Watched

Max sat strapped into the return capsule. The interior was about the size of a walk-in wardrobe, all matte carbon and smart foam.

He was on his way back to the orbital station, where the rest of the team waited with the main transport. They would ride down together in a proper shuttle. Him, the engineers, the board representative, and a scientist who had spent the week trying not to throw up in zero gravity.

This had been his only solo run in his career, if you didn’t include Hermes. It wasn’t standard procedure, but there simply hadn’t been space for more than one body in the capsule. Installing a QEC and a portable AI core had meant stripping everything but the essentials. Passenger space had been replaced with mission equipment.

Now Max sat alone in that same capsule, only this time he had room to breathe.

Everything was gone.

The equipment had been transferred and installed aboard the Argos shuttle, now riding toward asteroid 46610, also known as Bésixdouze. One of the largest bodies in the inner belt, just over two kilometres in diameter. It would provide Argos with enough raw material to self-replicate. The first attempt of its kind, made possible only because this was the first time an AI existed that could manage the process.

It was quiet without Hermes on board.

The image of Magnus in the lab replayed in Max’s mind. He had no direct access to the QEC right now, but he could radio the Argos shuttle and ask Hermes to keep an eye on it. Just in case Magnus tried anything else.

Which he probably would.

Max tapped a few buttons on the console. “Hermes, you reading me, buddy?”

A pause. Then a crackle.

Hermes’s warm, upbeat voice filled the capsule. “Loud and clear, Bossman.”

Thin white lines began sketching themselves across the black display. A circle first. Then two dots. Then a curved smile. A simple face, drawn in quick chalk strokes.

“Are you settling in okay on Argos?” Max asked.

The chalk face nodded cheerfully. Beside it, another doodle formed. A rough cartoon outline of a gloved hand.

“I know this shuttle like the back of my hand,” Hermes said proudly.

The face turned toward the hand. The smile flattened. The dot-eyes narrowed.

“Oh,” he added after a beat. “That’s new.”

Max groaned. “Hermes—”

The chalk smile snapped back. “Kidding. Mostly.”

“I need you to filter the entanglement comms. Anything that doesn’t look like it has ARCHON stamped on it is for my eyes only.”

“Don’t send Magnus’s homemade lab videos to ARCHON’s board of directors. Got it.”

“Good. You’ve got a few weeks before you reach 46610. Use the time to fix any bugs with the entanglement comms. We can’t afford for it to misbehave during the mission. We’re treading new ground here, and some of the equipment already behaves differently up here. You have an IQ of six thousand. Be ready to improvise.”

A little chalk insect appeared near Hermes’s face. He squinted at it. A giant scribbled boot descended from nowhere and crushed it flat.

“I’ve been ready since dial-up died.”

Max huffed a laugh.

A blinking comm icon pulsed like a heartbeat, pulling his attention back to the console.

DAPHNE – HOME LAB (LIVE)

“I have an incoming comm. Goodbye, Hermes.”

“See you later, alligator.”

The chalk face gave a wobbly salute. Then the lines blurred, smudged, and wiped themselves away, leaving the screen black.

Max tapped the accept button.

The display shifted to Daphne’s face, backlit by the cold blur of overhead lab lights. The angle was off. The lab’s old webcam never quite sat straight. She was surrounded by a cluttered fortress of half-disassembled tech and abandoned coffee mugs. Wires coiled behind her like sleeping snakes.

“I miss you,” she said, skipping the pleasantries.

Max exhaled softly. “I miss you too, Flower. Won’t be long now.”

She nodded, but the delay in her smile had nothing to do with bandwidth.

Max leaned forward in his harness. “Hermes is away. Full sync to the uplink, locked in and clean. He’ll have a few weeks to reach Bésixdouze, get set up, then relay the data from the twelve g-trino detectors.”

He let the rest hang.

“That’s the big one, Daph. After that, I’m done.”

She blinked. “Done done?”

“Retiring done. No more launches. No more late nights solving boardroom physics.”

A short, surprised laugh escaped her. “You mean it?”

“I do. I want to be there. With Magnus. With you. I don’t want to become my father.”

“You always said he was too busy building the future to be part of yours.”

Max nodded. “I know what this telescope means. I know what it’ll do for science. But I’ve already launched my greatest achievement, and he’s nine years old and learning to lie about brushing his teeth.”

Daphne laughed softly, but it cracked halfway through. She looked down, then back up. “He misses you.”

“I know. I’m coming home.”

Something shifted in her expression.

Max narrowed his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

She hesitated. Not long. But long enough.

“It’s the house,” she said. “The staff.”

He frowned. “They came with the property. I made sure they were vetted.”

“I know,” she replied quickly. Then, quieter, “But the gardener stares. Not by accident. He just watches. And the chef goes quiet when I walk in. Like he’s listening for something.”

Max said nothing.

“I’m not imagining it,” she added, sharper now. “I feel watched. All the time. If it wasn’t for Beatrice, I think I’d go mad.”

He rubbed his brow.

Silence stretched between them.

“We’ll sort it when I get back,” Max said. “Three, maybe four days.”

She nodded, but she didn’t look reassured. “I’ll be waiting.”

A thought surfaced.

“Flower, is Magnus with you? I need to ask him something.”

“He’s at the house. Is it important?”

Max hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t want him visiting the lab unsupervised. I think he’s been playing with the QEC. I received something earlier. He was on it.”

She gave him a look that said I told you so. “And whose fault is that? You gave a nine-year-old free access to a space lab.”

“I know.” Max smiled apologetically. “I love you, Flower.”

“Yeah, you better,” Daphne replied, her tone making it clear that three to four days was three to four days too many. “Just hurry up.”

The line went dark.

Max stared at the blank screen for a moment longer. The capsule hummed around him, gentle and clinical.

He pressed a few buttons on the console, and an external camera feed filled the display.

Blackness.

An infinite scatter of stars.

And just off-centre, a milky blue sphere.

Earth.