“All system-assisted construction within Tago requires synchronization with a licensed Structural Liaison and the submission of compliance files. Approval is conditional, revocable, and subject to audit.

  Pre-authorized corporate sites operating under an active Sol Alliance charter are exempt from the above.”

  — Tago Building Code, System Integration Addendum

  The math was brutal.

  Each problem required multiple steps, careful attention to notation, and the focused thinking that my post-combat brain absolutely did not want to provide… but I pushed through anyway, because the alternative was explaining to my instructor why I’d skipped homework two days in a row.

  …and he always brought a pick for Friday’s lessons.

  An hour passed in a blur of derivatives and integration techniques. I was halfway through problem twelve when I heard the front door chime downstairs, followed by familiar voices.

  “—and I’m telling you, the chemicals don’t mix that way!”

  “It literally says in the textbook—”

  “The textbook is wrong!”

  Mom and Comma were home.

  I saved my progress and stood, stretching muscles that had locked up from hunching over the tablet. My back cracked in three places as I winced.

  Downstairs, I could hear the rustle of bags being set down, the soft beep of the kitchen warming drawer activating, before the unmistakable smell hit me.

  Real meat.

  Not synth-protein, or algae paste with “natural flavoring.” Actual, honest-to-god meat, the kind that cost more per kilo than bullets.

  I was down the stairs before I fully registered moving.

  The dining parlor had been transformed. Mom had set the table properly with plates instead of the usual quick-grab containers, cloth napkins, even the fancy glasses that normally sat untouched in the cabinet.

  In the center sat three takeout containers from Tian’s Authentic Cuisine, their logo gleaming in soft gold holographic print. The smell wafting from them made my mouth water instantly. Mom looked up as I entered, and her face broke into a genuine smile. “Dash! Perfect timing.”

  Comma sat at the table, glued to the band, and didn’t even glance up. “Yay,” she said flatly, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Celebration dinner.”

  “What are we celebrating?” I asked, even though I had a pretty good idea.

  “Your license, of course!” Mom gestured to the chair across from Comma. “Sit, sit. I got the good stuff from Tian’s. Real pork, real vegetables, none of that synthetic nonsense.”

  I dropped into the chair, my civilian clothes feeling almost too casual for the setup. “Mom, you didn’t have to—”

  “I absolutely did.” She started opening the containers, revealing perfectly prepared dishes that looked like they belonged in a cooking holo. Char siu that glistened with glaze, stir-fried vegetables that actually had color and texture, rice that wasn’t gray sludge. “You got your gray license on the first try. That deserves celebration.”

  Comma finally looked up from her band, one eyebrow raised. “Aren’t you supposed to celebrate before you risk your life, not after?”

  “Comma,” Mom said warningly.

  “What? I’m just saying.” She went back to her band, but I caught the hint of a smile tugging at her lips.

  Mom started serving, placing generous portions on each plate, and the food looked almost too good to eat. Almost, so I grabbed my chopsticks and was about to dig in when Mom’s hand shot out, stopping me mid-motion.

  “Ah-ah,” she said, voice taking on that tone that meant I was about to get interrogated. “Sit properly first.”

  I straightened in my chair, confused. “I am sitting properly?”

  “Good.” She settled into her own seat, folding her hands in front of her plate, and fixed me with a look that made my stomach drop. “Now. Tell me why you went into another incursion today.”

  The temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees.

  “I—” My brain scrambled for an explanation. “How did you—”

  “The IC sends alerts to registered family members when a licensed hunter engages in combat.” She tilted her head slightly. “Imagine my surprise when I got a notification that you were fighting Gray-1 threats in Midorikawa Park less than six hours after getting your license.”

  Comma’s band lowered slightly, her attention now fully on our conversation. Naturally, her eyes gleamed with barely suppressed glee.

  “It wasn’t—” I started, then stopped. Lying to Mom was pointless; she always knew. “Okay, look. I was there with Erika, and she’s Officer Cadet for IC, so she’s like, way overqualified for Gray-1. It was completely safe. Relatively. Mostly.”

  “Your girlfriend doesn’t count as proper backup,” Comma interjected, grinning wickedly.

  My face went hot. “She’s not my—we’re not—”

  “Oh please.” Comma rolled her eyes. “You turned into an idiot every time she texted you back at prep. It’s pathetic.”

  “Comma,” Mom said, but there was amusement in her voice now.

  “What? I’m helping!” Comma turned to Mom. “He literally sprints to his band when it buzzes. Like a trained puppy.”

  “I do not—”

  “You absolutely did,” Comma said with closed eyes, smirk and absolute confidence. “Last time you almost fell down the stairs, I remember it even after months!”

  Mom was trying very hard not to laugh. I could see her lips twitching, the way her shoulders shook slightly with suppressed amusement. I buried my face in my hands. “Can we please just eat?”

  “Not until you answer my question properly,” Mom said, composure restored. “Why were you in another incursion zone?”

  I lowered my hands and met her eyes. “I was meeting Omar at a café near the park. The incursion manifested while we were there. We didn’t go looking for it… uh, I mean, it came to us.” I paused. “Erika showed up because I called for help. She handled the boss thing; I just dealt with the smaller threats.”

  Mom studied me for a long moment before she sighed. “And you couldn’t evacuate because...?”

  “Because there were 119 of them and someone needed to keep them from swarming Erika while she fought the boss,” I mumbled. “She’s good, Mom. Fantastic. But even she can’t handle a boss and thousands adds at the same time.”

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  The silence stretched until finally Mom nodded. “119 confirmed kills?”

  “According to IC’s count, yeah.”

  “On your first day?” She raised an eyebrow. “That’s... actually impressive.”

  Comma’s eyes widened. “Wait, you killed 119 aliens? By yourself?”

  “They were small ones,” I said. “Nothing like the boss Erika took down.”

  “Still,” Mom said, and there was something in her voice now. Not quite pride, but close. “That’s good work, Dash. Following Kallum’s legacy.” She picked up her chopsticks. “Now eat. Before the food gets cold, and I wasted a hundred sols on nothing.”

  I didn’t need to be told twice.

  The char siu practically melted in my mouth, sweet and savory and so far removed from Jeup Protein-Rich Paste? that it might as well have been from a different planet. The vegetables had a real crunch. And surprise, surprise… the rice tasted like rice.

  For a few minutes, we just ate in comfortable silence, but then Comma nodded sagely. “When you called her specifically to come help with the incursion, was that just friend behavior?”

  “She’s IC! Of course I’d call her!”

  “And when she flew you home in her fancy car?”

  My face was definitely red now. “How did you—”

  “We actually came home before you and saw it when we were going to the restaurant.” Comma grinned. “Nice car, by the way. Way out of your league.”

  “The car or Erika?” I shot back without thinking.

  Comma’s grin widened. “Both.”

  “I—” I slumped in my chair, defeated. “Can we please stop?”

  We finished dinner in much lighter spirits, the tension from earlier dissolved into the comfortable rhythm of family routine. Mom told us about her day at work, something about supply chain optimization that went completely over my head. Comma complained about her chemistry teacher, who apparently “had it out for her” despite her “almost” perfect test scores.

  Normal, like I hadn’t spent the afternoon fighting crystal death birds. “Dash,” Mom said quietly as we loaded dishes into the washing unit.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m proud of you.” She didn’t look at me, just kept stacking plates. “Your father would be too.”

  My throat went tight. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Comma made a gagging sound. “Ugh, you two are so weird. Stop it!”

  “Sure,” Mom said. “Let’s talk about your homework. Finished it?”

  I nodded. “Math’s half-done. Still have the reading assignment for Thursday and the safety quiz on Friday. Hopefully, I can find bugs before the teacher asks hard stuff.”

  “And tomorrow? What’s your plan?”

  Tomorrow. Right. Wednesday. I needed to... I hesitated, then decided honesty was probably the smart play. “A shipment from Kallum arrives tomorrow. I want to have my workspace ready when it shows up.”

  Mom's eyes narrowed. “Shipment? What shipment?”

  “I spent the money from Grandma and met Asti. Via a weird projection.” I glanced away from her piercing gaze. “She helped me to order some gear. A crafting bench, materials for building equipment. System-grade stuff. A million-credit gift. I used most of it on a book and the crafting equipment.”

  Comma looked up from her band, suddenly interested. “A million credits? You spent a million credits?”

  “It’s a loan of a book,” I clarified. “Five hundred thousand for a week and then they take it back. The bench and materials were the other five hundred thousand.”

  Mom was silent. “Where exactly are you planning to put a crafting bench?”

  I opened my mouth to say “the bunker” but Comma beat me to it. “Ha! His workshop isn’t big enough for a real bench,” she said matter-of-factly with a tone that sounded way too pleased with herself, before she glanced back at the Pulse feed.

  I froze, and my brain stuttered to a complete halt. “Huh?” The word came out strangled. “You know about it?”

  Comma laughed as if I’d just told the world’s most obvious joke. “What? Why do you think it’s clean every time I’m punished—” Mom cleared her throat meaningfully, and Comma continued without missing a beat. “—every time I’m reminded by Mom that I should clean?”

  My head was spinning. Clean? When had… “How do you get in?” I demanded, mind racing through every single time I’d been down there doing… stuff.

  Had I left anything incriminating? No, I’d been paranoid enough to keep everything locked in the sealed storage containers or hidden in the false bottom of my toolbox. Right?

  Right?!

  “What do you mean?” Comma looked genuinely confused. “Through the basement?”

  “Basement...?” I stared at her.

  “Erika made your brain pancake,” she giggled.

  Mom motioned upstairs. “That’s enough. Comma, up. Homework.”

  With no other comment, Comma disappeared upstairs, probably to text her friends about how embarrassing her family was.

  Mom stood, gesturing for me to follow. “Come with me.”

  I followed her through the house, past the living room, down a hallway I rarely used because it just led to the storage room. She pressed her palm to the scanner, and the door slid open, revealing stairs leading down, and she was already descending.

  I followed her down into the storage room filled with the organized chaos of a family that had moved planets twice. Old furniture stacked neatly against one wall. Broken appliances that Mom insisted, “Dash will fix someday.” Boxes labeled in her corpo handwriting: KITCHEN - MARS, COMMA - AGE 8, DASH - PREP SCHOOL.

  But Mom didn’t stop there.

  She led me through another door at the far end, and this room...

  This room was mostly empty.

  About ten meters by ten meters of open space, smooth permacrete floors, climate-controlled air that smelled faintly of... wine?

  One entire wall was dedicated to a wine collection. Racks upon racks of bottles, some dusty, some gleaming, all organized with the same carefulness Mom applied to everything in her life. The collection had to be worth—

  Mom turned to me, arms crossed, and glared. “I’ve been counting. You haven’t touched any.”

  I groaned. “I’m legal—”

  “It’s twenty-one,” she said firmly.

  I shook my head. “That’s Mars. Here in Tago it’s eighteen, and Luna is sixteen.”

  She sighed, a sound of pure maternal exhaustion. This exact conversation had played out too many times for her to have any energy left for it. “Fine. Whatever.” She waved dismissively, then pointed to a door at the far end of the room. “There’s your workshop, right?”

  I blinked at the door.

  It looked... normal. Just a standard interior door, nothing special about it. I walked over and opened it… and my brain broke.

  Where the stairs to the statue should have been, where I knew the stairs were, where I descended every single day, there was just... a door. I could see the bunker, see my workbench and armor rack, but a door replaced the stairs.

  My head hurt.

  “Yeah...” I closed the door quickly and turned back to Mom, trying not to think about the spatial impossibility I’d just witnessed. “That’s it.”

  Mom nodded as if she’d just shown me a perfectly normal closet. Then she pointed vaguely to the room. “You can store your things here and make it your workshop. It’s big, and we don’t use it.” She paused. “The six-month limit to prove you’re not reckless is still active. You didn’t help yourself with today’s stunt.”

  I glanced to the side, unable to meet her eyes. “I have a system...”

  Mom nodded, and I caught the worry flickering across her face. “Apparently Scavantis thinks so. I’m not a system user, so I can’t offer you any advice.” Her voice softened. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. Did Asti help?”

  I nodded. “The book. It is... it’ll help with the system. Sorry, I can’t tell you more.”

  Mom laughed. “Yeah, we plebs are used to it.” She actually winked, then gestured around the empty room. “Oh, the code for the loading bay is 6-9-4-2.”

  “Loading bay?”

  She walked to what I’d thought was just a light switch and tapped the wall beside it. A keypad materialized, glowing softly in the dim light.

  She entered the code: 6-9-4-2. Click, and there was a soft mechanical hum.

  A platform at the end of the room, a section of floor I’d assumed was just concrete next to the wine collection, rose. Where was perfectly cut grass in the garden, was now… a hole. And a platform rising to be loaded.

  “It was here the entire time?!” I stared at the opening, then at Mom, then back at the opening.

  Mom nodded. “This house has a lot of functions. John built it that way; that’s why we’d get a lot of money selling it, but Kallum has a purchase priority.”

  “Moooom...” The word came out pained.

  She smiled, but there was sadness in it. “Half a year, Dash. Prove you can do this properly, and we stay. You’ve got a system, but can you make enough to justify living here?” She patted my shoulder once. “Now go finish your homework.”

  She walked past me, back toward the stairs, leaving me standing in the empty room staring at the loading bay I’d never known existed. The house my great-grandpa built; the house with secret passages and spatial anomalies and wine collections worth small fortunes.

  I’d lived in the house for years without really understanding what it was. I looked at the door to my bunker, then at the loading bay, then back at the door.

  “System fuckery,” I muttered. “It’s always system fuckery.”

  I headed back upstairs to finish my homework, my brain still trying to process the fact that my bunker had apparently been accessible from the basement this entire time.

  Great-grandpa’s house was going to drive me insane.

  I would prefer to focus only on the system, just grind my way to glory, but… I had to finish this year if I wanted to join my old classmates at Creston. That meant doing stupid homework, going to the mines, and killing bugs.

  What a waste of time.

  The holo-tablet waited with the remaining assignments in my room, but before diving back into schoolwork, I pulled out my holoband and checked my messages.

  One new notification.

  [Erika: Made it home safe. Mentor wasn’t mad about the unauthorized engagement. Well. Not TOO mad. :P]

  [Erika: Call me tomorrow? Want to hear how the gear prep goes.]

  I stared at the message for probably longer than necessary, then typed back:

  [Me: Will do. Thanks again for today. You saved my ass.]

  [Erika: You held your own! Seriously, 119 kills at Level 1 is crazy.]

  [Erika: Anyway. Sleep well, Dash. Don’t stay up too late doing homework. ;)]

  I smiled despite myself and set the holoband aside.

  Tomorrow: gear prep.

  But first, homework. I pulled up the Math assignment and got back to work.

  TODAY’S CHAPTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY John's wine cellar

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