly," Florence said. "Like mine's Techwiz. It lets me interface with machinery on an instinctive level."

Wren's eyebrows went up. "You mean you can talk to machines?"

"Not talk," Florence replied. "Understand. Feel. Read their mood, their damage, their feedback loops. Like listening to a sick animal breathe, but more than that. It's not words. It's presence. Emotion. They show me what's wrong without asking, and I respond without thinking. Like instinct, but wired."

"My Skill," Car added, "lets me master any weapon I touch. Not just use it, understand everything about it."

Warren squinted slightly. "Then why did you think I was sixteen?"

"Because you fight like someone who's already crossed the First Threshold," Florence said. "And that means someone who forged their Skill."

Wren stared at her. "Wait. You have to forge a Skill to pass the threshold?"

Florence nodded. "Exactly that. It's the first gate. No Skill, no threshold. And the longer you take, the slower you level."

Warren nodded slowly. "That tracks. Before I picked my class, I was leveling constantly. Then it just... slowed."

"Because you've plateaued," Florence said.

Car tapped a knuckle on the wall. "You've gotta have a hell of a trail behind you to be that low and fight like that. All kill levels, I'm guessing."

Wren turned to him. "Wait, you can level without killing?"

"Of course," Car said. "The Green Zone's full of non-combatants. They don't hand out murder licenses with your meals. People level through all kinds of paths. Combat's just the clearest route to power."

He leaned back, eyes distant. "Imagine living in paradise. No one hunting you. No traps in the alleys. No need for eyes in the back of your head. Just... peace. Time to think. Time to breathe. Imagine all the cats you could pet. Every day. All day. That's the dream."

Florence gently whacked the back of Car's head. "Focus. Warren, you're six. That means your Skill hasn't emerged. You need to forge it. Or unlock it. Whatever term fits."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I thought maybe it was Quick Reflexes, watching how you moved out there" Car said.

"No," Warren replied. "I got that from a Broken. A fast one."

Florence nodded. "Then it was that Broken's Skill. You can gain the personal skills of others, but they're not yours. They follow you, but they aren't you."

"So how do I make mine?" Warren asked.

Florence stepped back from the console and faced him directly. "You find something only you do, how you move, how you think, how you are. And you feed it to the nanites. Not literally. But show them, over and over, until one of those ideas stick. It is both much harder and easier than you might think."

Wren raised a hand. "If that Skill is so important, then why do we even bother with classes and other skills?"

Florence answered gently. "Because classes were meant to shape what you wanted to become. Your Skill is who you already are."

Warren tilted his head. "You said 'were meant to.' Does that mean people use to have to craft there own classes originally?"

"Yes," Florence said, "it used to be that everyone needed to build there own class manually. people would buy six chips and use them as capacity upgrades. Only later did they figure out that the chips only needed fragments."

"Mara had a manual," Warren said. "She was gathering info on class creation. Why wouldn't she include any of this?"

"She knew all this," Florence said. "but she probably stopped writing when the war began and the chip supply dried up. What was the point when people couldn't get them?"

"Also," Car added, "she was Empire. Not supposed to even have a chip."

"She got hers from me," Florence said, quiet but firm.

Warren blinked. "You?"

"Of course," Florence said. "I've been keeping the machines running since before the Empire fell."

Car turned to Warren. "Did you make your own class chip?"

"I did."

Florence smiled. "Let me guess, Scavenger?"

Warren nodded. "Yeah."

"Figures," Car muttered. "Most Scavs aren't real Scavs. System hates that class. They go digging where it doesn't want them."

"But all the clans...." Wren began.

"Most clans register a Scav, but the majority are actually Survivalists, Soldiers, or Scouts. Smart classes? Heavily restricted."

Warren looked at Wren. She was still processing.

"Will I be able to get the class I want?" she asked quietly.

"Of course, love," Florence said. "We're here so I can find you a chip that wants to be a Surgeon."

"The chip wants something?" Warren asked.

Florence grinned. "Sort of. It's easier to show than explain. Come on. It's time you met your chip."

Florence led them deeper into the facility, past half-lit corridors and sealed doorways, until they reached a heavy security hatch. She tapped her wrist module twice. The door unlocked with a series of low clunks, sliding open to reveal a small, square room with a vaulted ceiling.

The walls were lined with sealed crates and storage drawers. Dozens of them. And in the center of the room, four worker bots moved in quiet, practiced rhythm, unpacking chips from their protective casings, testing their charge levels, and placing them in precisely spaced trays that filled the shelves.

Wren stopped just inside the doorway, her breath catching. "Is this all..."

"Chips," Warren finished, wide-eyed. "This is... a fortune."

"I guess I've got a rich uncle," he added.

Florence, without looking up, corrected him: "Aunt."

Car grinned and gave a mock salute. "I married me a sugar momma."

Both Wren and Warren cringed in unison.

Florence ignored him, already stepping into the center of the room. She gestured Wren forward. "Come here a second."

Wren approached, slow and hesitant. Her eyes kept darting across the rows of trays and the quiet hum of the machines. She glanced at Warren, then Florence, and back at the worker bots moving with mechanical precision.

"What if there's not one for me?" she asked, her voice low. "What if none of them fit?"

Florence looked up, her expression softening. "That's not how it works. These chips aren't blank. They're listening. One of them is already waiting. We just have to find it."

Wren nodded, but her lips were pressed tight.

Florence gestured to a low tray filled with neatly arranged chips. "Run your hand across these. Don't overthink it."

Wren reached out, fingers gliding over the row. Florence watched her, silent. Then shook her head.

"Nope. Not these."

She walked to the next tray, slotted in a fresh set from the storage cache. Wren repeated the process, her hesitation more obvious now. Her fingertips moved slower this time, almost reluctant.

"Hmm... getting closer," Florence murmured.

Three more trays. Six more chip pulls. The bots kept working in silence around them, shifting inventory and scanning. Wren stood stiffly with each pass, the tightness in her shoulders growing more visible.

Finally, Florence laid out a group of ten. Wren touched each one. Florence watched. Then she nodded, picked up four.

"These are all possible. But only one of them is right."

Florence lifted each one in turn, feeling them in her hand, tilting her head like she was listening to a song only she could hear.

Then she stopped. Held one.

"This is it," she said.

Wren blinked. "That's it? I thought this would be... I don't know. A big moment. Some ceremony or something."

Florence smiled faintly. "Nope. No fuss. No muss. Just finding a chip that fits you and wants to be a Surgeon."

Wren let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Her hands dropped to her sides, fingers uncurling slowly.

Florence slid the chip into a secure cloth pouch and tucked it into her bag.

"That's it," she said. "Let's head back and get this chip into its new home."

Wren smiled, still nervous but with something steadier in her posture. "Yes. Let's do that."

They made their way back through the halls, the ambient hum of the facility now quieter in Warren's ears. The flicker of system lights tracked their steps like a slow, mechanical heartbeat. Florence walked with purpose, chip secured in her satchel. Car trailed behind with one eye on the shadows.

As they passed a storage wing near the outer perimeter, Warren slowed. His eyes caught on an old maintenance panel. Its screen was dust-choked, but still faintly alive. A sign flickered, half-lost in static:

"NOTICE: SYSTEM PROHIBITION. Reuse of chips from previous hosts is strictly forbidden. Mutation risk exceeds safe threshold. 100% fatality reported in test cases. Full reformatting required. Do not bypass authentication failsafes."

The words hit Warren like a nail driven into the center of his spine.

He didn't say anything. Just stared. The glow of the panel burned in his vision long after he looked away. Something inside him recoiled. Too late. The phrase looped in silence behind his eyes: mutation. fatality. test case.

He blinked. Once.

Then dropped.

Wren cried out, catching him under the arms. She went down with him, cushioning his fall against the cold floor. His head lolled. Rainwater already seeped through a breach in the ceiling high above, painting the tiles like falling needles.

The storm arrived with vengeance.

Car dropped low in a heartbeat. His lance was pulled and humming. "Something's wrong. Something's here."

Florence was already kneeling beside Warren. Her hands moved fast, checking pulse, eyes, breath.

"He's alive," she muttered. "But he's not present. Like something pulled the current out of the frame."

Car stood up, jaw tight. His stance shifted to cover Wren without being obvious.

"We're not alone. I can feel it. Something's watching."

Wren glanced toward the shadows beyond the hall's curve. "Lucas? One of his mercs?"

Warren stirred, barely. His lips parted.

"Not Lucas," he breathed. "Not his mercs."

Car adjusted his belt scanner. The display pulsed, then slowed. No readings. No ping. Just silence and the static buzz of distant systems.

"Doesn't seem like it," he muttered. "No heat sigs. No pressure shifts. But I know the feeling. Whatever it is, it's close. And it's patient."

The lights dimmed. Just slightly. Not enough to be obvious. Just enough to make them question if they ever burned brighter.

Warren's eyes snapped open.

Wide. Glowing.

Lines of fragmented code scrawled across the irises, pale, shifting text that wasn't meant for human sight. Strings of shattered system calls, permissions, and locked error states flickered like lightning, unreadable and relentless.

He screamed.

The sound wasn't human. It wasn't pain. It was recognition, ripped from somewhere deeper than his mind, deeper than the chip, deeper than the world itself.

"Daemon!" he howled, throat straining, back arching hard enough to crack tile.

Florence grabbed his face. "He's syncing. His system's spiking. It's not supposed to do this."

"Is it the chip?" Wren gasped.

"No," Florence snapped. "It's him. Something's responding to him."

She looked up, gaze sharp, and turned toward the doorway. Rain slanted in sheets beyond the open threshold, hammering the crumbling ground outside. Car stood just beyond the archway. His frame was backlit by the flicker of stormlight. His lance was already drawn, scanning the distant skyline of the ruined city.

Rain ran in rivulets down his coat. It pooled around his boots. He didn't speak, but his posture said enough.

Florence stepped up beside him. Her eyes narrowed.

Rain carved lines through the city's bones. Shattered towers hunched in the mist. Roads broke in uneven slabs under old signage, and the air stank of static and wet concrete. Car stood at the edge of the old corporate platform, Warren slumped against the doorway behind him, still pale from his system flare. Wren knelt beside him, eyes on the skyline.

Florence stepped forward in silence,. She raised one hand toward a rusted wall bracket, and without touching it, something changed. The air hummed. Her fingers traced a pattern midair, and three sentry units whirred to life, eyes glowing soft gold as they emerged in answer to her call, drawn not by signal or order, but by recognition. They had heard her voice in the static, and they came.

She didn't issue commands like a controller issuing signals. The drones moved because she wanted them to. Because they trusted her. This wasn't command code, it was communion.

"Formation three," she said, quietly.

The sentries moved, not fast, not violent. They adjusted into a protective arc in front of her like trained dogs. Their optics pulsed once in acknowledgment.

From the rooftops above, something moved.

Car's stance shifted. "We've got company."

The first one dropped from a rooftop with no sound, its body like wet bone stretched around data-cables. Its eyes flickered with system script, and when it opened its mouth, corrupted code poured out in a stream of static pulses. Then another. Then three.

From the alleys came the Broken: Common first. Then Runners. Crawlers dropped from the undersides of shattered buses. A Brute shoved its way out of a collapsed parking garage, rebar through its chest like it didn't even notice.

And far behind them, something large stirred, a shape not yet revealed. But it was building.

Florence didn't flinch. "Sentries, engage. Absolutely destroy anything that isn't us."

The sentinels surged forward with surprising grace. They weren't expendable machines, they moved like precision instruments under her command. One swept wide to cut off a flanking pack. Another arced in front of Car as he readied his lance.

Car was already moving, crackling arc lance in hand. He spun once, a full body pivot that sent a charge through three Runners. Their bodies sparked, convulsed, then dropped not even twitching.

Florence's hand-lances flared, one shot at a time. Clean. No wasted motion. When a Crawler lunged, she ducked, rolled, and landed a bolt in its spinal cluster without rising.

"Left flank, adjust," she said.

The sentry turned mid-sprint, catching a Brute across the neck with a blade arm. Another drone grabbed a dying Runner by the scruff and threw it into a second.

Warren tried to rise. Wren stopped him.

"Don't," she whispered. "Just watch."

More Broken poured from the ruins. A Bloated skulked at the edge of the battle, its form rippling with gas and fluid.

Florence spotted it. "Sentry three. Engage with containment. Minimal pressure."

The sentry approached like it was diffusing a bomb, not attacking. It herded the Bloated into a corner, forcing it back with strobing light and soft pulses. When the thing ruptured, it was away from the others.

"Thank you," Florence said, quiet, almost reverent, to the drone.

Then came the Daemon again, only this time, one reformed. The body rebuilt itself in mid-air, data threads latching and reweaving.

Florence's eyes narrowed. "Override memory access. Halt recursive code."

The drone paused, adjusted its targeting, then fired a single white-hot bolt. The Daemon collapsed instantly, eyes blank.

And then....

The city shook.

Behind the battlefield, where the Broken had been dying, limbs began to gather. Flesh and tech. A stitch of bodies.

A Stitcher.

Stitchers were a myth to most, whispers passed between scav crews and mercenaries who survived deep Red incursions. They weren't made. They weren't born. They were built, constructed from other dead and dying around them.

They began as a mass of ruined forms, dragging and absorbing anything nearby. Broken corpses. Daemon husks. Even parts of building. The Stitcher fused them together without logic, welding flesh to metal, bone to rebar, until the structure moved like one thing. Not clean. Not stable. Just... moved.

It didn't walk so much as lurch forward, joints still deciding what belonged. Faces emerged in its torso, some screaming, some still muttering fragments of code. Limbs had too many elbows, too many fingers, some ending in jagged tubing or fused claws.

It was a war machine with no blueprint. A graveyard that learned how to stand up.

And it was still growing.

Its form rose twenty feet. Then thirty. Parts of Brutes and Crawlers made up its limbs. Faces twitched in its chest. One spoke in looped Imperial. It took a step, and the ground cracked.

Car exhaled.

"Time to bring out Betty."

He reached behind him and unlatched the Foundation Breaker.

The weapon wasn't just a thunder lance. It was a decision. A barrel as long as a man was tall, coiled in stabilizers and forged from something darker than steel.

He braced. Waited.

"Now," Florence whispered.

Car fired.

The shot hit the Stitcher like a god's judgment. It tore a path through half a building and took the core of the monster with it. The upper half folded in on itself like broken scaffolding. The rest staggered.

Florence raised her hand. "Sentry four. Assist."

The sentinel moved in, blade arm spinning as it pierced the collapsed Stitcher through the throat joint, severing its last neural bundle.

Silence followed.

Steam rose from the ruin. The road was cratered. Bits of metal and gore twitched in the heat.

Florence walked forward, placing a hand on the still-living drone beside her.

"That was a bit of fun," she said, then almost as if she had forgotten, her head snapped toward the door. "Warren."

Car reloaded, scanning slowly making sure they were in the clear.

Up on the rooftop, a figure stood. Watching.

Then turned. And was gone.