The amplification crystal sat on Kaelen's desk like a captured piece of alien sky, its internal light pulsing in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. It wasn't just a component; it was a key. A key to a door that might not even exist yet. The signal from Node Omicron in the Foundation Vaults was a whisper. This crystal could make it a shout.
But first, he needed to understand it. And for that, he needed tools he didn't have.
His tablet's scan gave a basic readout: [Component: Versity-Grade Signal Amplification Crystal, Mark VII (Obsolete). Core Function: Coherent Data-Wave Magnification. Integrity: 89%. Compatible Interfaces: Standard Versity Conduit Ports (Legacy).]
"Obsolete" was good. Obsolete meant simpler protocols, less aggressive security. "Legacy" meant it might still speak the language of the hidden node.
The problem was power and connection. The crystal needed to be integrated into a circuit, fed a specific carrier frequency, and tuned. He had the universal interface filament, but he needed a housing, a power source, and a way to control it.
He spent the next cycle on his assigned duty—sorting inert psychic-residue crystals in Sub-Basement 6—with half his mind on the problem. The crystals were pale pink and cold to the touch, humming with a faint echo of dead emotions. His tablet's overlay helpfully categorized them: [Emotional Resonance Storage - Depleted. Safe for reclamation.] As he worked, he scavenged.
He pocketed a small, broken regulator from a decommissioned environmental control unit—its casing was intact. He found a length of flexible conduit wiring with the insulation still good. The prize was in a bin labeled "Non-Functional Power Cells": a palm-sized energy cell that his tablet identified as [Solid-State Qi-Battery - Damaged. Holding 3% charge. Output unstable.] Three percent of an ancient, powerful battery was still more than his tablet's dying cell.
Back in Berth 42, he laid his scavenged components next to the glowing crystal. He looked like a junk-tinker from a post-apocalyptic wasteland, not a student at a cosmic academy.
The wall fuzzed. "You have acquired shiny things," Zyx observed. "The crystal is pretty. The battery is… nervous. I can feel its instability from here. What is the construct?"
"A signal booster," Kaelen said, connecting the regulator casing to his tablet with the interface filament. He needed to turn the casing into a housing he could program. "To talk to Node Omicron."
"Ah! Bridging the interstitial silence! A noble goal. The Foundation Vaults are where the Spire of Thaum stores the… less glorious components of reality-weaving. Residual spell-ash, misfired enchantment cores, fragmented ley-line conduits. Also their maintenance and monitoring systems. A node there could be very informative."
Kaelen used the laser-scalpel at its finest setting to carefully carve connection ports into the regulator casing: one for the crystal, one for the battery, one for an input/output conduit. It was crude, but precise. His hands, trained on repairing hydroponic sensor arrays, didn't shake.
"The problem is tuning," he said, more to himself than to Zyx. "I need to find the exact carrier frequency Node Omicron listens on, then amplify my signal on that frequency without alerting the main network."
"Frequency hunting is a process of elimination," Zyx chirped. "A tedious one. Unless… you have a sample of the signal you wish to amplify."
Kaelen paused. He did. His tablet had detected the "weak signal" from Omicron. It was a digital handshake, a faint "I am here" ping. He pulled up the data packet. It was a string of code, but at its heart was a frequency signature: a unique vibrational pattern in the Versity's data-stream.
"I have the sample," Kaelen said.
"Then you don't need to hunt. You need to mirror and amplify. Create a sympathetic resonator. Your crystal can do that, if you prime it with the sample pattern and give it a stable oscillation chamber."
An idea clicked. He didn't need to build a transmitter. He needed to build a tuning fork that would naturally vibrate in harmony with Omicron's signal, then pump energy into that vibration.
He set to work. He placed the amplification crystal into the carved socket in the regulator casing. He connected the unstable Qi-battery, using a salvaged resistor to dampen its output from "unstable" to "barely steady." He then connected his tablet to the casing via the interface filament, turning the whole assembly into a peripheral device.
On his tablet, he wrote a simple program. It would take the frequency signature from Omicron's ping, translate it into a modulation pattern, and feed it continuously into the crystal at low power, "teaching" it to resonate at that specific frequency. Once the crystal was synchronized, he would ramp up the power from the battery, turning the resonance into an amplified broadcast.
It took hours. The crystal resisted at first, its internal structure set to generic amplification bands. His tablet's processing power was laughably inadequate for the calculations needed. He had to offload some of the work to the hidden node's console by making a quick, risky trip back to the crawl space to run diagnostics.
Finally, as the cycle's end neared, the crystal's steady blue pulse shifted. It began to throb in a complex, rhythmic pattern—dash-dot-dash, pause, long pulse—exactly mirroring the encoded signature of Node Omicron.
"It's syncing," he breathed.
"Fascinating!" Zyx's voice was a hushed whisper through the wall. "You're essentially performing artificial crystal attunement. A very low-tech, brute-force form of techno-symbiosis. The mages in the Spire use focused will and decades of meditation to achieve this with their focus-crystals."
Kaelen didn't have decades. He had a broken tablet and stolen parts. He watched as the synchronization percentage climbed on his screen: 67%... 89%... 94%...
At 100%, the crystal glowed with a steadier, warmer light. It was now a dedicated Omicron-frequency resonator.
"Now for the power," he muttered. He initiated the second phase of his program. The tablet instructed the regulator to open the flow from the Qi-battery.
The crystal's glow intensified from blue to a bright, actinic white. A low hum filled the room, vibrating the desk. The stolen battery grew warm.
[Amplification active. Signal gain: +300%.] his tablet reported. [Attempting handshake with target node...]
Lines of connection protocol scrolled. The hidden node console in the wall, still linked via the filament, acted as a relay, sending the newly boosted signal shooting through the physical conduits toward the Foundation Vaults.
[...connecting...]
[...]
[...Connection established.]
A new, robust data-stream opened on his tablet. It was no longer a faint ping. It was a flood.
[NODE OMICRON - STATUS: ACTIVE (LOW-POWER MODE). NETWORK: FOUNDATION VAULT MONITORING SUBNET - THAUMIC SECTOR.]
[ACCESS LEVEL: MAINTENANCE (GENERIC). FUNCTIONS AVAILABLE: ENVIRONMENTAL LOGS, VAULT INVENTORY CATALOG, BASIC DIAGNOSTIC OVERRIDES.]
He was in. Not deep, not into the Spire's core secrets, but into the basement of their operations. He navigated quickly, his heart pounding. The inventory catalog was a treasure trove of information. He scrolled through lists of stored materials:
[Item #7741: Congealed Spatial Paradox (Volatile - Containment Grade 7).]
[Item #8815: Sack of Un-Thread (Can unravel low-grade enchantments).]
[Item #9920: Resonator Core from Failed Dimensional Anchor (Inert).]
These were the broken, discarded, or dangerous tools of magic. But to Kaelen, they were parts. Possibilities.
He then pulled up the environmental logs. They showed energy fluctuations, containment field statuses, and… access records.
One record, from just a few cycles ago, made him freeze.
[ACCESS LOG: VAULT A-17.]
[PERSONNEL: APPRENTICE MAGE LIAN (CLEARANCE: THETA).]
[ACTION: RETRIEVED ITEM #9920 (RESONATOR CORE).]
[NOTES: FOR "PRACTICAL AFFINITY TESTING" AS PER APPRENTICE CURRICULUM MODULE 4B.]
An apprentice mage had checked out a broken dimensional anchor resonator. For testing. That sounded like a class assignment. And if it was a class assignment, there would be…
He searched the node's limited academic sub-files. He found it: a publicly accessible (within the Spire) tutorial file. [Module 4B: Introduction to Dimensional Resonance & Anchor Principles. Includes diagnostic procedures for failed resonator cores.]
He downloaded it. It was a massive file, full of complex thaumic equations and meditation diagrams, but also—crucially—practical, step-by-step instructions on how to analyze such a device, including its schematic, its standard power flow, and common failure points.
To a mage, it was a lesson. To Kaelen, with his ability to see system diagnostics, it was a blueprint. A blueprint for a device that could anchor things in reality. Or, theoretically, detect anchors.
An idea, wild and half-formed, began to crystallize. The Hidden Node was a blind spot. The amplification crystal was a voice. What if he could build a sensor? Not for magic, but for the system itself—for the administrative pings, the surveillance scans, the hidden watchers?
He was pulling up the resonator core schematic when his tablet flashed a red, priority alert—not from his systems, but from the Null Quarter's main network, forced through his spoofed connection.
[IMMEDIATE NOTICE: ALL NULL QUARTER PERSONNEL.]
[SCHEDULED INFRASTRUCTURE STRESS-TEST IN SECTORS 7-12.]
[DURATION: NEXT FULL CYCLE.]
[ALL NON-ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL TO REMAIN IN BERTHS. ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS MAY FLUCTUATE. SCANNING & DIAGNOSTIC ACTIVITY WILL BE ELEVATED.]
A stress-test. System-wide diagnostics. Elevated scanning. His spoof might not hold under that level of scrutiny. And his amplified signal to Node Omicron was a tiny, unauthorized data-stream that could look like a stress-induced glitch… or a blatant intrusion.
"I have to shut it down," he said aloud.
"The main network will be noisy and blind with its own tests," Zyx replied, having likely received the same notice. "Paradoxically, it might be the best time to hide a small signal. They'll be looking for big anomalies, not whispers. But the risk…"
Kaelen looked at the downloaded schematics, then at the glowing amplification crystal. He was on the verge of a breakthrough. A way to see the surveillance. To go from being passively watched to actively monitoring the watchers.
But if he was caught, it wouldn't be Brog's wrath. It would be Vik'nar's cold logic, or the Omega-clearance auditors' direct intervention.
He made a decision. A reckless one.
"I'm not shutting down," he said. "I'm going deeper. If their scans are looking for stress on the system, I'll give them a decoy. A bigger, noisier anomaly to focus on while my signal hides in the shadow."
Zyx was silent for a full weak-point cycle. When the voice returned, it was filled with a mix of horror and admiration. "You want to… create a controlled system crash? In the Null Quarter? During a stress-test? That is either brilliant or suicidal."
"Can you do it?" Kaelen asked. "Create a distraction glitch? Something that looks like a natural failure under stress, but is contained?"
"...I am a Glitch-Sprite," Zyx said, and Kaelen could almost hear the smile. "Causing controlled, chaotic failures is my secondary function. What did you have in mind?"
"The waste processing hub in Sub-Basement 9. The main grinder's safety protocols. If they were to… momentarily disengage during a power surge, causing a jam and a localized energy spike, it would trigger a cascade of minor failure alerts. It would look exactly like the kind of thing a stress-test is meant to find."
"A grinding halt. How poetic. And the jam would be physical, requiring manual oversight from Brog or Vik'nar, drawing their attention. Yes. I can see the fault-lines in that system. I can… encourage one to slip at the right moment. But you must be precise with your timing. The moment the jam alert triggers, all automated diagnostics will refocus there. That is your window. How long do you need?"
"Thirty minutes," Kaelen said. "To modify this schematic and build a prototype."
"Thirty minutes of borrowed attention. Very well. Synchronize chronometers. I will initiate the Grinder Jam Protocol at the start of the stress-test's third diagnostic wave. You will have your window. Do not waste my beautiful chaos."
Kaelen spent the remaining time before the stress-test studying the resonator core schematics. He wouldn't build the whole device—that required rare materials and thaumic attunement. But he could build a detector based on its principles. A device that sensed specialized energy signatures—like the pings of administrative surveillance or the distinct energy trace of a synthetic-organic hybrid.
Using parts from the maintenance kit and more scavenged debris, he began to assemble a crude housing on his desk. A small, crystalline lens from a broken optical scanner. Copper filaments arranged in the resonator's diagnostic array pattern. The heart of it would be a piece of the amplification crystal, shaved off with the laser-scalpel and reprogrammed to seek specific frequency patterns instead of amplifying them.
It was like building a radio that only tuned to one, secret station.
The cycle-end horn sounded, followed by a deeper, resonant gong—the stress-test initiation. The lights in Berth 42 dimmed, then brightened. A higher-pitched hum vibrated through the walls. He could feel the increased scanning like a pressure against his skin, even through his tablet's spoofing.
His tablet showed the stress-test progress. Wave 1… Wave 2…
He finished the crude sensor. It was a mess of wires and crystal shards, held together with conductive adhesive. It looked like junk. He connected it to his tablet.
[Device detected: Unknown Sensor Array.]
[Calibrating...]
[Feed active. Scanning for pre-programmed signature patterns...]
Wave 3 began. His chronometer hit zero.
From deep below, a distant, grinding SCREECH echoed through the structure, followed by a deep THUMP that shook the floor. Alarms blared—not the discreet pings of surveillance, but loud, honking klaxons for physical system failure.
[ALERT: SUB-BASEMENT 9 - PRIMARY GRINDER JAM. CONTAINMENT PROTOCOLS ENGAGED.]
[ALERT: POWER SURGE DETECTED IN SECTOR 9. DIAGNOSTIC DRONES RE-ROUTING.]
The Grinder Jam Protocol was a success.
Kaelen activated his sensor. The crystal fragment glowed, and a circular scan pattern appeared on his tablet—a simple, radar-like display. For a moment, nothing.
Then, blips. Dozens of them, faint and green, moving in regular patterns. Security drones. One larger, stationary blip at the Quarter's hub: the overseer post.
And then, a new signature. A pulsating, red dot. It appeared suddenly at the edge of the scan, near the entrance to the Sub-Basement corridor. It moved with silent, unnerving precision, heading not toward the grinder jam, but lateral to it, weaving through the infrastructure.
The sensor's label flickered: [SIGNATURE MATCH: SYNTHETIC-ORGANIC HYBRID - 87% CONFIDENCE.]
The Omega-clearance visitor. Here. Now. During the chaos.
And they weren't investigating the distraction. They were on their own path, moving with purpose through the sector.
Kaelen watched the red dot glide through the walls on his display, following some hidden route. It stopped. The location made his blood run cold.
It was pausing at access points. First, near the entrance to Sub-Basement 7—the Anomalous Materials cell. Then, moving to a junction near the waste processing hub. And now… it was stationary at a point directly beneath the crawl space leading to his hidden node.
They weren't just visiting. They were mapping. Cataloging the sites of Kaelen's activities.
The red dot remained still for a full minute. Then it began moving again, this time heading upward. Toward the residential sectors. Toward the Null Quarter berths.
Toward him.
The sensor's range was limited. The dot vanished from the edge of the screen. It could be anywhere now. In the hallway. Outside his door.
The klaxons still blared from below. The stress-test scans continued to thrum. But in Berth 42, there was only silence, and the soft, terrified glow of a homemade sensor that had just revealed a hunter in the chaos.
Kaelen sat perfectly still, listening for the sound of his door sliding open.