Two months in the underground felt weird.
The base did not settle the way buildings usually settle. Concrete did not cure into its final shape and then hold; the walls here kept refining themselves in small increments. Seams tightened. Corners sharpened. Ductwork rerouted itself by a few centimetres as if it had decided the original geometry lacked elegance. The spiders treated completion as a moving target and kept improving any surface that looked like it had been printed in a hurry.
I walked through it anyway, because inspection had become a habit, and habit was the closest thing I had to sleep. The corridors were no longer half-finished arteries full of scattered kits and temporary panels. They were nearly done. The administrative bay now looked occupied even without people. Terminals sat in tidy rows, chairs aligned, surfaces clean. Storage lockers lined the walls with crisp labels and standardised compartments. Even the airlocks had been refined; the door edges were tighter, and the ceramic lining looked denser, as if the system had quietly revised its containment assumptions.
Small spiders still moved along the periphery, but they behaved differently now. In the early days, they printed obvious objects like the facility was growing a skeleton and needed organs fast. Now they did fine work. Cable management. Interface plates. Sealants applied in thin layers. They were maintenance more than construction, like a nervous system checking its own continuity.
In the containment wing, the one-way glass still reflected nothing. Beyond it, the imulsion pools looked calmer than they had any right to. Pumps hummed. Gantries moved with slow patience. The storage tanks from the original delivery were gone from open staging; they sat buried deeper in engineered slots, connected to lines that treated the substance like inventory.
I had not jumped into another tank.
Not because I had decided it was wrong. I had decided it was wasteful. Essence came quickly when you did something dramatic, but drama drew attention, and attention attracted people who wanted to own the terms of what you did. I could farm essence later, once the perimeter was real, once the oversight channels were managed, once I had a paper wall thick enough to matter.
The spiders had built me a perimeter. Fences above ground. Sensor poles. Cameras that rotated with quiet precision. The facility watched itself, and it watched the land around it in widening circles.
That was how I saw the convoy before I heard it.
I was in a nearly completed corridor near the elevator spine when a status pane lit on the nearest terminal. I did not need to touch it. The system assumed I wanted to know anything that approached my property.
A feed opened on the screen.
A line of vehicles on the access road, military profile, moving in steady formation. Not the hazard contractors from before. These were not men in sealed suits eager to leave. These were armed vehicles with a purpose, headlights off, dust controlled. They looked like a unit that believed the world had already given them permission.
The terminal chimed again.
Incoming call.
No name. No friendly routing tag. A direct number with the feel of authority behind it.
I answered.
The audio came through cleanly, slightly compressed, the sort of channel used for operational clarity rather than comfort.
"This is COG security liaison," a voice said. Male. Middle-aged. The tone was brisk enough to insult etiquette without violating it. "We are requesting access to your facility. Immediate."
I did not ask how they had this line. Asking would have signalled ignorance, and ignorance was a weakness they would use.
"Access for what purpose?" I asked.
A pause, short but deliberate. He wanted that question to sound unnecessary.
"Inspection," he said. "Verification. Compliance. Your site contains materials and assets relevant to the war effort."
"I have a charter," I said. "Land grant. Civil development mandate."
"You also have imulsion," the voice replied. "And you have industrial capability that does not match declared resources. That makes you relevant."
So the rumours had matured. Not just in bars and barracks. In offices.
"I will consider an inspection," I said, "when I see official documentation. Signed. Sealed. With the scope clearly defined."
The silence on the line thickened. I pictured him glancing at someone beside him, then back to his script.
"You are refusing a lawful request," he said.
"I am refusing an undocumented request," I replied. "Those are different."
His breath sharpened through the mic. He was trying to keep annoyance from turning into something actionable.
"You will receive documentation," he said. "Within forty-eight hours. You will grant access then."
"I will review it," I said.
"That is not what I said."
I let the pause sit. The facility's ventilation hum filled my end of the channel like a reminder that I did not need to speak fast.
"You can come back with paperwork," I said. "Or you can leave now and save fuel."
The voice held steady, but the professionalism now sounded like restraint.
"Understood," he said. "We will return."
The call ended.
I stayed still for a few seconds, listening to the line go dead, and the facility continued breathing as if it had not noticed the shift in my life. Then I turned back to the terminal and pulled the camera feed larger.
The convoy had stopped at the outer boundary. I watched a few soldiers dismount. They moved with controlled confidence, scanning the fence line, looking at the cameras, looking at the printed structures in the distance. One of them pointed toward the central refinery silhouette as if he wanted to claim it by naming it.
They did not cross the perimeter. Not yet.
A senior figure, likely the same voice, stood near the lead vehicle and spoke into a handheld radio. I could not hear the words from this feed, but I did not need them. The posture was enough. This was not a courtesy visit. This was a future argument being prepared.
After a few minutes, they remounted. Engines started. The vehicles turned and rolled back down the road, returning the land to its quiet.
I watched until they disappeared beyond the shallow rise.
Only then did I exhale.
The problem was simple. The COG had decided my base no longer belonged entirely to me. They were going to test the limits of the grant, the charter, and the polite fiction that I was a private entity rather than an asset. If I let them in without constraint, they would not leave. If I refused outright, they would not accept it. They would come back with more men and call it lawful.
Paper mattered in this world only because guns pretended it did.
I walked down the corridor, slow, letting my footsteps echo lightly off the smooth composite walls. The small spiders near the ceiling conduits paused as I passed, then resumed their work. They were not sentient; they did not look concerned. They did not understand that people were approaching, and people were the one variable the system could not fully control.
My first thought was of Adam.
The thought arrived with the weight of familiarity. Adam understood leverage. He understood how to translate absurdity into documents and how to make those documents bite. He also understood what I was, enough to know that turning me into a military project would end badly for everyone involved.
Then the second thought arrived and corrected the first.
Adam was not here.
The DRA appointment, the promotion, the exit from this part of the war. He had said he would disappear into research and let other men do the field work. That disappearance had a name in the rumour channels I had learned to read: Azura. A place the COG used when it wanted to hide valuable minds and valuable failures behind water and distance.
If Adam was on Azura, he was not answering calls about my land disputes. He was building the Hammer, or starting to. He was living inside a different machine now, one with cleaner walls and sharper knives.
I needed someone else.
I reached the elevator platform and stepped onto it, not to go up, but because the shaft cameras gave a good overview of the facility. The lift rose halfway and stopped at an intermediate observation level I had not used much. A narrow balcony ran along the shaft wall, with a console built into the railing. From here, I could see multiple levels of the base through reinforced glass panels. Movement below looked like a diagram: spiders crawling, gantries sliding, pumps cycling, lights steady.
A quiet city without people.
A city that would attract them anyway.
I stood there and tried to list options the way Adam would. Allies. Legal leverage. Political cover. Economic pressure. The COG listened to public opinion when it was loud. It listened harder to the industry when the industry threatened supply. It listened hardest when a regional council made problems that Ephyra did not want to solve personally.
A card surfaced in my memory.
Lopus Energy.
The Sarfuth councillor had handed it to me like a door with a handle. He had offered money, partners, and a way around central bureaucracy. He had also offered something more important, whether he admitted it or not: representation. If the COG treated me as a lone anomaly, they could intimidate me with process. If I became attached to a corporate entity with regional political backing, intimidation became negotiation, and negotiation cost them time.
Time was the only thing they never wanted to spend.
I went back down the lift and walked to the administrative bay. A workstation near the entrance had a drawer now. The drawer opened smoothly and contained a set of printed stationery tools, including a secure storage compartment designed to fit thin items. I opened it and found my small collection of physical documents, the pieces I kept off-network because I had learned to distrust networks.
The business card was there.
Thick stock, clean print. Lopus Energy. The councillor's name and contact number. A title that suggested influence without specifying its limits.
I held the card between two fingers and felt the absurdity of it. Two months ago I was a weapon without a file. Now I was a landholder with a refinery and a corporate contact. The war moved fast when it decided to.
I keyed the number into the terminal's comms interface. The terminal offered to route through official COG channels. I declined and used the direct line. If the COG wanted a record of this call, they could work for it.
The line rang twice.
"Councillor Halvek speaking," a voice answered. The same man. Calm, attentive. He sounded like he expected inconvenient calls to arrive and enjoyed being the solution.
"This is Varmund," I said.
A short pause, then a shift in tone that was almost pleasant. Almost.
"Varmund," he said. "Your timing suggests trouble."
"Military trouble," I replied. "A COG security liaison just requested immediate access to my facility. No documentation. I refused. They said they would return with papers in forty-eight hours."
Halvek did not react with surprise. That mattered more than any sympathy.
"They have moved quickly," he said. "So the rumours are no longer rumours."
"What rumours?" I asked, though I already knew.
He gave me the professional version. "Unaccounted industrial output. Containment capacity beyond declared capital spend. Nonstandard fabrication methods. The word 'city' has been used in the Senate. People enjoy dramatic language when they want funding."
"And they want inside," I said.
"They want control," he corrected. "Access is the polite term."
I let that sit. My jaw tightened without my permission.
"I want to keep them out," I said. "Or at least keep them limited."
"You can keep them limited," Halvek replied, "but you will require cover that they respect. You have land and money from the Council, yes. That gives you a charter. It does not give you a shield against the military when the military decides your work intersects with national security."
"So what do I do?" I asked.
Halvek answered without hesitation. "We formalise you. We make you part of an economic structure with coalition value. We attach your research to an industrial contract that creates obligations the COG cannot casually override without political cost."
I watched a small spider print a replacement panel on a nearby desk as if the base wanted to contribute to the conversation by making itself look tidy.
"You mean a contract with Lopus," I said.
"Yes," Halvek replied. "Lopus Energy will provide investment, legal representation, and regional council backing. In return, we require defined access to outputs."
"Outputs," I said. The word tasted like ownership.
Halvek did not pretend otherwise. "Technologies," he clarified. "Research results. Production capacity. The mysterious elements, as your senators are calling them. If we are putting our name beside yours, we cannot do it blindly."
"I do not intend to hand over everything," I said.
"I would advise against 'everything' as a concept," he said. "It invites fear. Fear invites raids. What we need is a framework. A compartmented partnership. We can draft it quickly. Forty-eight hours is not much time, but it is enough if you move now."
I looked back at the facility feed on the terminal. Quiet corridors. Clean lines. The sense of a private world that could be violated with a stamp and a squad.
"What would you want?" I asked.
Halvek's voice stayed measured. "A nonexclusive right of first negotiation on energy and transport innovations. A seat for a Lopus-appointed compliance officer on site, vetted and bound by confidentiality. A provision that any military inspections require joint representation, meaning our counsel must be present, and the scope must be limited to declared hazard and security parameters."
"A compliance officer in my base," I said. "That sounds like letting them in through a different door."
"It is letting one in," Halvek agreed. "One with incentives aligned to keep the others out. The COG fears private corporate influence because it competes with centralised control. That fear can protect you if used correctly."
I did not like it. That did not matter.
"What do you need from me?" I asked.
"A commitment," he said. "Verbal now, written within twelve hours. I will dispatch legal to meet you on site. They will bring draft terms and coalition endorsements from Sarfuth council offices. Once signed, we notify Ephyra that your facility operates under an industrial partnership charter. The military can still request access, but they will have to argue with more than you."
I stared at the card in my hand, then set it on the desk as if that made the decision less personal.
"If your people come," I said, "they do not roam freely. They stay where I allow. They see what they need to draft, and nothing else."
"That is reasonable," Halvek replied. "You are learning."
His tone held a thin edge of approval that I did not ask for.
"I will send coordinates," I said. "You have them already, I assume."
"I do," Halvek said. "You will have our team before nightfall."
"And the military," I said. "They will be back."
"They will," Halvek replied. "When they return, you will not be alone. That changes the conversation."
The line went quiet for a beat, then Halvek added, softer but still precise.
"Varmund, a warning," he said. "If the Senate is already speaking about your technologies, then someone inside your orbit is talking. Your security problem is not only at the gate."
I felt that settle into my chest like a weight.
"I know," I said.
"Good," Halvek replied. "Then prepare. Forty-eight hours is a courtesy only until it becomes impatience."
The call ended.
I stood in the administrative bay with the terminal light reflecting off smooth composite walls and polished workstation surfaces. Outside, the wind moved across my land, and the ocean remained indifferent. Somewhere, beyond the perimeter, a military liaison was drafting paperwork that would pretend this was all standard. Somewhere else, a corporate legal team was preparing a contract designed to turn my base into something the COG would hesitate to seize openly.
Two months ago, I needed a rifle and luck.
Now I needed lawyers and structure, and both felt like different kinds of weapons.
I looked at the facility schematic rotating on the nearest screen. Levels, corridors, compartments, containment logic. It resembled a living thing in cross-section. I had built it to protect myself from being used.
The COG had noticed.
The next forty-eight hours would decide whether my base stayed mine or whether it became another annexe of the war with a nicer logo on the door.