An Anomaly

Hetto dried off his hair, passing by a group of guys getting changed into uniform. They were in a long hallway of lockers, just shy of peaking into the showering area. He sat far away from the others, opening a locker surrounded by empty ones. He took his time getting changed into his jumpsuit, during which, the group of guys made their way past him and out of the room. He sat there in silence, worried. His stare held on the empty insides of the open locker in front of him. With a sigh, he stood up and left.

Only a few minutes later, the door to the brig opened, and Hetto walked in. Although he was quickly stopped in his tracks, caught off guard by the sight in front of him. Ambi was out of his cell sat next to a ginger woman in a lab coat. She was examining him with a hand-held device that was projecting a light teal glow onto the skin of his forearm.

"What's going on here?!" He rushed over to them, grabbing Ambi by his arm and twisting it behind his back.

"Ay! Chill, everything's fine!" Ambi managed to get out before Hetto slammed him up against the glass cell door.

With a couple of quick entries to the console nearby, the door slid open, and Ambi was tossed back inside.

"Hey! I was looking at him!" The woman stood up, thrusting her arms beside her in frustration.

Hetto turned to her, flustered by the situation. "Do you have clearance to take him out of this cell?"

"Clearance?" She tilted her head.

Hetto quietly pressed an extra key on the console, causing the cell next to Ambi to slide open. "I'd like you to take a step inside here for the time being while I contact your commanding officer or manager..." He almost gagged on his own words, terrified of if what he was doing was even possible with inquisitor's rights.

"What! You can't put me in the brig! I'm a part of the R&D team!" She backed away from him.

Hetto stepped closer. "You freed a registered prisoner without clearance. You are automatically considered to be a potential assistant to the criminal in question. Please step inside the cell, or I'll be forced to put you there against your will."

The woman opened her mouth and uttered a vague noise but was too lost for words. She marched past Hetto and into the cell, with the door closing behind her. "Happy?"

Hetto didn't immediately turn to face her. He was blushing. The woman was young, in her late 20s and unfortunately for Hetto, very pretty. It made it all the more difficult to face her with a stern face. She likely legitimately didn't think about what she was doing, but he needed to follow protocol. After all, nothing about Ambi's situation was worth leaving to chance.

"Name and department?" He said, refusing to make eye contact. Instead, he pulled the terminal over to him to look her up.

"Lilly Smith, R&D. Reporting to Harry Joney." She stopped herself from saying any more. "But wait, please hear me out!" She slammed up against the cell door.

Hetto's eyes finally met hers, giving her a distrusting glance.

"I know he appeared out of nowhere." She motioned over to the cell next to her, where Ambi was patiently waiting to see the outcome of the conversation.

Hetto looked between the two of them. "What do you mean 'he appeared out of nowhere'? You got proof?"

"If you'd come to my lab with me... Then I would gladly show you the evidence." She leaned off the glass cell door.

Hetto glanced away. He wasn't quite sure what he was meant to do. The woman seemed suspicious. But it wasn't like he knew how to extract anything from Ambi anyway. "How can I trust you?"

"I'm a Vanguard researcher, you can look up the work I've done for us in the past! I'm known by like hundreds of people on this ship alone!" She paced back and forth.

"Then why would you let a PRISONER out of their cell, unsupervised and without any clearance."

"There is a giant ball of caramel where a planet used to be, and a human has just magically appeared on board! I think the circumstances call for some clearance skipping."

"And what if he killed you and was then free to roam the ship the moment he got out?" Hetto walked up to her cell door.

"I'll have you know I have taken many CQC classes as a part of my initiation into the Homemakers fleet!" She placed her arms at her hips.

He twisted his lips. "What do you mean he appeared on the ship?" He walked over to his usual seat. "You mean he teleported somehow?"

Lilly hesitated, "I think so, but that wouldn't make sense since the human body can't handle conventional forms of teleportation, especially since most of them require slipping into Theory Space. So either he came here in some sort of Tarx suit, and then hid it or sent it back to wherever he came from."

Hetto watched her speak.

"Thing is, if he came here in a suit, it would've triggered the onboard foreign Tarx tech sensors."

"He's former Vanguard. Not unbelievable that he'd know how to spoof an ID."

"But then it would've gotten an entry in the inventory logs, which I've checked and found nothing." She paced in her cell.

"So you believe he somehow survived teleportation without any protection?"

"Can I say something?" Ambi waved to Hetto, who turned to face him with a mixture of unenthusiasm and slight annoyance. "Surviving teleportation isn't actually as hard as your modern-day Tarx technician would have you believe."

Lilly squinted her eyes in the cell over despite not being able to see Ambi. She looked over to see Hetto's reaction, who seemed to be unimpressed by the statement.

"The problem with current practice of Tarx tech is compliance to regulations and safety. Humans want to treat it like a science, yet the Tarx have never seen it that way. For them, it's an intensely spiritual experience, which involves more than just tested use cases and time in labs." Ambi sat down on his bed and twirled his hands around as he continued his explanation. "To us, a Breaker is something that temporarily breaks the Rules of Everything. To them, a Breaker is a sad attempt from a primitive civilization to grasp a much more complex system. Their usage of RoE involves gods, heroes of legends, and other myths." Ambi took a moment to breathe. "So just because you think it's not possible, means very little to people that long since abandoned that way of thinking."

"I mean, everyone knows that Tarx see their manipulation of RoE as magic, but we could never use it as they could. Humans can only manipulate it through the code we can put on Tarx bones." Lilly was quick to defend her beliefs.

"Which university taught you that? You seem like a smart woman so far, so I'll assume Mt. Horizon?"

She didn't respond.

"I went there too, med student. Still remember making notes as they told me the exact value of human life in relation to Breaker code." Ambi slammed himself into his bed.

The three sat in silence. Ambi was content, his eyes closed as he enjoyed the surprisingly comfy bed the cell was outfitted with. Hetto sat with a confused look in his eyes, he was a Tarx engineer, but the prospect of everything he'd ever learned being false was something so daunting that his mind was utterly rejecting the idea of it. Lilly had a hand to her chin, contemplating the situation and Ambi's unpopular opinion on Tarx technology.

"Oh! Hetto! I told you I'd tell you a story today! Wanna hear it?" Ambi jerked up from his bed.

Hetto sighed, "fine."

"Can I stay for it?" Lilly squeaked out.

"Never said you could leave anyway." Hetto sat back in his chair. "Let's hear this story."

Ambi clapped his hands together. "It was graduation day...!"