Somewhere on the larger ship — the one at the center of everything, whose shadow covered entire sectors of the colony — there was a room that didn't seem to belong to the same universe as the rest of that place.
Not because it was grand. But because it was *personal*.
A table covered in mechanical parts in varying states of assembly and disassembly. An entire wall taken up by medals and trophies, each hung with surgical precision, as though the position of every object had been considered for long enough. And at the center of it all, in a chair that suggested authority without needing to announce it, a being sat in silence, reading.
The opera music filling the room was too low to be bothersome and too loud to be ignored.
Cyfer turned a page.
— Hm-hm... quite clever for a cube...
The door burst open.
— General Cyfer! General Cyfer!!
The agent who entered was agitated enough to have forgotten that there are proper ways to interrupt a general. Cyfer lowered the book slowly — *Volume 8 of Marprow's Secrets of the Constellations* — and stared ahead for a moment, like someone putting their patience back in place before turning the chair.
When he turned, he was smiling.
— Yes, Yextinos?
The agent blinked.
— Huh? You... remembered my name?
— Hm-hm-hm... but of course! — The smile grew one degree more wicked. — After all... you never know when I might need it for future "projects." Don't you think?
Yextinos looked at Cyfer with the specific expression of someone who had just received a compliment and a warning at the same time and wasn't sure which of the two should worry them more.
— So... — said Cyfer, with his peculiar delicacy.
— Oh, right! — Yextinos snapped back to agitated mode. — A cube! He-he... escaped!
Cyfer stared at him with an ironic look. Let a comfortable silence settle in.
— Ah... how interesting.
Yextinos stood still. Looked to the side. Looked at Cyfer. Waited for some instruction that never came.
— Is that it? — Cyfer asked.
— I... I think so.
— And... why did you bring this information to me?
— Well, it's just... you're the general and...
Cyfer stood up.
There was no urgency in the movement. No visible anger. There was something worse: the complete calm of someone who knows exactly how much space they occupy around them.
— And... a-a-and... — Yextinos took a step back as Cyfer approached.
The two stood face to face. Cyfer's red robotic eye glowed with that cold, calculating light that never blinked.
— And?
— And...
— What? — said Cyfer, in the gentle tone of someone who is being very patient and wants the other to notice it. — Should I give an order? Teach you how to do... your job?
— Well, I... it's...
Cyfer sighed. Turned his back.
— Yextinos. Yextinos. Yextinos... — The name was repeated like a diagnosis. — I expected more from you.
— I-I-I'm sorry, sir.
Cyfer rolled his eyes and extended his hand, open, without turning around.
— Just... give me the report.
— Yes, sir.
The device changed hands. The hologram opened.
And there it was — a blue cube with disheveled fur, an inventor's goggles, and three tufts of hair in complete disagreement with one another, caught on a surveillance camera with an expression that mixed determination with a complete lack of understanding of just how much trouble he was in.
Cyfer's eyes widened.
*The flashback arrived without warning.*
*Him flying. The cage in hand. An unexpected weight — and then, turning back, that same blue cube hanging from the structure, looking up with eyes that still didn't know what they were dealing with.*
*He returned to the present.*
Cyfer's mouth did what Cyfer's mouth did whenever something truly interesting finally happened in the universe: it smiled.
— Hm-hm-hm... — The voice came out low, almost to himself. — Now that's what I call interesting...
---
The transport cart navigated the energy road with the heavy slowness of something carrying too much and in no particular hurry. Around it, hundreds of ships crossed in every direction — a city in constant motion, ordered, mechanical.
Willy stood at the edge of the cart, looking at all of it like someone trying to find a fixed point in a world that never stops spinning.
— There are so many... ships...
He went quiet for a moment, his thoughts following their own path.
— Like... how many of these so-called sphericals actually exist?
Agent T was beside him, purple eyes fixed forward, the colony hologram projected between his fingers as he studied routes with that closed concentration of someone who doesn't waste attention.
— Enough that you don't want to know the answer.
Willy looked at the ships. At the structures. At the cubic planet behind them, silent as an unanswered question.
— I don't understand! — His voice came out with more force than he intended, carrying things he'd held in since waking up in that cage. — What do they want?! The invasion of my planet, this giant thing full of ships and strange machines floating around... why? What's the point of all this?!
Agent T didn't respond immediately. He closed his hand slowly, as if squeezing something that didn't physically exist but needed to be contained all the same.
— Many questions, one answer. — His voice came out differently this time — no less cold, but with a weight underneath. — Power. That's what they want. And that's what... they will never have.
Willy looked at him.
— And...
— How about you focus more on your mission and less on foolish questions?
— Ok-ok... sorry.
— Hm! — Agent T rolled his eyes and returned to the hologram.
Willy stayed quiet for a few seconds — the kind of silence that isn't resigned, just reorganizing things.
— What are you doing?
Agent T shot an ironic glance without moving.
— Look, it's kind of my first time visiting a giant alien space colony — said Willy, with the dignity of someone being very reasonable. — So excuse me for asking a lot of questions while I ride along in this situation!
— Amn... — Agent T rolled his eyes for the second time in under a minute, which for him was probably a personal record of wasted patience. — I'm checking the route.
— Route to what?
— Our next step. — He pointed upward, where an elevated track cut through the space above them like a second road layered over the first. — Route 450B. It'll take us to the objective.
Willy opened his mouth to ask something else about Route 450B — but Agent T pushed him down before the question could take shape.
Surveillance spheres passed swiftly overhead, sweeping the area with their mechanical eyes. On the screens scattered across the road, an image began looping: Willy's face, caught on some camera in a moment of completely disastrous expression, with the caption **WANTED** beneath it in letters that left no room for ambiguity.
Willy looked at his own image on the screens.
— But of course they'd use that photo...
The voice came through the colony's radio system before he could finish the thought.
*— Greetings, defenders of the spherical legacy!*
Willy turned.
— That voice...
— Cyfer. — It came dry from Agent T's mouth, like an unpleasant fact stated without emotion so the emotion would have nowhere to rest.
*— This is your General speaking! And today I come bearing good and bad news for all living beings tuned in to this broadcast... starting with the bad news: unfortunately, I knocked my coffee off my desk this morning. Terrible, I know. As for the good news... a small blue cube, with hair I'd describe as...*
A calculated pause.
*— ...let's say, "peculiar"...*
— Amn... — went Willy, with the look of someone who had been personally offended by a radio broadcast.
*— ...thought it would be a good idea to try escaping a colony in the middle of space. Oh dear... foolish, I know. But, as I said, it is good news! After all, I love to hunt. Especially prey as innocent and naive as that one. So go ahead and run, Cube. Run as fast as you can... the more you run... the more fun it'll be... when I catch you.*
The silence that followed was the kind that has weight.
Willy stood still, staring at a fixed point in the void, with the look of someone processing several things at once and none of them good.
— Cube!
— Huh? What?
Agent T pointed backward without changing his expression.
Willy looked.
Several surveillance spheres were advancing down the row of cargo behind them, inspecting each car with the methodology of someone who has the time and orders to do so.
— Whoa!
— Meet me on Route 450! — Agent T was already moving.
— That road up there?! — Willy looked up at the elevated track, then back at Agent T. — How am I supposed to get up there?!
— I don't know. — Agent T prepared to jump. — Use your imagination.
— But—
— And watch out for the guards. — One last direct look. — They won't show mercy.
And then he was gone — leaping from cargo to cargo with that absurd lightness, toward a large vehicle connecting the lower roads to the elevated track above.
Willy stood there looking at all of it for one whole second.
— Wow...
Then he looked at the spheres closing in.
Then he looked up.
Closed his eyes. Breathed.
And went.
The gravity here was different.
Willy noticed it on the first jump — when his feet left the car and he rose higher than expected, lighter than he should have been, the space around him complete for one instant before he began to descend. Jumps here were events. Generous arcs that gave time to think, to redirect, to fail and try again. Car by car. The carts slid in parallel below like a river of metal, and the road's posts passed in front of him creating that illusion of movement that makes your head spin if you stare too long.
Willy didn't stare. Willy kept going.
A spherical a movement ahead — a blue reflection, perhaps, or the glint of copper lenses — and it shot toward him, watching with alert eyes hidden behind the reflection of its visor. Willy passed through the arc of the detector before it completed its sweep and the sphere returned to position, uncertain of what it had seen.
The Wanted posters passed on the sides like a permanent commentary on his life choices.
The crossing continued. Ahead, transport ships grew larger. On one of them — tall enough to require climbing — Willy scaled the side with his fingers finding holds where there were barely any, reached the top, and discovered what lay on the other side: a new energy road, lower, accessible from below, like a second floor in a city that grew inward.
Changed direction. Left now.
Route 450B was drawing closer from above like a ceiling that was slowly descending.
Then the surveillance spheres started arriving in force.
Not one. Not two. An entire sequence coming from the opposite direction, each one systematically inspecting every ship, every corner, every shadow with red eyes that never blinked and never tired. Willy ran. Jumped. One platform, another, another — obstacles appearing at growing speed, the spheres behind, the route above, space on both sides.
And then a hand grabbed him.
Strong, precise, from inside one of the ships.
The spheres passed right by. The red eyes swept the empty space where Willy had been a fraction of a second before.
---
The darkness inside the cargo hold was total.
Willy fell into it with a scream that echoed more than it should in such a small space, instinctively curled up, and stayed still, waiting for something to happen.
Silence.
He opened one eye. Then the other.
Agent T was leaning against the inner wall of the hold, looking at him with that specific ironic expression that had already become far too familiar in very little time.
Willy smiled with the kind of embarrassment that tries to hide itself.
— Hehe... hi.
---
Outside, through a crack, you could see the colony's roads below — covered in surveillance spheres passing on patrol, unaware that what they were looking for was hidden a few meters above, inside a perfectly ordinary cargo hold.
— We've bought ourselves some time — said Agent T, watching the movement outside.
— But... what now?
Agent T looked at him with disdain and moved deeper into the hold.
Willy waited a moment, with the expression of someone who already knows the question won't be answered voluntarily, and followed.
Agent T had reopened the colony hologram. He studied the map with that closed attention of his, tracing routes with his gaze.
— You know it would be really helpful if you were more open about *our* mission — said Willy, with the care of someone testing how far they can push.
Agent T raised his eyes with a look that communicated several simultaneous thoughts on the definition of "our." Then returned to the hologram.
— We're going to sabotage the communications tower.
Willy startled.
— What?!
— Then, the colony's fuel central.
— Fuel central?
— And after that, the Core.
Willy stared at Agent T for a moment.
— You're not explaining anything. — His voice came out with that specific patience of someone being very clear about the problem. — You're just throwing out random information with no context and expecting me to understand!
— Hm! — Agent T didn't seem particularly bothered by that. — And who said I wanted you to understand?
Willy opened his mouth. Closed it.
— Your mission is your mission, mine is mine. — Agent T walked past him and went to lean against the back wall, staring at a point on the ceiling with that pensive air that didn't invite continuation. — Don't mix things up, Cube.
Willy stayed where he was for a moment. Rolled his eyes. Then went to sit against the wall on the other side, at the exact distance of someone who didn't agree but understands that the argument is over.
The silence lasted a while.
— Hmm... — said Willy, to the air, without looking sideways. — What's your achievement?
Agent T turned.
It was quick — just a flash of something in the purple eyes, too fast to identify, before the expression returned to its default state of polished stone. He was silent for an instant.
— That information... — he said at last, slowly, as if weighing each syllable before releasing it. — is confidencial.
— But...
— And that's the end of it.
Willy didn't respond. He kept looking at Agent T with that expression that was becoming his trademark — serious, curious, and with the quiet persistence of someone who hadn't given up yet, just waiting.
Agent T didn't return the look.
Outside, the cargo hold continued along the long, illuminated road, cutting through the darkness of the colony toward a massive shadow growing on the horizon — the great communications tower, too tall to ignore, too silent to be harmless.