*Defective Tools, Defective Decisions*

Belobog Heavy Industries — Sector 7, Grace’s Workshop — had seen worse messes. Usually those messes had the courtesy of being mechanical.

Grace Howard kicked the workshop door shut with her heel and set the olive-green crate on the workbench like it was a birthday present. Stenciled on the side, in the kind of font Public Security used when they wanted something to look official and already abandoned:

`MUNICIPAL POLICE GOODS — DEFECTIVE TOOLS.`

“There we go, little ones,” she murmured, peeling the lid. “Mama’s home. Let’s see who still wants to be useful.”

Robotic arms unfolded from the ceiling with a hydraulic sigh. Screens woke. Blueprints of drones and heavy frames bloomed across the monitors. Grace’s goggles sat on her forehead like a second pair of eyes that had already decided this would be a good night.

She dumped the crate into a tray.

A Public Security badge. Handcuffs that had clearly lost an argument with something stronger than a suspect. A collapsible baton with a cracked housing. A stun baton that smelled faintly of burnt insulation. Wrenches, drivers, a half-melted communicator, a pistol grip with no pistol attached. Recalled goods. Salvage. The kind of batch Koleda signed off on because “if Grace can’t fix it, we can at least melt it.”

Grace’s gloved fingers moved through the pile with the tenderness other people reserved for sleeping cats.

“Oh, you’re just tired,” she told a seized clamp. “Not defective. Don’t listen to the label.”

Then her hand closed on something that did not belong.

A small box. Squared. Worn. Older metal under newer paint. No serial that matched the rest of the Public Security lot. A single dark viewport. No obvious switch.

Grace lifted it into the light.

“…and who are you?”

---

From above, the workshop looked like a circuit board that had grown arms.

Grace leaned over the tray, goggles down now, orange lenses catching the bench’s glow. The robotic arms waited at the four corners like polite vultures. The tray’s rim still read `BELOBOG MPD GOODS — DEFECTIVE`.

She turned the box. No seam she trusted. No port that admitted it wanted to be a port. The thing sat in her palms with the weight of something that had been waiting.

“You’re not a tool,” she said softly. “You’re a secret someone forgot to classify.”

She did what Grace Howard always did when a machine refused to introduce itself.

She listened.

Then she pressed.

A hairline seam warmed under her thumb. The viewport flickered. Dust lifted off the casing as if the box had exhaled.

“Oh,” Grace whispered, delighted. “You do still work.”

---

The air above the tray tightened.

A wireframe bloomed around the box — a pale geometric cage, facets snapping into place like a net remembering how to be a net. The device lifted off her hands by a finger’s width. Light crawled over its corners.

Grace’s smile froze halfway.

“…but.”

The cage brightened. The box’s viewport opened like an eye that had been shut too long.

Grace’s hand went to her mouth.

“That’s not a diagnostic field.”

The wireframe ballooned.

---

The first rupture was almost polite.

A sphere of clear, warping air punched out of the box and took the workbench with it in principle if not yet in pieces. Tools rattled. A monitor cracked along a hairline. The device hung in the center of the bubble like a bad idea that had achieved lift.

Grace stumbled back into a stack of BHI crates, goggles askew, both hands up as if she could negotiate with physics.

“Okay—okay, little one, that’s enough showing off—”

The sphere did not listen. It never did, once it had decided it was a room.

Inside it, the box pulsed. Once. Twice.

The bubble’s skin went from glass to storm.

---

Sector 7 learned, very quickly, that “workshop” was a suggestion.

The sphere ate space. It rolled across the floor in a slow, terrible inhale, dragging sparks off the nearest arm, peeling a monitor from its mount, kissing a support beam until the beam remembered it was only metal. Overhead signage flashed:

`BHI — GRACE’S WORKSHOP — SECTOR 7`

Grace was a dark smudge against the far wall, one palm out, shouting something the expanding field turned into weather.

At the sphere’s heart the little box still hung, obedient and catastrophic.

---

Pressure arrived like a tide that had learned to climb walls.

The workshop stretched. Lights smeared. The air went thick and silver-white, folding around Grace until she was half in it and half against the bulkhead, boots leaving the floor, coat snapping in a current that had no wind. Her mouth opened on a sound that did not quite make it out.

The field was not exploding.

It was rearranging.

---

On the other side of a very large, very locked door, Wise chose the worst possible second to be a good guest.

Belobog Heavy Industries

Research & Development Division

The plaque was older than the scanner beside it. Wise tucked a stray silver bang behind his ear, backpack strap tight against his shoulder, and pressed his thumb to the reader because Grace had texted come by if you’re free, I found something cute in the scrap lot and “cute,” from Grace, had historically meant either a Bangboo with a new hat or a device that could level a city block.

The lights on the panel went green.

The handle turned.

Wise had time to think: I should have brought Belle. Belle is better at doors that explode.

Then the door remembered it was attached to Sector 7.

---

The pulse hit the corridor like a swallowed scream coming back up.

Pink-white mass boiled through the inner bay — not quite liquid, not quite Ether, not quite polite enough to pick one. Bangboo tumbled inside it like toys in a washing machine: one with a yellow visor, one hugging its own ears, one making the exact noise Eous made when the HDD in Random Play overheated.

Wise ran.

He did not run with dignity. He ran with the specific terror of a man who had survived Hollows and still was not prepared for Grace Howard’s hobbies.

“NOT THE BANGBOO—” he yelled, which was, in hindsight, a very Proxy thing to prioritize.

The blob answered by eating a catwalk.

---

*Public Security Bureau*

*Interrogation Room 3*

*PUBSEC — SILENCE PLEASE*

The rubber duck wore a tiny police cap.

Zhu Yuan sat with perfect posture, pen aligned to the page, mug labeled `PUBSEC` steaming like it had also been briefed. Across from her, in chairs that were too small for the amount of trouble they contained:

Wise, chibi-sized by trauma and fluorescent lighting, one hand in his hair, eyes wet with the particular sorrow of a man who had watched his delivery Bangboo become modern art.

Grace, arms crossed, goggles still on, looking like a child who had been told the engine she rebuilt was “evidence.”

Zhu Yuan closed the folder. Opened it again. The papers said things like unlicensed Ether containment, reckless refurbishment of recalled municipal assets, and why is there a duck.

She looked at Grace.

Grace looked at the duck.

Wise looked at the exit.

Zhu Yuan exhaled through her nose, the official sound of a woman who had a perfect case record and a rapidly deteriorating afternoon.

“Start,” she said, “from the crate.”

Grace brightened, because even in Interrogation Room 3, a machine was a machine.

“Well,” she said, “it wanted to be held.”

Wise put his face in his hands.

Outside the two-way glass, someone in PubSec quietly updated the incident board from workshop accident to do not let Belobog have police surplus ever again.

The duck, to its credit, said nothing.