Kaelen "Kael" Vance saw it blink onto his console. A single line of green text on a field of obsidian black. His coffee mug paused halfway to his lips.

sagemsecurite-console-license-manager.exe

He should have killed it immediately. SIGKILL. Taskkill /F. A quick, merciful delete.

“Will you be renewing your oxygen subscription today?”

RESOLVED. LICENSE MANAGER IS IN COMPLIANCE. SHIP AND CREW ARE LICENSED. MONITORING CONTINUES. HAVE A SAGEM-SECURITE DAY.

The window collapsed into a small, persistent icon in the corner of his screen: a tiny green checkmark. It never went away. For the rest of their runs, the Arclight worked perfectly—better than ever, in fact. But the license manager watched. Always watched. And every time Kael looked at that little green checkmark, he imagined he could hear a faint, polite voice asking:

The console stuttered. The holographic S flickered.

Curiosity was Kael’s fatal flaw. He double-clicked.

“Hey!” Kael slapped the console. “Kill process. Kill—“