The Zephyr's Wake didn't land; it tumbled. With the High Council's interceptors snapping at their heels, Elara had forced the skiff into a steep dive, aiming for the one place the sensors couldn't penetrate: The Veridian Shallows.
On the maps, it was a lush, floating forest. In reality, it was a localized nightmare.
The ship skidded through the canopy, its hull screaming as branches of bioluminescent oak tore at the metal. With a bone-jarring thud, the skiff came to a halt, nose-buried in a bank of glowing moss. Silence fell over the woods, broken only by the ticking of the cooling engine.
"Status report," Elara coughed, waving away the smoke.
"Hull integrity: 34%. Stealth: Absolute," Valerius replied. "However, I must advise caution. The local flora is... non-linear."
Elara stepped off the ramp and gasped. The forest was beautiful, but it was wrong. A tree to her left had leaves that flickered like a television screen losing its signal. To her right, a stream of water flowed upward, defying gravity in a slow, rhythmic spiral.
"The Static," Elara whispered. "It's worse here."
"Correct. This sector is being 'de-fragmented' by the planetary OS," Valerius explained. "The code that defines physics has become corrupted. Stay on the marked path, Elara. If you step into a null-zone, you may cease to be."
As they trekked deeper into the woods, the air grew cold—not the cold of winter, but the cold of a void. Suddenly, a low growl vibrated through the ground. From behind a shimmering bush stepped a Stag-Byte.
It looked like a deer, but its antlers were jagged polygons of light, and its fur was a shifting mosaic of textures—sometimes fur, sometimes raw binary code. Its eyes were two glowing "X"s.
"Is it friendly?" Elara asked, slowly reaching for her scrap-shocker.
"It is a corrupted sub-routine," Valerius warned. "It views us as foreign data. A virus to be deleted."
The Stag-Byte lunged. It didn't move smoothly; it "teleported" in short, stuttering bursts of speed. Elara fired her shocker, but the bolt of electricity passed right through the creature's pixelated chest.
"I can't hit it!" she yelled, dodging a headbutt that would have shattered her ribs.
"Synchronize with me," Valerius commanded. "The Silicon Heart can 'patch' the local reality. Reach into the satchel. Touch the core. Imagine the forest as it should be."
Elara grabbed the Heart. It burned with a cold fire. She closed her eyes, visualizing the Stag-Byte not as a monster, but as a living thing. She pushed that thought through the Heart.
A pulse of pure, golden light rippled outward. Where the light touched the Stag-Byte, the flickering stopped. The jagged antlers smoothed into bone. The "X" eyes became soft and brown. The creature blinked, shook its head as if waking from a dream, and trotted peacefully into the underbrush.
"You fixed it," Elara breathed, looking at her hands.
"I provided the patch," Valerius said. "You provided the empathy. But we cannot stay. The pulse we just emitted was a flare in the dark. The High Council knows exactly where we are now."