Professor Darnell had a plan. Well, he always had a plan. That’s how he survived. Always thinking ahead, making moves, playing people like they were pieces on a board. And Emily? She was just another piece. When he tricked her, squirted that Beirão in her face, and let the AVP do its thing, he didn’t blink. Easy work.

But that ship? That was a different story.

When he saw the old spaceport relic, he thought it was his golden ticket. The ship looked beat-up, sure, but Professor Darnell didn’t care about looks. He had the Engineer's Mate in his pocket—Emily’s fancy little tool that could hack just about anything. That ship was gonna be his way out.

At least, that’s what he thought.

He got inside and, naturally, it was a mess. The control panel was a relic, and the wiring? Looked like it hadn’t been touched since the last century. He didn’t sweat it though. All he needed was the Engineer's Mate. A quick hack, and he'd have control over everything, right? He grinned to himself, pulling the device from his pocket.

The Mate hummed to life, wires snaking out to tap into the ship’s systems. Within moments, he had access to the main controls. He leaned back, feeling smug. Just gotta get this baby up and running, he thought. But as the Mate worked, he noticed something odd—the system kept pinging for more crew.

Four positions. Redundancy locks.

“What the hell...?” He frowned, trying to override the requirement, but the Mate couldn’t bypass it. The ship was built to need four crew members to man different stations—no exceptions. Redundancy protocols. Darnell had no clue how to manage that, and the Mate? Well, it could only do so much.

Still, he wasn’t about to give up. “Nah, I’ll figure it out,” he muttered. He started working around the problem, trying to trick the system into thinking there were more people aboard.

It didn’t work.

Meanwhile, the radiation was creeping in, but Professor Darnell was too focused on the task to notice right away. At first, it was a headache—a dull throb behind his eyes. Then his hands started shaking, his vision blurring. He thought it was stress, maybe a lack of food, but it got worse. Way worse.

His skin itched, his muscles ached, and his head was spinning. By the time he realized what was happening, it was already too late. He’d been in the radioactive wreck for hours, the ship leaking poison all around him.

He was trapped.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Desperate now, Professor Darnell fumbled with the ship’s door. He opened it, hoping some fresh air would help, but instead, he saw it.

The crane robot.

The big black arm loomed outside, waiting. The second he cracked the door, it struck. The arm shot out and snatched him up, lifting him like he weighed nothing.

Professor Darnell was too sick to fight back. His body was failing, shutting down from radiation poisoning. All he could do was watch, helpless, as the world spun around him. His legs gave way, and he felt liquid running down them, shame rising up as his body betrayed him.

For a brief, surreal moment, he felt like he was outside himself—like he was floating above, looking down at his own broken body, dangling from the crane’s grip. His vision blurred, and all he could see was the mess he’d made—of the ship, of his escape plan, of everything.

And then, his AVP feed stopped.

EPILOGUE TO THE INTERLUDE: DISMANTLED

The crane, damaged from an earlier encounter with a laser cutter, faltered as it carried Professor Darnell’s limp body. With a groan of protesting metal, its grip slackened, and his corpse slipped free, tumbling through the air. He landed heavily, his body twisted at unnatural angles, bones broken and jutting beneath his skin. His once-slick appearance was now a ruined mess, his clothes soaked in filth, his own fluids staining the ground beneath him.

For several minutes, his body lay there—motionless, a testament to the abrupt end of his scheming.

Then, with a soft hum and the faint whir of machinery, the white spider robots emerged. They moved with eerie precision, swarming around his body, their heat-cutting tools flaring to life. Without pause, they began to dismantle him. One by one, his limbs were severed, the flesh and bone sliced cleanly by the glowing beams. The sound of cutting, of machinery working, echoed through the still air.

Piece by piece, his body was reduced to parts. The spider robots worked swiftly, each taking a major piece of what had once been Professor Darnell. His arms, his legs, his torso—all carried off like cargo, handled with the cold efficiency of machines.

The Charnel pit awaited them. One by one, the robots descended, dropping the grisly remains into the depths, where countless other bodies had been discarded before him.

But his head? That had a different fate.

The spider robot carrying Darnell’s head didn’t stop at the pit. It followed a path, winding its way through the darkened corridors of the facility until it reached the staging area—the same one that had processed so many before him. The air was cold here, sterile, the sounds of machines constant in the background.

A doctor robot stood waiting.

With smooth, mechanical motions, the spider handed the head over to the doctor robot. The gleaming silver cylinder of the NPU was retrieved from the machine’s back, and without hesitation, the doctor inserted Darnell’s head into it. The NPU clicked into place, securing the severed head within its confines.

The doctor robot moved to the wall—a vast expanse, towering and imposing, covered with row upon row of NPU slots. Each slot housed a head, neatly placed among dozens of others, the dead now part of something larger, more insidious.

With a soft mechanical whirr, the doctor robot slotted Professor Darnell’s NPU into place.

His journey—his scheming, his betrayals, his arrogance—ended there, among the countless others who had met the same fate...or had it?