Zedd blinked awake slowly, his body half-sinking into the soft mattress beneath him.
The larger sun was just beginning to crest over the horizon, its light spilling through the wide window across the room. Golden-orange rays stretched over the walls, tinting the black synth-satin sheets that pooled around his legs. He stretched lazily, arms reaching out, the kind of stretch that made his whole body feel lighter for a second.
A yawn escaped him, long and unhurried.
This bed was huge.
Like, big enough that he almost had to roll to reach the other side.
Not that he needed to.
His eyes drifted left, landing on the caramel-toned form nestled in the sheets beside him. her face was half-hidden in the pillow, soft curls spilling over her cheek. She was still out cold, her breaths slow and steady, and his oversized t-shirt hung loosely around her. The thought hit him then—just the shirt—and he felt a smirk tugging at his lips before he could stop it.
Heheh.
He kicked off the sheets, the black fabric sliding easily to the edge of the bed as he swung his legs over the side. The cool prefab flooring sent a faint chill up his feet, but it was nothing compared to the old place.
The old place.
Zedd rose to his feet, standing shirtless in nothing but his dark blue boxers. The sunlight hit him full-on through the window, the warmth settling on his skin like it had been waiting for him to wake up.
The seventeen-year-old stretched again, arms raised high above his head, his back arching slightly as he let out a satisfied grunt. “God, this place is so much better.”
And it was.
His eyes scanned the view beyond the window. Arkadia IV wasn’t exactly a paradise—not yet anyway—but it had its charms. The horizon stretched out endlessly, broken only by the outlines of prefab housing and the low mountains framing the colony.
His grin widened.
This was home. His home.
The new place was seven times bigger than the tiny little shack he’d been assigned to rent, down by the hub. Granted, that only made it sixty-five square meters—not exactly luxury living—but still, it felt like a mansion compared to where he’d been.
He had every right to feel a little proud, didn’t he?
A whole month he’d been here, waking up in this place, and it still made him smile every morning.
Sure, getting it had almost been a problem.
The down payment had been a little steep— not much more than the ticket to this rock, though— not to mention the headache of explaining how a seventeen-year-old without a steady job could afford anything bigger than a shoebox.
But he’d made it work.
Nearly four hundred credstacks burning a hole in his tool had helped.
He exhaled, the grin slipping just a little. Mom and Dad would want me to start living a real life anyway. The thought came unbidden, brushing the edges of his mind before he pushed it away.
Zedd shuffled toward the door, his feet dragging slightly against the smooth flooring.
The hallway was prefab-basic. Faux-wood floors, polished and fake, but good enough it wasn’t an issue. Being real, everything about prefab housing had that same polished-but-fake vibe, but he didn’t mind.
It was his.
The main room opened up ahead, a blend of living space and workspace.
Simple.
Functional.
Minimal.
Even down to the entertainment center that came with the furnishing package. Zedd barely glanced at it as he veered toward the workshop at the front of the house.
His bare feet thudded lightly as he moved, the sound barely audible against the faint hum of the colony outside, miners and other blue-collars with their families waking up for the weekend.
The living area wasn’t much, but it did what it needed to.
A couch hugged the far wall, in shades of black like the rest of his furniture. One cushion sagged a little too much—his fault from last night, when he’d flopped down hard enough to make it groan.
Next to it, a low coffee table sat under the soft glow of sunlight slipping through the blinds. A couple bottles of non-alcoholic drinks from the night before leaned precariously on its edge, both half-empty. One had left a faint ring of condensation that darkened the cheap polymer surface. It was amazing how people kept being surprised at his unwillingness to drink. Even away from Earth, peer pressure was a problem. You’d think they’d get it after the first time.
Off to the right was the kitchen.
Compact. Cramped.
Everything lined up neatly in rows like someone’d been trying to win a Tetris game. The fridge hummed a nigh-impercetible but steady bassline, and the stove’s control panel blinked 2:14 in bright red numbers.
Wrong time. Always wrong.
He could fix it if he wanted.
He didn’t.
Zedd stood at the edge of the room, his bare feet brushing over the floor, tinted in the black of his choosing. Prefab charm—everything matched because it had to.
His gaze slid toward the workshop, the only space in the house that wasn’t already set up for him when he moved in.
It smelled faintly like burnt wiring and metal dust.
He liked it.
The work table—standard prefab junk like the rest—was buried under the guts of an omni-tool. half of it was dismantled, parts scattered across the surface but laid out neatly, almost obsessively, in little trays he’d picked up from the colony’s market.
Tools were stacked haphazardly to one side, a mix of old and new. Some were shiny, practically untouched. others had the kind of wear you couldn’t fake—scuffed grips, dulled edges.
He’d made it work.
The chair? Kitchen rescue, wobbly backrest and all. Still, it held up well enough so he wasn’t complaining.
Floating shelves lined the walls, mostly bare except for a few rolls of wiring, some datapads, and random scraps he’d salvaged from god-knows-where.
Zedd leaned against the doorframe, his arms loose at his sides as he took it all in. The sunlight creeping through the single window made the diagnostic scanner on the corner of the table glow faintly, it's hard-light interface flickering faint patterns over the table’s edge.
It wasn't much.
But again, it was his.
The thought tugged a grin out of him before he could stop it.
He pushed off the doorframe, crossing the short space to his workbench.
The omni-tool from last night — ChoraTech P4 —lay there, guts exposed, waiting for him to figure it out. He knew this model well enough. It was a top mid-range option, ideal for a Standard grade Omnitool at one point. Granted, that one point had been five years ago, considering the reason he knew about it was a kid in his bridge core classes bragging about the omni his parents had bought him for the holidays.
Now, it was slow with an outdated processor.
Yet, you could find this thing on a bunch of people’s wrist without looking all that hard.
He grabbed a diagnostic stylus off the table, flipping it between his fingers as he slid into the rickety chair. The scanner blinked at him, throwing a couple of error codes that made him squint as he picked up one of the more worn tools to open it up.
“Fuck off,” he muttered, finally getting a good look inside the thing.
The inside of the omni was a mess. Bad wiring, connectors barely holding on, and some cheap replacement parts that’d been shoved in like they’d fix everything.
Lazy fucking dickhead, he barely held himself back from saying the words out loud. “They better not have paid this guy for this slapjob.”
He traced a bundle of badly managed wires with the tip of his stylus, his mind already working through the problem. Something about the way the connections were spaced, the way the current flowed...
He paused, his grip tightening on the stylus as his brain finally put together what he’d been going over the last five minutes.
It's the interface relay. The thought hit fast, instinctive as he leaned closer, plucking a set of microcutters off the table and snipping one of the smaller wires loose.
Sure enough… “Look who has two thumbs and is never wrong.”
The relay was fried—burnt edges, barely any conductivity left.
Zedd huffed out a laugh, shaking his head. “Amateurs,” he muttered, dropping the relay onto the table and reaching for a replacement. What went unsaid was that he was also an amateur, but some things were better left unsaid.
As he worked, his thoughts wandered, drifting toward the credit total in his tool’s ledger.
He was close. Close enough to taste it.
A car.
Good-looking sports cars in the twenty-second century were, funny enough… a thing of the past, for the most part. Especially in megacities, where sky cars dominated.
Honestly, anything that looked like what he remembered from the more primitive part of his memories was almost impossible to find. They were common enough, sure, but nothing that made his inner thirteen-year old boy pump his fist. Almost everything he could find was sleek, and made with ultra-light materials and the rarer heavier and aggressively-designed ones would be expensive to ship out to a colony, honestly.
Maybe I should focus on something more in the now, he thought, biting his lip.
Hell, maybe he’d even make enough soon to splurge on an addition to the prefab.
His hands moved on autopilot as he thought about the future, fingers twisting the new relay into place, locking it down with practiced ease. Having way more time to himself had helped him get used to this.
He honestly didn’t regret leaving his job in the least.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Four Weeks Ago
Zedd wasn’t one to yell.
It wasn’t worth the effort most times—never had been.
Every time he did, his voice felt raw from just a few seconds of letting himself get loud. Hell, even the thought of it made his throat itch half the time. Should’ve grabbed a bottle of water on the way in.
But here he was, standing stiff in Elias's cramped office, his shoulders squared like he was gearing up for a fight anyway.
The old man sat behind the battered desk, arms folded, an eyebrow raised so high it was almost mocking.
“You’re quitting,” Elias said.
Not a question.
Zedd nodded, his jaw tight. “Yeah. Effective immediately.”
The words came out clean and firm as he reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a neatly folded resignation letter and sliding it across the desk.
The paper felt stupid and outdated both, a whole Neo-Ludd gesture. But it made things feel... solid and final too, so…
“Normally, this shit comes with two week’s notice,” Elias said flatly.
Zedd’s lips pressed into a line. His head dipped into a slow, almost apologetic nod as he once again felt lucky that he had the type of skin that didn’t redden when embarrased. “I... didn’t know that.”
Elias grunted, the kind of sound people made when they were deciding how much trouble you were worth. For a few long seconds, the hum of the power conduits filled the silence.
Then the old man leaned forward slightly, his voice steady but sharp around the edges. “You sure about this, kid?”
He still had yet to look down at the letter, not even for a second. His eyes stayed locked on Zedd like he was trying to see something the teenager wasn’t saying. “You’re good at this work. damn good. Better than most anyone else who’s been here for years. Your hands are fuckin’ magic, pardon my language.”
Zedd's mouth twitched, a breath of a laugh escaping before he could stop it. A second later, the teenager sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck. “That's the problem, though.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, pops,” Zedd muttered, his voice dipping low with frustration. “I'm too damn good, apparently. Every time something breaks, it’s like—” he broke off, shaking his head. “It's like people think I made it happen. And then, when will I fix it? They look at me like I'm cheating or something. Like I wasn't supposed to fix it. I don’t get it, man.”
Elias leaned back, arms still crossed, as he watched the boy standing across his desk.
Zedd didn’t stop.
“A month of that was bad enough,” he continued. His words were quieter now but sharp, each one cutting as he let them out without holding back. “But that shit two weeks ago? Pardon my language, but fuck that, old man.”
Elias didn’t respond immediately. He tilted his head, a faint nod, but his expression stayed unreadable.
Then, finally, he let out a low groan, dragging a hand down his face.
“In a few years,” the older man said, his voice quieter now, “no matter how old you are, you should be running this whole place. Hands like that, a brain like yours, composed under pressure… Even just one out of three, I’d take you over five of the lunks that call me boss. In an ideal world, you’d be my boss in two years.”
Zedd blinked, thrown by the shift in tone.
“...okay,” he said slowly, unsure where this was going.
Elias didn’t let him figure it out.
“And that’s the damn fuckin’ problem, kid,” he cut in sharply, leaning forward again. “Galaxy’s far from ideal, and we both know it. Way it goes, you’d never make it off the floor. You’d be lucky to make it past senior tech in a decade. Major part of it is, I can’t afford to promote you. You’re too good to move up.”
Zedd frowned.
“And if you did manage it?” Elias continued, his voice a low growl now. “Connor would make your life a living hell before you ever got past him. You see the way half of them look at you already for being you. You think you’re doing a good job… Nah, the issue is you’re showing them up, making them work harder, and about five years younger too, on average.”
The man sucked his teeth, low and slow. “You stay here, kid, and you’d be fighting twice as hard for half as much, and for what?”
Zedd opened his mouth to respond, but the words didn’t come out right away.
Still though… Knew it.
Finally, he managed with a shrug, “I mean... well, like I figured, just didn’t wanna s—”
“Half the floor thinks you’re a plant, you know” Elias cut in again, his tone almost conversational, like he wasn’t trying to drop anything heavy. “Some higher-up’s kid dropped in and told what to fix, when to fix it and how to fix it just to make you look good for an easy path up. Wouldn’t be the first time, really. Whole place is run from the top-down as it is. All one project out of the governor’s own pocket.”
He sniffed the air a few times. “Technically sponsored by his family’s company, but from what I hear, he’s never actually worked for the company in all his years. This whole capital and the other four sectors… all one trust fund kid’s plan.”
What? Ignoring that last part, Zedd's jaw tightened as he locked into what mattered. “But I kept the Hub running that night. If I didn’t know what I was doing, how could I pull that off?”
The floor manager scoffed, nearly laughing as he swung a foot up on his desk. “Kid, I know you’re the farthest thing from one so don’t act like a fuckin’ idiot. You think the reality of what happened matters more than how people already feel?” He swung his other foot up and shook his head. “Being entirely honest, Connor's been on my ass about you since day one. He’s been fucked over for at least two promotions since he joined up that way. Thinks you’re another classic plant. But we both know that ain’t true.”
Elias snorted, his barely-amused smile just this side of bitter. “Hell, Connor knows it too. Man’s just got too much of an ego to admit it you’re the real deal.”
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Zedd didn’t shift, didn’t move, but he could feel something when Elias added, “’Specially cause Nina keeps eyein’ you.”
Wait—what?
Zedd blinked, his expression slipping for half a second before he could catch it. Nina?
The thought circled in his head as he replayed the last few weeks, thinking about the short woman who’d been giving him a little more attention than most since he had shown up. They weren’t exactly friends, not like him and Kira’s crew, but they definitely spent more time together than he ever had with the other guys, especially with the three of them still busy with basic training.
Nina was a few years older than him too—he’d figured that out his first day—and always had a smile like she was thinking of something really funny.
But still…
Thought for later.
The teenager’s arms stayed folded as he let out a long slow breath, his words measured but sharp. Look, I’m done carrying dead weight while getting spat on for it. If working too hard makes me the villain, then fine. But I’m not rotting here just to make their egos feel better, especially if I'm not moving up anytime soon.”
Elias didn’t respond right away. his sharp gaze stayed steady, searching Zedd’s expression like he was testing for cracks.
When he found none, the old man gave a single nod. “Fair enough.”
Just like that.
No argument. No anger. No guilt trip.
Just... acceptance.
It threw Zedd for a second, the lack of pushback making him feel almost off-balance. He straightened his shoulders, clearing his throat. “Thanks for the opportunity, bossman,” he said, the words feeling stiff in his mouth despite himself.
“Shut up,” Elias grunted, the old floor manager leaning back in his chair as it let out a faint creak. “Locker’s yours to clear out. Good luck, kid.”
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
And that was it.
Zedd found himself standing in the quiet shuffle of the locker room, the sound of boots on polymer flooring filling the empty spaces in his head.
The bench beside him held a small pile of his stuff: a worn pair of gloves, a dented multitool, a couple of ration bars he hadn’t remembered leaving there.
Nothing sentimental.
He worked in silence, the murmurs of the other workers drifting around him like static. Some of them glanced his way as they moved in and out, their expressions ranging from uninterested to... something else.
“Good riddance,” someone muttered, the words low but loud enough to be deliberate.
Zedd didn’t even bother looking up.
“Better luck out there, kid,” another voice said, quieter, almost kind.
That one caught him off guard, but he didn’t respond to it either.
As he snapped the last latch on his bag, Zedd noticed Connor stepping into the room out of the corner of his eye. the older man froze for a split second, his brows furrowing as his grizzled features twisted into something halfway between surprise and irritation.
Zedd didn’t hesitate.
He slung the bag over his shoulder, standing tall as he turned toward the exit.
His gaze locked with Connor's, and for the first time in weeks, a grin tugged at Zedd's mouth as he looked at the other man.
It wasn’t friendly.
“Your job’s safe, big guy,” he said lightly as he walked past.
Connor didn’t reply. He just stared after Zedd, probably trying to figure out if he’d been insulted.
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
Later that afternoon—early evening back on Earth, maybe, but with the sun here refusing to clock out till whenever—it felt like time didn’t matter. Zedd stood in front of the prefab, arms loose at his sides, his shadow stretching long and jagged over the uneven dirt. Somewhere in the background, machinery hummed, its low drone almost fading into the occasional chirp from some alien bird—or something that wanted to be a bird.
Arkadia IV's ecosystem didn’t really deal in clear labels.
The house? Sixty-five square meters of functional.
No frills.
Prefab walls in muted off-white, straight lines that felt like they were cut out of a template, and a roofline that didn’t even pretend to care about aesthetics. It wasn’t trying to impress anyone.
Zedd kind of respected that. It looked like something you’d forget the second you walked past it, but it was solid.
Sturdy. Mine.
“Forty-two thousand credits down payment, ninety-eight five-hundred total,” the realtor said, her tone polished and practiced, like she’d given this exact pitch at least a hundred and a half times before. “Non-negotiable, considering your age and lack of financial history. These units don’t come cheap, especially furnished.”
She gave him a polite pause, probably expecting some pushback, or at least a question.
Zedd didn’t blink.
He raised his omni-tool, the blue glow lighting up the edges of his face as his fingers worked fast, tapping through menus like muscle memory. A soft beep confirmed the transfer.
Done.
The realtor blinked, clearly thrown off. “That was... fast.”
“You said non-negotiable,” Zedd replied, shrugging one shoulder as he slid the omni-tool back into standby. “Why waste time?”
Her composure snapped back in place quick, but there was a crack of surprise under the polished smile she threw on. “Alright then. Here's the transfer code for the deed. Once you sync it, the house is officially yours.”
He scanned the code without a word, the quiet beep of confirmation marking the deed as his.
“Congratulations,” she said, a hint of something—politeness, or maybe faint curiosity—slipping through her voice. “How’s it feel to be a homeowner, young man?”
Zedd glanced at the house again. Simple walls. Bare dirt. The kind of structure that practically begged to be ignored. His lips tugged into the faintest ghost of a grin.
“Feels good.”
--------------------------------------
The prefab smelled like prefab—chemical clean, with just enough of that synthetic edge to remind you everything was new. Over the next day, Zedd dragged his life inside, one armload at a time. Clothes…
Yeah, that was pretty much it.
He didn’t have much else, he realized to himself as he glanced around.
Home wasn’t the word for it. not yet. maybe not ever. But it was his, and that was enough for now.
First priority? The front room.
It wasn’t a room so much as a box someone forgot to finish.
No door, just an opening that didn’t bother pretending to be anything else. The floor had that prefab smoothness, the kind that scuffed too easily, and the walls stared back like they were waiting for him to give them a reason to exist.
Zedd stood in the doorway, arms crossed, his head tilting slightly as his eyes dragged over the space. His lips pressed together for a moment before he muttered, “Functional... but bare as hell.”
The furnishing package wasn’t much to look at, but it was enough to start.
Over the week, he chipped away at the space. The desk came first, dragged across the floor with a screech that made his shoulders twitch. then the terminal—sleek, compact, way better than anything he’d touched back in the maintenance shed.
Zedd dropped into the chair, his body slumping forward just enough to tap the power button on the terminal.
The holographic interface lit up, smooth and responsive.
“Alright.”
Zedd wiped his brow with the back of his hand, his fingers smearing dust across his temple like war paint. not that he cared. He glanced around the room, taking in the slow but steady transformation. The shelf along the far wall was packed now—tools stacked like puzzle pieces he’d found in the local markets. Multitools, a welding kit that hummed a little too loud but got the job done, a soldering iron he hadn’t even unwrapped yet.
It was a mess. A functional one.
He swiveled the chair side to side, the wheels squeaking faintly against the floor. His fingers tapped out a restless rhythm on the edge of the desk, his eyes drifting to the terminal’s holographic display. The glow lit up the corner of the room, a steady pulse of light like it was waiting for him to make a move.
“Gonna use that for orders,” he muttered, nodding to himself. His eyes flicked to his omni-tool, sitting on the desk, its screen dark. “Better than dumping all that onto my personal shit.”
Orders for what, though?
Outside, the project waiting for him was even more ambitious.
Zedd crouched in the dirt, his knees brushing the uneven ground as he worked. The holoprojector sat in front of him, its casing scuffed from being dragged halfway across the colony and back again. Not top of the line—not even close—but it was solid enough to work with.
“Alright,” he muttered, his omni-tool lighting up as he scrolled through the interface. His fingers hesitated for half a second before tapping into the calibration menu. The projection grid sputtered to life, flickering with weak light, and Zedd's jaw tightened.
“C’mon,” he muttered, his tone edging toward a warning. “Don’t make me regret spending that much on you.”
The grid flickered again, the light sputtering before stabilizing. A soft hum filled the air, low and steady, like the machine had finally decided to cooperate. Zedd stood, brushing dirt off his hands, his eyes fixed on the letters forming in midair.
VICTOR’S TECH REPAIR
He let the grin creep up slow, his head tilting slightly as he took a step back to admire it.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “That'll work.”
--------------------------
TWO WEEKS LATER
--------------------------
The first clients trickled in slower than he’d expected. Zedd leaned against the doorframe one afternoon, watching a wiry old man fresh off his mining shift shuffle up with a busted holo-display tucked under his arm. “Won’t turn on,” the guy muttered, not even meeting his eyes.
Zedd nodded, taking the display and running his fingers along the edges, his brain already ticking through the possibilities.
While he had been learning a lot about the actual work he was doing, half the time, he didn’t even know why he knew what he knew. It just felt... obvious.
Wires frayed, connections loose, capacitors fried.
Common sense, right?
The work was small at first, simple stuff.
Sluggish omni-tools, cracked displays, devices that just needed a hard reset. Zedd handled each job methodically, his hands moving before his thoughts could catch up.
But word spread faster than he thought possible.
One day it was locals with basic problems.
The next, it was miners dragging in power cells that reeked of burnt circuits or colonists clutching omni-tools that lagged so bad they might as well have been paperweights.
My fault for moving into a family neighborhood full of blue-collars and roughnecks.
Whatever the reason, the jobs piled up quick.
-----------------------------
Zedd leaned against the workbench, his weight braced on his forearms, staring down at the holo-display in front of him. The projection sputtered faintly, thin lines of static cutting through the image.
“Another one bites the dust,” he muttered, grabbing a tool from the tray beside him.
The casing popped off with a soft click, exposing a tangle of wires and circuitry that distinctly smelled like… liquor. The woman who’d dropped it off, some wiry colonist with a distracted look in her eyes, had said something about her kid tripping over it during a game or something.
Zedd hadn’t asked for details. The faint flush on her face said enough.
His hands moved without hesitation, the tool in his grip steady as he prodded the wiring. The faint smell of burnt plastic clung to the air, sharp and acrid, as he worked.
Wasn’t the first display he’d fixed this week. Probably wouldn’t be the last.
The pile of busted tech in the corner told him everything he needed to know. Word was spreading fast. Too fast, maybe.
He glanced at the workbench, the trays of half-finished jobs stacked high, each one a little more complicated than the last. Whatever, I’m just being a whiner, he snorted aloud. Ten credstacks in two weeks was enough to make anyone stop fucking complaining about most shit, being honest. This rate, I could buy that car in two months.
Next up was an omnitool, sluggish and unresponsive.
The thing sat on the edge of his workbench like a dead weight, its pale blue glow flickering weakly as it booted up for diagnostics. The whole setup fell low-rent and prone to fall apart, even before Zedd got to work on it.
Zedd’s fingers hovered for a second, eyes narrowing at the brand name that lit up. “Polaris P-3?” he scoffed, dragging the words out as if saying them slower might make them make sense. “Doesn’t Kassa make guns?” he flipped the device over, looking for some kind of logo or serial number, but the back was blank, matte-gray like the rest of it.
“Yeah, nah. Whoever marketed this was asleep,” he muttered, his tone laced with curiosity despite his annoyance. He dropped it onto the workbench, giving it one more dubious glance before booting the diagnostics.
The screen flickered once, then again, its response lagging just enough to be annoying.
Old software. Cheap casing. Weird guts, probably. Zedd shook his head, rubbing the bridge of his nose before leaning in to start poking around. “Well, whatever.”
The words barely escaped his lips before his hands were already moving, the familiar weight of a micro-calibrator in one hand, precision tool in the other. He didn’t think about it.
Almost never needed to.
The process was as automatic as breathing, a rhythm for his body, not his brain.
The omnitool groaned—actually groaned, as if offended by his efforts—when he pried off the back casing. A tangled mess of wires stared up at him, the kind of disarray that made him whistle under his breath. “Oh, this is ugly.”
The cheap wiring was halfway melted near the power core. Fucked.
He frowned, tilting his head like that might help him piece together what had gone wrong. Some of it looked like factory defects, but there were...modifications?
Amateur ones, if the shitty soldering was anything to go by.
“Somebody did you real dirty, huh?” he muttered, not expecting an answer. The omnitool sparked faintly, making him flinch back just enough to scowl at it. “Alright, alright, keep your secrets.”
The room around him was quiet, apart from the low hum of his tools and the faint, distant thrum of machinery outside the prefab walls. His focus tunneled in, the way it always did when he worked on something, as the outside world faded away.
Wire by wire, circuit by circuit, he started patching the thing back together as he removed what didn’t work and got to the heart of it all, his movements sure and steady. It had to be said, though, that half the fixes didn’t feel like actual solutions, just band-aids to keep the thing from falling apart completely.
Still, if it works…
Ten minutes in, the sluggish boot-up was gone. Progress.
Another twenty, and the cheap soldering was scraped clean, replaced with something that didn’t make his nose wrinkle every time he looked at it.
“Almost there,” he murmured, more to the omni-tool than himself. One last adjustment, and the flickering glow steadied, the badly-made omni humming faintly as it powered up. He leaned back, letting out a quiet exhale that wasn’t quite relief.
“Not bad.” Zedd ran his thumb along the edge of the casing, snapping it back into place with a small click. The omni blinked once, steady and stable now, though something about it still felt clunky.
That was a bigger problem. Could fix it. He frowned deeply, fingers drumming against the edge of the bench. Maybe.
“Yeah, but how?” This part left his mouth, his thoughts moving faster than his lips. “I don’t know how to code.”
Hell, the thought made his shoulders tense. He really didn’t know programming. All his skills didn’t go anywhere beyond patching holes in busted interfaces, and that was weird instinct and muscle memory, not knowledge. Still, the sluggishness bugged him.
Left it half-done.
That wasn’t his style.
His eyes flicked to the terminal on the desk, the faint blue glow of its screen almost calling him to make an attempt. “Guess I could try.”
He slid over to the terminal, its interface springing to life with a soft hum. The extranet search bar blinked at him, waiting.
Zedd cracked his knuckles out of habit, then hesitated. “...right. This is probably gonna suck.”
Once again, he was right.
The search results hit like a wall of “get fucked,” half in Salarian and half in tech-babble that felt like someone was cosplaying a thesaurus. His head throbbed from trying to decode words poorly translated into English in ways that just didn’t work half the time. Not for learning, at least.
He clicked a few links at random, scanning guides and forums with an intensity that burned more energy than he realized.
Turns out, omnitool programming was a mess.
Salarians apparently invented the first models like half a millennium back, which explained the overcomplicated frameworks. Every race had their own variant standard of programming language for their omnitool development, which all meshed with each other perfectly somehow, which made perfect sense, sure. Weird fucking scifi logic.
Humans came way later, doing their own thing by layering a language called SolMod onto the existing systems—some derivative of something called “Swift.”
“Swift,” he muttered, the word rolling off his tongue.
It was familiar in a way that made him pause, fingers hovering over the terminal. 2014 familiar, maybe.
A fleeting image of a tired tech teacher with a gray datapad, a buzzcut and a coffee-stained tie flashed through his mind, but it vanished just as quickly as it came.
“Huh.” Zedd leaned back in his chair, rubbing at the corner of his eye with a faint scowl. His gaze drifted back to the omnitool, its orange glow steady now, like it was waiting for him to make up his mind.
“Alright, then.” He sat forward again, clicking his tongue on his teeth before diving in.
The deeper he went into the thing, the worse it looked.
Granted, he didn’t consider himself an expert, especially after a few hours of learning, no matter how big his brain seemingly was, but he was pretty sure programming wasn’t supposed to be pretty, but this?
This was just… wrong.
Tangles of compatibility frameworks layered on top of each other like someone was trying to stack a house of cards on quicksand. Salarian legacy framework barely managing to hold the messy shitpile of human-made code together with what had to be omni-gel and a whole lot of prayers to whatever religious trend was sweeping the NUSA right now.
Zedd frowned at the mess on his screen, the flickering light blue glow of the P-3 mocking him from the corner of the workbench.
“No wonder you run like shit, little guy” he muttered, barely sparing it a glance before diving back into the terminal.
His fingers flew across the interface, inputting commands, rewriting blocks of code, running test scripts. The rhythm of it was automatic now, muscle memory guiding his hands even when his brain didn’t have answers yet.
Most of the time, it felt like chasing a shadow.
He stopped.
Blinked.
Stared hard at a particular string of code, the logic snapping into place all of a sudden.
“Okay, so... this connects here?” his voice trailed off as his hands moved, quick and precise, but still a little hesitant.
The screen screamed ERROR in blood-red letters. "Fucking of course," he muttered, fighting the urge to slam the keyboard. “Alright, little shit. Round two.”
He deleted the line and started over, the hum of the terminal filling the room as his focus tightened.
Time blurred.
The sound of his tools, the faint buzz of machinery outside the prefab walls, the occasional crackle from the P-3—all of it faded. His world narrowed to the glow of the screen and the mess of code in front of him.
His frustration peaked, the tension sharp in his chest, before leveling out.
He leaned in closer, his fingers moving faster, the adjustments coming more naturally now. The fixes built on each other, each one solving one problem while creating two more, but he didn’t stop.
Delete. Rewrite. Test. Repeat.
“C’mon, c’mon...”
His voice was barely a whisper now, the words half-formed as his thoughts spiraled.
And then—
The screen blinked. No errors. The test ran clean.
Zedd sat back, his breath catching in his chest as his eyes skimmed the terminal.
Sluggishness? Gone. Interface? Smooth. Response time? Instant.
A grin tugged at his lips before he realized it. “Holy shit,” he said, the words half a laugh.
He stared at the screen, letting the moment sink in.
“I did it.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
“Let's get back to it,” Zedd muttered, barely above a whisper. The omni-tool in his hands blinked faintly, its glow cutting through the dim light of the prefab.
Another busted relay. Great.
His thumb pressed against the stubborn wire, pushing it into place. The relay clicked, the faintest sound, but enough to make him sigh in relief. one down.
He set it aside and reached for the next one, fingers already searching for weak spots along the casing.
These things were piling up. Word had spread quick after that first fix, and now his desk looked like a graveyard for omni-tools. Most of them old models that barely qualified as functional anymore, but nobody wanted to shell out for replacements.
Business was always plentiful in a blue-collar neighborhood. Zedd shrugged, more to himself than anyone else. Work was work.
His grip tightened on the screwdriver as he leaned closer, focusing on the tiny screws along the side of the unit.
The quiet shuffle of footsteps behind him barely registered at first.
Then arms slid over his shoulders, slow and warm, pulling him back.
His hands froze, the tool slipping just enough to tap against the table.
He tensed automatically, breath catching, before the familiar smell hit him. Lavender, grease, a hint of cheap soap.
Nina.
Zedd let out a slow breath, his chest relaxing as he leaned into her hold.
Her nose brushed against his cheek, soft and teasing, her hair tickling the side of his face as she leaned in closer.
“Messin’ up my focus,” he mumbled, but there was no bite to it.
Her laugh was quiet, more air than sound.
“You say that every time,” she said, her voice low and playful.
He tilted his head, catching her mouth in a quick kiss. Reflex, almost.
Her grin widened as she pulled back, hopping onto the edge of the desk beside him.
Nina.
It wasn’t like they were a thing.
Not really.
She came and went, wore his shirts, sat in his chair sometimes, usually when he was still in it.
People talked.
Zedd didn’t care.
He gave her a sideways glance, still fiddling with the omni-tool. “You’re just here to distract me, huh?”
“Pretty much,” she said, stretching her arms above her head. The hem of his shirt—definitely his—rose just enough to flash bare skin.
He looked. Couldn’t help it.
Nina noticed, of course, her grin sharp now.
It helped that they weren’t coworkers anymore.
She liked that part.
A lot.
Zedd pushed the chair back as she swung a leg over his lap, settling there like she belonged.
Her lips found his again, slower this time, more deliberate. His hands rested loose on her waist, fingers brushing the edge of the shirt as she kissed him. The hum of the terminal filled the quiet space, blending with the sound of her breath and his own.
Then his omni-tool beeped.
Zedd's head turned automatically, but Nina's hand caught his wrist before he could move.
“Zee,” she said, her voice lower now, the teasing edge gone and replaced with another edge.
“Yeah?” he blinked, a little cautious.
She tilted his wrist slightly, the faint glow of the omni-tool lighting up her face.
“Who's Kira?”
Zedd’s stomach hit the floor. Fuck.
He opened his mouth to answer but before he could, his omni-tool lit up again.
From: Kira Varne
So, when am I gonna see that new house, rich boy?
He glanced back at Nina. Double fuck.