"More," Vegeta said, and the field answered like it had been waiting to be spoken to properly.
The plate bit; the bay's hum went up a key; a brace sang a thin, bright warning.
"Resonance," the engineer snapped. Her hand cut the air—two fingers to the tech on Driver B. "Shave the phase by one point six—now."
The tech's mouth moved around a number like it was a prayer. The driver harness ticked, a stutter-smear through the spectrum, and the song came off the brace and hid in the metal where it belonged.
"Hold," the engineer said—not to Vegeta; to the room. "Mounts at the edge. Ten seconds."
Vegeta didn't count. Counting made time cocky. His vision narrowed to clean edges, color bled to utility, breath became a tool he knew how to use.
Nappa had both hands flat on the crate without knowing it. The clerk held perfectly still because motion felt like an accusation.
Red flagged the corner of Vegeta's sight.
[SYSTEM: Hazard—mount resonance at 3.5g. Muscle microtear rate elevated. Recommend terminate.]
He put the words in the same drawer as mercy.
"Cut," the engineer said with the exact calm of someone who enjoyed keeping people alive. The field fell like a curtain, clean and total.
Vegeta stepped off without wobbling. The world tried to offer kindness; he declined it. A slow tremor ran the length of his tail—small, honest. He let it happen until it learned the new math and quit.
Nappa blew out a breath he owed the room. "Prince—your face went a little—"
"Bored?" Vegeta said.
Nappa snorted. "Pissed."
"Good," Vegeta said.
The engineer wiped grease into the page of skin at the base of her thumb, then wrote over it with the stylus. "We can push higher when the mounts are refit. Right now you'll get more from time than g."
Vegeta nodded once. "Then we make time do something useful."
She flicked her chin at the harness. "Bring it back up to three-point-two and hold for a minute. If the brace sings, you step off; we add lattice."
"To sing less later," Vegeta said.
"To not break now," she corrected, and didn't wait for agreement. "Three-point-two. Field on."
The plate took him. The first seconds were noise; the fifth became legible. Veins in his forearms stood in relief he hadn't asked for because the room needed to read him, too. He gave it what it needed and nothing it didn't.
Sweat found his hairline and stayed there; gravity clipped its wings. Breath ran numbers and returned with the answer: keep going.
"Thirty seconds," the engineer called. Her eyes never left the graphs that wanted to be drama. "Driver A at ninety-five, B at ninety-seven. We'll rebalance on the fly. Don't try to help."
"I'm helping," he said, by not moving.
The brace murmured. Nappa leaned and shoved a wedge under the mount before it could pretend to walk. The engineer didn't tell him to stop. She told him where to put the second wedge with a point of her stylus that had cut men before.
"Fifty," she said. "Bring B down two. A up one."
The field obeyed. The world stayed exact.
At sixty, she said, "Cut," and he stepped off with a body that disagreed and obeyed anyway.
The taste in his mouth had gone metallic. He rolled his shoulders once, slowly, to keep small pains honest. Good.
The engineer shoved a lattice section at Nappa. "Brace here, here, and here," she said, tapping three quick marks. To the tech: "Order another brace from supply. Also the temporary dampers I hate."
"You hate them," the tech said, already moving.
"They lie," she said. "They hide noise I need to hear."
"They buy you a minute," Vegeta said.
She didn't argue. "Take your breath, Prince. Then we go again."
"Breath taken," he said, stepping back onto the plate.
The clerk had found his voice and was trying to use it carefully. "Your Highness… Command pinged again. The flag says 'courtesy,' but the font is—"
"Tell them the room is talking," Vegeta said.
The clerk nodded like a man who had found a religion and hoped no one asked him to define it. "Yes, Your Highness."
"Three-point-two," the engineer said. "Ninety seconds."
The plate introduced him to the same old brother and held him there long enough for habit to grow callus. His ankles wrote complaints and were ignored. His hips wrote checks and cashed them. Breath measured and paid.
[SYSTEM: Training baseline extended. Protocol 'Pressure Sets' detail available—breathing cadence optimization suggested.]
He kept his cadence. He wasn't in a class.
"Sixty," the engineer called. "Seventy. Brace holding. Mounts quiet."
Nappa had stopped looking worried. He looked interested, which was louder.
"Ninety," she said. "Cut."
He stepped off. The room felt like weak soup. He didn't drink it.
The engineer pinched the bridge of her nose—fatigue acknowledged and shelved. "We can attempt three-point-five again for fifteen. If it sings, we cut without asking you. If we don't hear it, we go to twenty."
"Twenty-five," Vegeta said.
"Fifteen," she said. "Then twenty."
"Then twenty-five," he said.
She dipped her head, which in her language was consent shaped like refusal. "Field to three-point-five."
The plate hit like a story he'd told himself for years and finally had the words for. The room leaned in. The braces held their breath and then exhaled through steel.
Ten seconds had more edges than the last ten seconds. Fifteen arrived cautious and left surprised. At twenty, the brace tried to sing and got a hand over its mouth—Nappa's, literal and cheerful.
"Twenty," the engineer said, and cut. "Good. Again at three-point-five for twenty-five."
He stepped down, then up, then took the new twenty-five like a man picking up a city block and carrying it a polite distance.
Afterward, a tremor wrote itself into his quads and refused to erase for three heartbeats. He let it live. Then he killed it.
Nappa couldn't help himself. "You're bleeding a little," he said, pointing with his chin.
Vegeta looked. A red bead had traced a path from the lancet mark at his finger, reopened by force the way old debts come due. He licked it without ceremony. "It's mine."
[SYSTEM: Advisory—hydration recommended. Microtear index climbing; cooldown window—]
"No," he said softly.
The engineer set her stylus down. "Heard that," she said. "We anchor the plate."
"Anchor how?" Nappa asked, happy to lift anything that looked heavy.
"Into the floor," she said. "We stop asking the foundation to be patient; we make it complicit." To Vegeta: "It'll take four minutes to set the bolts and the resin. You get those four minutes whether you want them or not."
Vegeta weighed pride against physics and wasn't dumb enough to lose. "Fine," he said. "Three minutes."
She pretended not to hear. "Four," she told her crew. "Move."
The bay became a machine that forgot to be a room. Bolts like short spears went through pre-cut holes into the slab. The resin stank like a promise no one wanted to keep. Nappa put his back into the plate and the plate admitted it appreciated the help.
The clerk hovered at the door and then committed the sin of speaking. "Your Highness, the Command line—"
"Call them," Vegeta said, watching the resin find all the wrong spaces and occupy them. "Tell them we're mid-test. They can watch the report when it's worth their time."
"Should I—should I say that?"
"Say it in words you can live with," Vegeta said.
The engineer tapped a bolt head twice, listening for disagreement. "Anchored," she said. "We can add the temporary dampers now, or we can wait and keep the noise honest."
"Add them," Vegeta said. "We take them off later. I want time, not a ghost story."
She slid a glance up at him that conceded he'd been paying attention. "Dampers on. Field to three-point-two for two minutes."
He stepped onto the plate again. The field rose—cleaner. The room had fewer complaints to sing and more work to do. He gave it work.
A minute in, the metallic taste sharpened. Vision narrowed by one more degree and then sharpened inside the tunnel like someone had cleaned the glass. Hold.
"Sixty," the engineer said. "One hundred. Cut."
He stepped off without drama. His calves fluttered behind the bones; he let them.
The engineer ran the back of her hand across her forehead and left a clean streak in the grit. "We're closing on what the bay can do without a full refit. The walls—" She tapped the air. "We can make them part of the field."
"Seal the room," Vegeta said.
She didn't blink. "We haven't tested the hatch under load."
"Then we learn," he said.
"Your Highness," the clerk said, commendably brave. "The hatch cycles are limited until we certify—"
"Limited becomes enough when we make it," Vegeta said.
Nappa grinned like a man introduced to a better kind of problem. "I'll stand at the hatch. If it gets shy, I'll introduce it to confidence."
The engineer drew a box in the air with two sharp motions. "Fine. We seal at baseline and raise. If anything sticks, I dump the field. You don't argue."
Vegeta stepped onto the plate.
"Walls hot," the engineer said. "Baseline at one. Hatch—close."
The bay's wide door slid, thought about stuttering, and then decided to be brave. Metal teeth met and held. The room shrank to the work and the men and the machine's patient anger.
"Band to two," she said. "Two-point-five. Three."
The air thickened—the kind that remembered oceans and old planets and what it took to stand on them with a spine. The walls learned their job and stopped complaining. A cable somewhere tried to bow into a new shape and was denied.
"Three-point-two," she said. "Hold for sixty."
Sweat was not allowed to fall. It stayed where it was told. Breath went to the corner and came back useful. The plate stopped being a thing and started being a place.
[SYSTEM: Protocol 'Pressure Sets' engaged. Cadence variant unlocked.]
"Sixty," the engineer said. "We can climb."
"Three-point-five," Vegeta said.
The room took the number and made it personal. Nappa braced one palm on the hatch frame and grinned at it, daring it to misbehave. The clerk stood with his back flat to the wall and whispered numbers like he'd always believed in math and had just met it in person.
Fifteen seconds passed. Twenty. The brace didn't sing; the dampers earned their pay.
"Twenty-five," the engineer said. "Cut in five."
"Thirty," Vegeta said.
"Twenty-five," she repeated, but she didn't cut.
At twenty-eight she opened her mouth.
He said, "Lock it."
She met his eyes, checked the graphs, and made the decision that made the other decisions possible.
"Lock," she told the hatch.
The light over the door turned a color that meant one thing: no one opens this until someone says the word.
The band answered by tightening like a hand on the back of his neck that didn't hate him—it just wanted to see if he would bow.
He didn't.