I woke up to Imbertri pouring fuel back in my tank.

The entire part had been replaced, feeling new and less worn, as well as the filters and connecting pipes. In human terms it would probably have translated to something like a heart transplant, along with most of my arteries and veins.

The broken panel was in less positive condition. It had been taken off and replaced, but the substitute was used and slightly dented, along with being a different colour again. Was I the only one who cared about my appearance?

Still, I didn’t complain. Along with Imbertri, Sajjpen – the Chapel’s senior mechanic – stood watching against the bay wall. He was a dark man with dark clothes and too many joints segmenting his body at any point imaginable, which had made him terrifying as an assassin and honestly in general, but exactly who you wanted as a technician. At least if he had the right parts.

“I’m awake,” I said through my speakers.

“Good,” Imbertri replied. Outside of the hazmat suit, she was a slight brown woman with equally brown hair and penetrating yellow eyes. They’d also been brown before her last augment, a vision-based treatment my Defect had Near Missed into faulty operation. Her petite arms squeezed the last few drops from the fuel hose and started walking it back to its holster. “You do realise there’s such a thing as biological medicine, right? Next time, learn to use a tourniquet.”

“Healing normally would take weeks,” I excused myself. “I still have to take missions.”

“How do you feel?” Sajjpen asked with a touch more diplomacy.

“Better.” I transformed back, prepared to reverse the change at the first sign of trouble.

Everything was fine, however – except for the arm, which had healed with a large scar. Half of it was now also jaundice-yellow, which I accepted with a sigh. “I’m guessing my budget ran out?”

“I’m seeing you too often,” declared Sajjpen. He pushed off the wall and crossed the floor. “Why are they sending you to missions above your paygrade?”

“They’re not,” I said. “It’s –”

“I know why it is,” the second-tier interrupted. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Er,” I floundered, taken aback at the unexpected change in direction. “Pay for an upgrade?”

He looked me somewhat justifiably up and down. “With what credit?”

“That’s… a good question,” I admitted. “I suppose I keep straddling the line until my budget and health skew one way or the other and I make my goal or die.”

The wiry man folded his arms. “I won’t let that happen. But one day I won’t be here anymore, and I can’t speak for my replacement.”

“What do you mean, ‘upgrade’?” Imbertri asked me, shooting me an intense stare. From her, it looked unnaturally piercing. “That’s more expensive.”

I made an unhappy noise in the back of my throat. “Maybe, but this is the worst Defect. There’s every chance I could have woken up right now with the wrong pieces replaced just because it decided to trigger. And that can be at any time.” I waved my arm at her flippantly. “It got you, didn’t it? I’m a walking repeatable timebomb to myself and everyone around me. I have to do something.”

“Mmm,” Sajjpen uttered in a tone somewhere between judgemental and approving. “I’m going to put in a word about you in particular. You’ve been a Tri for too long, and even a core Defect shouldn’t be this much of a problem. If the mighty House of Fate can’t handle it, something’s wrong.”

I scratched at the new piece of arm. It itched slightly. “Thanks, Sajjpen. But what’ll they do?”

The mechanic shrugged, a surreal, inhuman motion thanks to the joints lining his shoulders and upper arms. “Waive your purchase fee, perhaps? Who knows. But I think they’d do well to run an analysis. There might be something hiding in there.” He brought out a finger and tapped me twice with it in the centre of my chest, before sidling around and placing himself between me and the door to the infinite staircase. “You've taken up enough of my time. Try not to see me again.”

Imbertri glanced at me as the aperture closed behind him. “Bet you’ll be back here within the month.”

“I will with you helping,” I said, eying her sideways.

She grinned, though the smile didn’t last. “He’s right, though. Your Defect isn’t normal. I’ve been around long enough to spot the difference.”

So had I, but realising it didn't make any practical difference, and dwelling on the matter didn't do anything but put me in a bad mood. I gave the usual excuses. “It’s my core, and it’s Fate-aligned.”

“Lamutri –” Her features twisted, eyes sliding away from me. She’d been doing that a lot lately, ever since advancing to Tri. Whatever her Defect made her perceive, it hadn’t been playing well with me.

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“I know where you’re going with this,” I interrupted. “Subconscious desires and all that. I’ve already considered it. Run through it over and over. Trust me, I wish it were the case. But ever since I got this thing, it has sabotaged me at every available turn. I want to be here. I want to move up the ranks. I want to do it via a path of my choosing, because I definitely wouldn’t have chosen this. And I can’t. There is no way you can convince me this is anything but a problem.”

“That’s not what I was going to say at all,” Imbertri countered. She pursed her lower lip before continuing with her next words, biting the corner with her front teeth. “I was going to say I can see it.”

“What do you mean?” I queried. “You can see Near Miss? You didn’t tell me Naked Eye could do that.”

“I may have… lied,” my colleague admitted. “Don’t be mad. It wasn’t just to you. It was everyone, and the fact that I’m trusting you with this –” this last part was spoken with emphasis, “– means I’d appreciate your discretion.” She took a deep breath. “Naked Eye. Supposed to dispel illusions, blah blah. Except we both know it doesn't work like it's meant to. It’s actually worse than I let on.”

“This only proves my point,” I insisted.

“The reason I lied,” Imbertri continued in an annoyed tone, “is because there are many things in here I’m certain I’m not supposed to see, and I don't feel like explaining that to a senior hierarchy known for their terminal solutions. And you don’t have a Defect.”

“That’s because I have three,” I deadpanned.

“You have two,” Imbertri acknowledged. She glanced around the room, scanning the walls and ceiling. “And I have one. But your Near Miss? Lamutri, it’s an Arch. And that’s not even the weirdest part.”

“Then what’s the weirdest part?” I persisted, discarding the previous information the moment it entered my head.

Imbertri didn’t let me. “Later. What matters is that your core is an Arch. An Arch that’s been altering your augments and mine, and probably a lot of other things we don’t even realise.”

I rocked back on my heels on the bay floor, folding my arms over my chest. “That’s impossible. The chances are one in a hundred thousand.”

“So are the odds for various illnesses. It happens. Rarity is relative. It only seems worse than it is because we’re part of a small pool.”

“Secondly,” I added, dropping out of the defensive pose into something more assertive, “the whole point of Arches is that you can control them. If it was one, it would have to be an Arch Defect, and you’d think someone would have mentioned it by now if those were a thing. Thirdly, the source of your information is also an unreliable Defect. Fourthly, how would you even know what Arches look like? Have you ever seen one to compare?”

“I just do,” Imbertri said firmly. “Trying to describe it might as well be describing smells to someone without a nose. It’s not just the Arch, either. Even our Defects are off. They meet the criteria, but they're different to other agents’. Succinctly put, we’ve been altered. Deliberately. And all signs point to your core.”

I stared at her for a good few seconds. “This isn’t funny,” I said.

“I agree,” Imbertri said, crossing her arms for emphasis. “Think about it. If your Arch is trying to prevent you from doing something, that implies it’s important. And if it’s gone to this much trouble to hide its nature –”

“Which you’ve just ruined, if so.”

“– then maybe there was a reason for that,” she finished. “My point is, I’m worried.”

I dropped my arms to my sides, looking away with a small laugh. “This is crazy,” I said. “You’re asking me, the person who lives with them, to believe all my problems are the result of something ridiculous that hinges on your word alone, after you just admitted lying to me. As opposed to a simple and rational cause that explains everything.”

“Yes.”

“No!” I countered, putting a hand to my forehead. “Maybe if you had some kind of proof, but even then –”

“I bet,” pronounced Imbertri, loudly enough that it echoed around the chamber, “that I’m right.”

The arguments died on my lips in spite of myself. It felt like a vice clamped around my chest and the fresh blood in my veins forgot its lessons on heat retention. The air around us felt still and clammy, suspended in bated pressure as reality waited for direction.

“I won’t take that bet,” I said, feeling the invisible tension rush back to a normal equilibrium. “You can’t change something like that at Par grade, besides.”

“I don’t have to. Because I’m right.”

“And even if you could,” I continued, ignoring her, “wouldn’t that make it worse? Why would an erratic and unpredictable Arch be any better than an erratic and unpredictable Defect, especially if the former meant it also came with a host of larger ominous questions?”

“Then you won’t know,” Imbertri said simply. She shook her head, rolling her yellow eyes. “Fine. I tried. That’s the way things are, whether you believe it or not. I’ve had enough for today, and I’ve got a mission soon. You do what you want.”

I stood in the centre of the worn concrete as the inner door slammed behind my co-worker, and lifted my chin to the ceiling. Swirls of dust played down on the roof’s domed glass, its best feature. No doubt a common trait of the local architecture. I was fairly sure the Chapel had just repurposed the building from its original owners. Fate knew what had happened to them.

Twelve years. There was no way I’d been sitting with an Arch as my core that whole time. If it walked and talked like a Defect, it made for a pretty good indication. Imbertri’s own Defect must have been influencing her judgement, which was ultimately also my fault and rammed home the need for an upgrade.

Yet the conversation admittedly had me rattled. There was a chance, however miniscule, that Imbertri could be correct. Or wrong but approaching the right path. What if an augment could be Arch and Defect simultaneously? Or there were some rare edge cases for particular augments?

It felt like fanciful wish-fulfilment. Everyone dreamt of uncovering an Arch. Some, like Flinq, actually had a viable chance. Nobody I’d met actually knew anybody who had one, thanks to the Chapel’s continual upwards churn. It was hard to distinguish fact from the rumours. Apparently it had been an Arch that had started the House. But everyone could agree they were powerful, enough to make Exalts seem like child’s play. Reality a toy in one’s fingers, even across the multiverse.

And why say something only now? I didn’t buy the ‘I know too much’ excuse. Imbertri was a schemer, sharp like a poised knife in the moment before it cut. Of all my colleagues to come and go, it was she who intimidated me most despite us having comparatively more in common. While the rest of us were here doing our jobs saving the multiverse via the power of murder, Imbertri struck me as striving for a different agenda. The kind that involved calculation and knowing things, and the kind that had a defined end.

Telling me wouldn’t have been a mistake.

Shaking my head, I stomped my way off and out. I’d just woken up and didn’t even know the day. Might as well go home and rest. Assassinations could wait.