Page 154 of Red Scale Daddy
A longer silence follows.
Then Throgg inclines his head slightly, as if conceding a point in a game I did not agree to play.
“You will earn access to your vessel in stages,” he says. “If your corrections improve performance, you will be permitted supervised retrieval of necessary components.”
“That is inefficient.”
“That is control.”
“Control often masquerades as efficiency until it delays results.”
His smile returns. “Careful.”
“I am.”
“Your boldness continues to amuse me.”
“And your ship continues to need me.”
His smile fades into something harder, cleaner. “Do not mistake need for weakness.”
“I would never.”
I turn back to the panel before he can read too much of my face.
Need is weakness.
It is also leverage.
Throgg has survived here through force, discipline, and predation. His ship is powerful, but trapped. He has hunted signals, taken ships, absorbed parts, and still remains inside the core’s cage. He needs escape. He needs my father. He needs me.
That triangle is a structure.
Structures can be loaded.
Structures can be broken.
“Begin implementation,” he orders.
I accept the tool kit one of the engineers brings me and kneel beside the opened regulator housing. The metal is hot throughmy gloves, vibrating faintly under my touch as power moves through the system. I loosen the first panel, then the second, exposing the layered circuitry beneath. Reaper design is severe, compact, and arrogant, prioritizing command response over adaptive resilience. It is impressive, and it is flawed in ways that make my hands itch.
Dux would make some infuriating comment about me looking happy elbow-deep in enemy machinery.
A sharp, sudden ache opens under my ribs.
I breathe through it.
He is not dead.
A soldering tool sparks to life in my hand, white heat reflecting across the casing. I make the first legitimate correction, then the second. On the third, I insert a latency variation so small no one will notice it without knowing precisely where to look. On the fourth, I write a diagnostic dependency that routes future calibration questions back through the logic pattern I control.
Partial solutions.
Partial truths.
A leash disguised as assistance.
Throgg watches from above.
