The Shape of the Fault

The legacy technician wanted Iven’s coolant line shut off for the scan.

I put my hand on the regulator before she reached it. “How long?”

“Under four minutes if the diagnostic cradle reads cleanly,” she said. “Longer if I have to repeat the sweep.” She glanced at Iven, still secured in Pelin’s narrow bay. “The line stays attached. I’m closing the valve, not draining the circuit.”

Four minutes was a small number on a station slate. I had learned what small numbers did to Iven when they were measured in power.

He looked toward the technician. “Can I decline the scan?”

“You can,” she said. “The review would end without a core assessment.”

“Then I consent to the scan. Astoria stays.”

The technician checked my face for an objection. I had one, but it wasn’t a useful one. I moved around the cradle so I could reach the manual valve. “I’m staying.”

The technician introduced herself as Nemi Orr, Pelin’s legacy systems specialist. Her voice was plain and low, with the unhurried cadence of someone used to delivering bad numbers. She attached the diagnostic cradle to the open service panel and ran a fiber lead to Iven’s core casing. I checked each connection behind her. Nemi let me.

The line valve turned under my fingers. Iven’s pump stopped. Nemi started the scan.

A pale grid crawled across her screen, then settled into a view of the damaged core’s internal channels. I recognized the main fracture from the clinic’s earlier readout. The new image showed the branching cracks in finer detail. A dark line crossed the regulation channel where Iven’s emotional module remained coupled. The damage had spread a little since the clinic scan. The coolant had slowed it; the display offered no measurement for how much worse it would have been without the line.

“Could the regulation channel be bypassed?” I asked.

“Not without opening the fracture under load.” Nemi enlarged the image. “A bypass would put current through the damaged edge. It might hold for seconds. It might arc immediately. Either result risks the module and the rest of the core.”

Iven’s voice came through the cradle speaker, thinner without the pump. “Would isolation reduce the risk?”

“It could reduce demand. It could also damage the module permanently. Your clinic record says you declined that option.”

“I did.”

Nemi studied the image. “The scan supports that decision.”

She said it like a technical conclusion. I watched the jagged line cut across the display and tried to find a point where a careful hand could separate the damaged section from the rest. There wasn’t one. The core had not failed in a way I could divide into good parts and bad parts. Its fault ran through the systems that kept it alive.