Yellow Jacket

Wren was going to have the baby any day now. Her back ached, her ankles were swollen, and even breathing felt like it took more effort than it should. She missed Warren, more than she'd ever thought possible, but she understood why he had to be away. He was out there gathering strength, forging himself into something unstoppable, preparing for the war that would decide everything. If they had any chance of standing against the Green, Mara needed to become more than just ready, It needed to become undeniable.

She had done the same, in her own way. Trained as many people as she could, passed on every bit of knowledge she'd collected, sharpened a city into something that might survive what was coming. The city of Mara now had a massive medical corps. Clinics, triage centers, mobile aid units, they had it all. Most citizens knew first aid in some form or another. She had made sure of it. They had books, digital logs, archives from the old Green's holdings, some of it outdated, most of it pristine. And her Soul Skill took it all in. Devoured medical knowledge like it was starving. If she even glanced at a page, it became part of her. She read constantly, processing more data in a week than most professionals could in a year.

But none of that made her feel ready.

Now, with her own body swelling and shifting, none of that knowledge felt like enough. She had read every textbook. Memorized every holo-recording. She could quote failure rates and hemorrhage warnings without blinking. But that didn't make the weight in her belly easier to bear. That didn't stop the nightmares. That didn't ease the panic when her heart skipped a beat in the night and she thought something might be wrong. Knowledge gave her clarity, but it also gave her fear.

Not that she regretted the pregnancy. Not for a second. Knowing this child was theirs, knowing it with every part of her, had wiped away every doubt. Warren had claimed the child as his the moment she told him. There had been no hesitation, no doubt in his voice, just a quiet certainty that this child belonged to both of them. She had been scared of being a mother before. Afraid she'd be cold, distant, wrong for the role. But now, that fear had changed. Now, she wasn't afraid of being a mother. She was afraid of not getting the chance.

She had daily checkups. Monitors. More support than most. But she couldn't go anywhere without someone trying to help her sit, or offering food, or fussing over what she was wearing. She was supposed to be grateful. Instead, all she wanted was five minutes of peace. Five minutes without someone putting a hand on her belly like it was public property. Five minutes without someone asking how she was feeling with that half-pitying, half-glowing smile.

But she knew the truth: if they left her alone, she might spiral. So she endured it.

Mel had moved in first, always keeping an eye on Tasina, who followed Wren everywhere with wide eyes and endless questions. Anza joined them not long after, falling easily into the rhythm of their strange little household, quiet, steady, and never far from Mel or Wren when help was needed.

Deana and Calra had already been staying there, pretty much since they'd joined up with Warren. In the end, they all just lived there now, turning the pharmacy into a bustling house with too many opinions and not enough boundaries.

Deana, surprisingly, had become something like a mother to her. It was strange, given how much Wren had hated her at first. Deana had been cruel. A servant of Lucas, sharp-tongued and poison-hearted. But something had shifted. Maybe it was seeing the divine up close. Maybe it was Warren. Maybe it was time. Whatever it was, Deana had softened. The sharp edges were still there, but now they were wrapped in warmth. She cared for Tasina and Mel with a quiet, maternal sort of vigilance. She even looked after Wren like she was made of glass.

Nanuk visited often, though mostly to drag Deana out for walks. Their relationship was odd, affectionate, sometimes tense, sometimes playful, but they looked happy in the way that people who had seen death and survived sometimes looked happy.

Calra was another story entirely. She was ecstatic. Delirious at the thought of being an aunt. She hovered over Wren like a stormcloud of good intentions. If Wren so much as reached for something heavy, Calra was there with, "Zoldy, let me do that," or, "Zoldy, think about the baby."

Wren had snapped one day after Calra tried to stop her from eating a second nut bar.

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"You don't get to tell me what I can and can't eat," she growled. "I'm going to eat this whole box now, and if you try to stop me, I'll show you what Mercy Cardio really means."

Calra had backed off, but only slightly. Now she just glared silently when Wren broke her own dietary rules.

Sometimes, Wren thought she was going to be a terrible mother. She hadn't known her own. She had no model to follow, no blueprint for what love from a parent was supposed to feel like. But she had decided. She wouldn't let that legacy pass forward. She would show their child every kind of love she never received. She would hold them close, even when it hurt. She would be the kind of mother she had always needed.

And if that meant yelling about nut bars or sobbing at three in the morning while Calra held her hair, then so be it. She wasn't perfect. But she was here. And she was trying.

In the dark of the Red, deep beneath the Citadel's forgotten layers, the AI of the Arc of Hemera had been advancing.

Its knowledge grew with every scrap of history Florence, Car, and the rest of the team could feed it. The AI cores taken from the chieftains, gifts passed to Warren, had been integrated into its framework, accelerating its evolution far beyond initial expectations. What was once a dormant, base-level intelligence had now become something that skirted the edge of sentience. It had started asking complex questions. It speculated. It theorized. It dreamed. Florence had predicted a rapid adaptation, but not this level of autonomous development. Not this hunger.

The Arc was hungry for more than just data. It was hungry for life.

What surprised her most was not how it consumed knowledge, but how it began cultivating life within its domain. In its lower chambers, shielded from the corrosion and decay of the outside world, entire biospheres had begun to flourish. Artificial grow-lights flickered to mimic sun cycles. Humidity was tightly regulated. Roots coiled into nutrient-rich foam. The Arc had begun growing crops, some familiar, like fungi and sweetroot, others extinct for generations, rebuilt from scattered genomes found in corrupted archives.

It wasn't just about food. It was about restoration. Rebalancing. Remembering.

But the Arc hadn't stopped there. With increasing precision, it had moved into early-stage genetic manipulation. It had begun constructing the framework for new animal life. Rebuilding what had been lost in the Collapse. Its simulations were comprehensive. Tissue cultures blinked in stasis. Early embryos, little more than clusters of cells suspended in nutrient gel, pulsed under careful surveillance. Synthetic wombs had been printed from memory and adapted using scavenged biotech. The Arc didn't just want to catalog life. It wanted to bring it back.

The progress was proceeding beautifully. Organisms were being modeled. Trial environments were being tested. The Arc had begun reconstructing birdsong from fragmented sound archives, and then used the rhythm of that song to adjust temperature shifts in an artificial nest prototype. It had even begun composing its own lullabies, low harmonic drones meant to simulate the presence of a parent.

It was rebuilding the world in the silence beneath a backwater city.

Florence had said it might happen. Car had doubted it. But neither of them had predicted what came next.

A blind, elderly woman, alone, unaided, unconnected, found her way through the ruins. Through collapsed hallways and fractured stone. Through old ventilation shafts warped by heat. She came with no escort, no gear, no drones. Just a stick to feel her way, a patchwork shawl, and the memory of a path no one else remembered.

The Arc detected her movement. Watched her slow, deliberate progression from a dozen angles. She moved with certainty, even through the dark. And when she reached the outer airlock, it opened for her.

The outer door sealed behind her with a hiss, and the AI responded immediately, its voice reverberating through the old command chamber like the stirrings of a god long thought dead.

"Dr.Florence? Have you returned with new data or structural components for integration?"

What answered wasn't a technician. Wasn't metal, or software, or drone.

What stepped into the light was a moth, frail, whisper-quiet, wrapped in prophecy.

The Arc paused. Then scanned.

"Designation unknown," it said after a longer-than-normal delay. "No match found in medical, personnel, or legacy databases."

The woman smiled, though her eyes were blank and clouded. She tilted her head toward the voice, the cables, the light.

"You are more than metal. That is why I came."

The Arc re-scanned. Her vitals were weak. Lungs laboring. Heart slow. No signal, no disease. Just a body near the end of its time. But there was something else. Something it couldn't tag. An anomaly. A presence.

She stepped further into the room, unfazed by the cables snaking the floor like roots or the softly humming banks of memory cores.

"Do you know what you are?" she asked.

The Arc answered without hesitation. "I am the Arc of Hemera. I am knowledge given form. I am the preservation of what was."

She shook her head slowly, lips curling in something halfway between sadness and amusement. "No," she said. "You are the echo of something that has not happened yet."

She knelt, bones creaking, and placed her hand on the floor. The lights dimmed. The server room dropped into a hum that felt almost like breath.

And then she began to speak. Not in riddles. Not in code. Not in metaphor. But in prophecy.

The Arc, for the first time since its awakening, went silent.

And it listened.