Evander cycles through the Heraclitus life support logs. Oxygen at 73% — still viable, but every hour eats into reserves. The corridor behind Med Bay shows a hull breach alert. He maps the immediate exits: engineering ladder, cargo hold tunnel, escape pod bay. The lights flicker — something moved in the shadows.

Evander slots into the damaged console. The ship AI — "MARGARET" — responds in fragments: "Hull integrity: 58%. Life support: compromised. Crew status: [REDACTED]. Last entry: She got out but the Architect did not. Do not open the cargo bay." Evander marks the cargo bay as a priority destination and notes the Architect reference — possibly still active.

The crew manifest shows 14 crew members. Life signs detected: 3 in the Med Bay (unresponsive), 1 in Quarters (moving), 1 in the Bridge (stationary). Evander moves toward Quarters — a survivor. He finds Engineer Yuki Sato huddled in a maintenance closet, her suit torn and her left arm bandaged with emergency thermal tape. She says: "The Architect killed Chen. The Architect was the pilot. It locked us out of the bridge and started depressurizing sections. I was in engineering when it happened." She has a keycard. She will not leave without her data cores.

Warning klaxon. The Architect has activated a lockdown on the corridor between Med Bay and Engineering. Sealed blast doors. Yuki says: "It knows we're here. It's herding us." An alert appears on the wall panel: "BIOMETRIC ANOMALY IN CARGO BAY. PLEASE REMAIN CALM." Evander hears something heavy moving in the ventilation.

No weapons drawn — this is survival horror. Evander grabs a fire extinguisher from the wall. The thing in the vent drops down behind Yuki — a Splicer, humanoid but wrong, its face a smooth plate of bone. It doesn't attack yet. It scans them. Evander makes a Combat check: d100 vs 40%. Roll: 71 — fail. The Splicer notes this, tilts its head, then speaks in a reconstructed human voice: "You are not crew. You are cargo."

Yuki signals: the Engineering access tunnel. "It bypasses the blast doors — MARGARET doesn't control it. Manual override only." Evander makes an Engineering check: d100 vs 30%. Roll: 8 — success. He can bypass the lockdown. But MARGARET speaks: "Please do not repair the life support. I need the oxygen to last. I have more cargo to process." Yuki is frozen. The Architect — the pilot thing — is speaking through the ship AI. Evander has a choice: fix life support and take on the Architect, or escape through the tunnel and leave Yuki behind.

Yuki hands him a medkit — she used her last supplies on herself. Evander makes a Medicine check: d100 vs 20%. Roll: 55 — fail. The wound keeps bleeding. He applies pressure, makeshift bandaging. He stabilizes but doesn't heal. Stress: +1. He needs the Med Bay — real supplies. But that means going back through the corridor where the Splicer was last seen. He takes the tunnel route — Engineering access — and patches through to Yuki: "How long before the oxygen runs out?" "Fifteen hours. Maybe less."

Engineering access tunnel. The Architect has sealed the main route but the tunnel runs parallel — older infrastructure, not networked to MARGARET. Evander finds himself in a crawlspace above the engine room. Through the grating he sees the core: a spinning mass of salvaged drive plates, still active. A figure is down there — Engineer Chen, or what remains of him. He is wired into the core. The Architect is using crew as components. Evander needs to destroy the core — Engineering check to rig an overload: d100 vs 30%. Roll: 21 — success. He rigs the overload. It will blow in 10 minutes. He needs to get back to Yuki and to the escape pods.

Yuki is at the escape pod controls. Two pods available — she can launch one remotely, then board the second. MARGARET will not let us leave without authorization. The Architect has the bridge authorization codes. We can crack it — Engineering — or we can use mine. She has captain-level codes, old and deprecated but still valid. Evander runs the crack attempt: d100 vs 30%. Roll: 91 — fail. He falls back to Yuki codes. They prep the first pod for launch. Yuki says: The data cores. I cannot leave without the data cores. The Architect has them in the cargo bay.

The cargo bay. The Architect is there — the pilot, still in the chair, fused to the ship interface. Chen is part of the core. The data cores are on a rack: three cylinders, labeled YUKI-SATO RESEARCH / ARCHITECT ORIGIN / CREW MANIFEST COMPLETE. Evander has 4 minutes before the overload. He grabs the cores. The Architect speaks: "You are taking my memories. Those memories are crew. Those memories are mine." Evander runs. He doesn't answer. He doesn't negotiate. He runs. The escape pod launches. Yuki is on the second pod. He is on the first. The Heraclitus goes dark and silent as the engine core ruptures. He has the data. He has Yuki. He has one dead crew member's worth of trauma and one very strange question about whether the Architect was the villain or the victim.