Sebastian remained at the edge of the promenade, his gaze locked on the inward curve of the Citadel's arms arcing high above. The simulated dusk painted the sky panels in a warm gradient, yet it felt hollow. He stood motionless, not from indecision, but from the gravity of the moment settling into his chest. He was here. Finally, undeniably, here. Not in a vision, not during integration—he had arrived in the galaxy's most significant political, cultural, and technological node. And it wasn't fate that brought him. There was no destined script to follow. He had only the gift of presence and the burden of intent.
Foot traffic flowed around him in a steady tide. Turians, salarians, volus, humans, and dozens more moved past without a second glance. He watched them absently. In another world, he might have walked among them with simple curiosity. But now, every movement carried weight, and every passing face reminded him of the subtle current beneath the surface. Karmic strands, silent and frayed, weaving chaos without a center.
> "Local authority protocols confirm a civilian accommodation packet has been filed. Administrative contact has been established in Section D," SAS-C announced with smooth precision. "Processing queue is short."
Sebastian exhaled and stepped away from the railing. He moved with deliberate slowness, drawing inward. The simulation overhead faded behind him as he followed the glowing floor guides toward the Alliance-administered processing annex tucked into the commercial wing's infrastructure. A discreet checkpoint marked the entrance—no guards, just an iris scanner and a bored human clerk seated behind a slim terminal.
Sebastian presented his temporary ID tag without a word. The clerk ran a scan, squinting at the verification window.
"Sebastian Dalton, civilian intake, assigned through emergency evacuation routing. Franklin's World, right?" the man asked without looking up.
"Yeah," Sebastian replied quietly.
"Alright. Housing's been pre-cleared. You're slotted for Tower East, Level Fourteen, subunit B. Standard amenities, recycled furnishings. Maintenance has been in since the last occupant. You've got a two-week residency evaluation, then someone will review your employment status for further authorization."
The clerk's tone lacked any concern or curiosity. He handed over a sealed datachip with access credentials, a building map, and a short orientation brief.
> "Records match fabrication layer," SAS-C whispered internally. "No deviation detected. Cover remains stable."
Sebastian took the chip, nodded once, and stepped back without another word. As he turned to leave, his muscles remained tight. The procedure was routine, but each small moment added a brick to the new structure of his identity. One mistake, one inconsistency, and the entire edifice could crack.
The lift ride to the residential towers was uneventful. Screens along the walls played muted Alliance recruitment ads. He ignored them.
Tower East was modest. Concrete composites painted in muted greens, low-traffic lighting, modular hallways. The walls bore faint evidence of hasty maintenance: paint stripes unaligned, panel seams visible, and the smell of overused cleanser still hanging in the air.
He found Unit B. The door accepted his access code with a low chirp. Inside, the room was a narrow studio with bare walls and a collapsible cot against one side. The wash station gleamed in the corner, untouched. A personal terminal blinked patiently from the wall mount.
Sebastian stepped inside and stood in silence. The door closed behind him with a mechanical click.
> "Initial scan of quarters complete. Structural integrity acceptable. Surveillance grid neutral. Environment cleared for autonomous modification."
"Feels like a refugee capsule," Sebastian murmured.
"It is temporary. Utility supersedes comfort."
He dropped his duffel to the ground and approached the window. It offered a slim view of the Citadel's residential ring—a curtain of steel and light. For a moment, he simply watched, breathing in the filtered air and letting the stillness envelop him.
Then he turned and sat on the edge of the cot, resting his elbows on his knees. His thoughts ran faster than he could process. So much had led to this quiet room, and so much more lay beyond it.
"We have to move forward. But first, we get grounded. No more skips. No more leaps."
> "Short-term priority list prepared. Would you like a visual?"
"Project it."
A soft shimmer appeared on the far wall. SAS-C displayed a simplified framework: secure hardware tools, establish digital infrastructure, identify income sources, acquire field gear. Nothing grand. Just the bricks for a foundation.
Sebastian nodded slowly. "Let's do it right."
> "Integration protocol active. No anomalies detected. Your mind remains stable."
He exhaled, deeply and deliberately.
Then he lay back, eyes on the ceiling, and let sleep begin to take him.
---
Sebastian awoke slowly to the artificial daylight humming just beyond the edges of the window. The ambient temperature adjusted itself subtly as his consciousness stirred. His body, already adapting to the artificial cycles of the Citadel, responded with an almost unsettling readiness. No stiffness, no lingering fatigue. The nanites had worked through the night, continuing their micro-adjustments, tuning muscle groups, circulatory patterns, and neurological baselines.
> "Pulse optimal. Sleep efficiency at ninety-two percent. Internal nanite maintenance complete. No anomalies detected."
Sebastian stretched, first arms, then legs, and sat upright. The cot adjusted beneath him. He didn't speak right away. The room still smelled of sterile air and factory resin. It was not yet home. But it was his.
"Let's begin," he muttered.
He dressed in simple clothes, muted and functional. SAS-C had already provided biometric textile overlays—nothing special, just enough to keep tabs on his vital signs while also projecting a generic civilian profile. Most people wouldn't see anything worth noticing. That was exactly the point.
In the center of the room, he initiated a workout routine. It was a mix of dynamic tension movements and low-gravity stabilization drills. SAS-C monitored every repetition, providing subtle haptic feedback through the interface mapped into his nervous system.
> "Neural response is improving. Muscle fiber elasticity has increased by two percent. Suggesting minor adjustments to breathing intervals for improved oxygen saturation."
He pushed harder.
He wasn't training for aesthetics or even performance. He was training for control. The biotic nodules interlaced with his nervous system were sensitive to emotional flux. Precision and composure were essential. If the emotional signal spiked erratically, even a simple kinetic push could backfire.
By the time he finished, a light sheen of sweat coated his skin. He moved to the wash station and cooled himself under a short pulse of mist-spray. Then he dried, changed, and gathered the small satchel he had prepared the night before.
Time to scavenge.
He began in the lower districts—areas where few tourists roamed, and even fewer officials bothered to look closely. Here, small businesses mingled with junk dealers, tech traders, and storefronts that technically shouldn't exist without a merchant's license. But the Citadel was a city like any other. Loopholes lived in the cracks between regulations.
The first few shops were non-starters: tourist trinkets, overpriced salvage, sellers who sniffed out desperation and inflated their prices.
> "Avoiding stall 6B. Items are tagged with rudimentary traceware. Possibly compromised by a local protection network."
Sebastian gave the stall a wide berth and turned into a dimmer row of vendors, partially concealed by stacked crates and flickering signage. Here, he spotted it: a small corner shop, seemingly run by an older turian with grease on his claws and half a bionic jaw. The inventory was stacked in cluttered bins—old omni-tool shells, fractured thermal clips, worn-out capacitors, unused heat sinks, sensor clusters, micro-surge casings, and what appeared to be decommissioned drone parts.
Perfect.
Sebastian began sifting through a bin of outdated omni-tool components, picking up one item after another with practiced calm. He didn't ask questions. He didn't haggle. He just started a pile.
> "Top candidate identified. Omni-core Mark VI with thirty-six percent residual processing integrity. Potential upgrade path viable. Shield emitter coil located under adjacent bin. Corrosion minimal."
He found more: two micro-batteries he could rewire, a frayed neural relay suitable for interface rerouting, and a fragmented data node array—useless to anyone else, but with SAS-C's processing, likely repairable.
The turian said little. He barely looked up from his own project—a busted servomotor he was trying to stabilize with an uncooperative gel matrix. When Sebastian brought the pile over, he simply grunted.
"You doing repairs yourself?" the turian asked, glancing at the toolset hanging from Sebastian's belt.
"Nothing fancy. Just enough to get things working."
"Yeah, well, you get more outta junk than fresh stock these days. Fifty credits."
Sebastian paid in untraceable crypto-chits and left without further talk.
He visited two more locations—one for a used soldering wand with adaptive grip, another for a side-bag packed with assorted screws, polymer bonding agents, and sensor calibration pins. His shoulders were heavier now, but his mind buzzed with the possibilities.
By mid-afternoon, he was back in his quarters.
He laid everything out with a kind of reverence. Each piece had a purpose. Some components would be integrated directly. Others would be stripped for parts. A few would serve as test platforms for future experiments. But before any of that, everything had to be sterilized, scanned, and cleaned.
> "Beginning wideband analysis. Scans clear. No malware signatures, no microtracking. I will proceed to firmware purge and initiate dummy protocol overlays."
"Perfect."
He sat cross-legged in the center of the floor. The table, such as it was, became his workstation. Tools at the ready. AI projections flickering faintly in his periphery. Nanites stirring inside him, primed for the delicate work of bridging connections too small for soldering or bonding.
This was his sanctuary.
He stripped the omni-core first, identifying broken lattice links and eroded control matrices. He dissolved the corroded fragments using nanite-directed acid neutralizers, then patched the circuitry with alloy-laced filaments his body generated in microscopic quantities. It was slow. It required focus.
But it was his.
---
Sebastian worked until the Citadel's artificial day cycled into dim twilight. By the time he completed the structural integrity tests on his upgraded omni-tool, his hands ached—not from strain, but from prolonged precision. The tool now looked like any other worn unit someone might purchase secondhand from a clearance shelf. But inside, it was something else entirely.
> "Primary shell now houses independent dual-OS layers. Dummy interface fully operational. True system remains cloaked behind synthetic telemetry. No known digital forensics on the Citadel can penetrate the veil."
SAS-C's summary was clinical, yet there was a subtle undertone of pride in her voice. Or maybe he was imagining it. Either way, the work was done. The device was now keyed biometrically to him. It projected a generic civilian loadout—task calendars, public records access, and personal financial management tools. All distractions. The real functionality lay buried within the concealed layers: secure node interfacing, encrypted channel access, live nanite diagnostics, and systems override capabilities.
Sebastian rotated the omni-tool slowly on his wrist. To anyone else, it was just an old civilian model—nothing to be stolen, and certainly not worth hacking.
"Can we layer an illusion over the command prompt interface?" he asked.
> "Already implemented. Any unauthorized access attempt will be funneled into a guided tour simulation for a public model. They will not suspect the ruse unless they know to look for it."
He nodded.
The upgrades extended to more than just software. The shielding coil he acquired had been jury-rigged into a wearable dispersal harness, built into the underlayer of his jacket. It would not withstand a directed plasma bolt or an armor-piercing round, but it could suppress a kinetic shove, knife strike, or low-impact projectile—good enough to buy time in a sudden confrontation.
His room now reflected a kind of organized chaos. Spare components were sorted by function along the side table. The work mat displayed digital overlays of blueprint variations. Several defunct casings were stacked near the washroom wall, emptied of useful parts.
He looked around with a faint, tired satisfaction.
> "Executor, status is stable. You have achieved initial habitation milestone. Behavioral metrics indicate psychological grounding is improving."
"It's because I had something to do. Something small that I could fix."
> "Purposeful activity aligns with cognitive stabilization. Would you like to allocate time for food intake?"
Sebastian chuckled softly and stood up. His joints cracked faintly, though the nanites had already begun soothing the inflammation from extended kneeling. He grabbed a meal pack from the cabinet—one of the standard nutrient pouches provided to new residents—and dropped it into the heating port. The unit buzzed with a dull hum, steam rising a few seconds later. He moved to the small fold-out table, set the warm pack down, and settled onto the chair.
> "Would you like to review potential employment paths?"
He nodded slowly while chewing. "Yeah. Keep it quiet sector. Tech support, diagnostics, non-sensitive infrastructure systems. Something under the radar."
> "One suitable listing. Subcontractor maintenance for a small logistics node. Responsibilities include calibration of portable med-tech interfaces and periodic reviews of redundant software stacks. No background check beyond basic ID verification. Pay is modest. Interview is remote."
"That's the one. Apply through the alias file."
> "Request submitted. Onboarding packet will arrive within twenty-four hours."
He tapped at the omni-tool briefly, verifying the fake documentation. It would pass any casual glance. More importantly, it would allow him to be seen as harmless—just another underemployed tech civilian, scraping by with freelance work in the cracks of the system. That persona gave him mobility. And cover.
He leaned back in the chair, chewing slower now. The room had gone quiet, except for the occasional hum of a ventilation cycle. Through the small window, the Citadel skyline still glowed in its engineered dusk, serene and clean in its artificial way. He exhaled.
This moment of silence, of self-made order, held meaning. Not grand, not profound. But meaningful in its simplicity.
> "Executor, would you like a summary of current position?"
He thought for a second. "Go ahead."
> "Temporary housing secured. Financial buffer minimal but adequate. Functional omni-tool operational. Initial employment obtained. You are now positioned to pursue either low-profile advancement, identity solidification, or extended infrastructure infiltration. Karmic resonance is registering faint alignment in nearby threads."
"So the wheel's turning."
> "Slowly. But yes."
He stood again and returned the food pack to the dispenser slot for recycling. Then he walked back to the bed and sat on the edge.
A flicker of something passed through him. Not exhaustion. Not uncertainty. Something quieter. A sense of vastness. This was just the beginning. No one knew who he was. No one knew what he had done. What he could do. But soon, the ripples would start.
And all of it would start with a single push.