Nori shook her head. “It’s his path.”

Bulco nodded slowly. “It’s gotta be.”

Lana stared at them.

“Nathan has a natural affinity with machines,” Nori said. “You saw how he connected to the ship using those transparent fibers. We all just hit level five. I assume, that like me, you were given a choice to upgrade your path?”

“That’s right,” Bulco said. “I upgraded into an AstroTec. It should help me take better care of Unity.”

“And I became an Admin,” Lana said slowly. “It improves my ability to interact with … software, I guess.”

Nori nodded. “And I upgraded into a Pilot. We all evolved, turned into something new. I’m betting that’s what happened to Nathan.”

“But why would the ship swallow him up like that?” Lana objected. “Nothing that drastic happened to us.”

Bulco shook his head. “That kid is strange. He doesn’t tick like the rest of us. Remember how he fixed the thruster controls? Or opened doors without a console? I think Nori’s right. Whatever’s happening to him is happening at a deeper level than us. We’ll just have to wait until he finishes whatever he’s doing.”

“How long will that take?” Lana's voice rose by an octave.

Nori glanced at the holo-monitors. “It’s still on one percent, so I say we have at least several more hours to go. We’re still five hours away from the space station, the best thing we can do right now is to go back to sleep, we have to--What the hell?”

The sound of screeching metal filled the bridge. Nori's eyes widened as she noticed part of the floor extending as if it was gum being stretched by a giant. Lana tapped on her console and her pale face turned even whiter.

“What? What do you know?” Nori pressed.

Instead of answering, the young Expert projected the feed from her monitor to the main viewscreen. The image on the front display changed from showing the stars to Unity’s outer hull. The mounted excavator was visible. Or more precisely, what was left of it.

The machine was being torn apart. Its legs were severed, and, along with the ring-like body, were in the process of being slowly swallowed, sinking into the hull. The machine’s head was being pulled toward the front of the ship by an unknown force. More screeching noise and rumbling followed.

Lana swallowed hard. “Yeah, I’m not going to be able to sleep much.”

The two giant screens on either side of the main one flashed and the text they displayed changed slightly.

Synthesis progression 2%

Nori leaned over her console. “I don’t detect any hull breaches, thank god. Whatever’s happening to the ship doesn’t seem to be a threat.”