Digital Shadow
The workshop was quiet in the way only Aren's spaces ever were.
Not empty—never empty—but deliberately still. The hum of power conduits ran low and steady through the walls, tools sat where they had been left with intention rather than haste, and the faint glow of holoscreens painted the room in cool blues and muted ambers. Every surface had a purpose. Every object was where it was because she had decided it belonged there.
Omen was seated on the reinforced workbench, boots planted on the floor, shoulders loose but not slack. He wasn't restrained. He wasn't prepped. His jacket was still on, sleeves rolled just enough to expose the interfaces at his forearms—old fittings, well-maintained but unmistakably outdated. The kind of cybernetics that still worked because the man attached to them refused to let them fail, not because they were optimal.
Aren stood a few steps away, not touching him yet.
She held a slim datapad in one hand, stylus resting against the edge, eyes moving between readouts and him with the same steady focus she gave any system she intended to understand fully before altering. Diagnostic overlays hovered in the air between them, translucent lines mapping connection points, feedback latency, signal drift. Nothing alarming. Nothing urgent.
Which, in its own way, was the point.
"This isn't surgery," she said at last, tone even, almost casual. "I'm not replacing anything today."
She glanced up at him then, just briefly, as if checking not for consent—she already had that—but for something subtler. Readiness. Mood. Whether he was here because he wanted the work done or because he trusted her to be the one looking at him this closely.
"Think of it as… a proper assessment," she continued, setting the datapad down on the nearby console. "You've been compensating for signal lag in your right hand for a while. You adjust without thinking. It works, but it's not clean." A pause. "And it's been worse since Ilum."
She moved closer, finally entering his space, but stopped short of contact. Close enough that he could feel her presence shift the air, close enough that her shadow fell across his arms and the exposed interfaces. She didn't reach for him yet. Instead, she reached past him, pulling a tray closer with her foot—tools lay out neatly, untouched.
"This is the part where I look," she said. "And you decide if you're staying."
Her eyes met his then—steady, unflinching, unhurried. "No pressure. No pride games. We stop if and when you say stop."
The workshop hummed on around them, patient and waiting, as Aren stood there with the quiet certainty of someone who would not rush what mattered.
And for the first time, the work had not yet begun—but the choice had already been placed between them.
Sergeant Omen
Not empty—never empty—but deliberately still. The hum of power conduits ran low and steady through the walls, tools sat where they had been left with intention rather than haste, and the faint glow of holoscreens painted the room in cool blues and muted ambers. Every surface had a purpose. Every object was where it was because she had decided it belonged there.
Omen was seated on the reinforced workbench, boots planted on the floor, shoulders loose but not slack. He wasn't restrained. He wasn't prepped. His jacket was still on, sleeves rolled just enough to expose the interfaces at his forearms—old fittings, well-maintained but unmistakably outdated. The kind of cybernetics that still worked because the man attached to them refused to let them fail, not because they were optimal.
Aren stood a few steps away, not touching him yet.
She held a slim datapad in one hand, stylus resting against the edge, eyes moving between readouts and him with the same steady focus she gave any system she intended to understand fully before altering. Diagnostic overlays hovered in the air between them, translucent lines mapping connection points, feedback latency, signal drift. Nothing alarming. Nothing urgent.
Which, in its own way, was the point.
"This isn't surgery," she said at last, tone even, almost casual. "I'm not replacing anything today."
She glanced up at him then, just briefly, as if checking not for consent—she already had that—but for something subtler. Readiness. Mood. Whether he was here because he wanted the work done or because he trusted her to be the one looking at him this closely.
"Think of it as… a proper assessment," she continued, setting the datapad down on the nearby console. "You've been compensating for signal lag in your right hand for a while. You adjust without thinking. It works, but it's not clean." A pause. "And it's been worse since Ilum."
She moved closer, finally entering his space, but stopped short of contact. Close enough that he could feel her presence shift the air, close enough that her shadow fell across his arms and the exposed interfaces. She didn't reach for him yet. Instead, she reached past him, pulling a tray closer with her foot—tools lay out neatly, untouched.
"This is the part where I look," she said. "And you decide if you're staying."
Her eyes met his then—steady, unflinching, unhurried. "No pressure. No pride games. We stop if and when you say stop."
The workshop hummed on around them, patient and waiting, as Aren stood there with the quiet certainty of someone who would not rush what mattered.
And for the first time, the work had not yet begun—but the choice had already been placed between them.
Sergeant Omen
