The knife kept moving behind Elias as he reached his pod.
Metal tapped skin, turned, and landed again. Tid was showing off without looking like he cared whether anyone noticed. That somehow made it more irritating.
Elias kept walking. If the man wanted to lose a finger, that belonged between him, his Ikona, and the unlucky medic assigned to stitch arrogance back together.
The A 08 door had no handle. A green handprint pulsed beside the seam, waiting for him like it already knew his palm.
Elias set his stamped hand against it.
A calm artificial voice answered from the wall. "Welcome to your assigned pod, Elias Kael. Interior access is provisional until medical clearance updates your profile."
The panels folded upward into the ceiling.
The pod was larger than he expected, which annoyed him before he understood why. A cell would have been honest. This room wanted gratitude.
A bed sat against the left wall with green sheets tucked tight enough to make a nurse proud. A dresser stood opposite it beneath a wall screen. A compact fridge had been built into the back wall. The only window had shutters over it, sealed from the outside, and Elias doubted it opened onto anything command had not approved first.
He dropped the pack on the bed and looked around.
"This is nicer than my apartment in two categories, and that feels insulting."
Dot popped out near the dresser. "Does the fridge count as one entire category?"
"The fridge is doing most of the work."
He opened it.
Water, protein drinks, sealed meals, fruit, and several unlabeled packs waited in perfect rows. The packaging had no brand, no color, no promise of taste. Expensive military food always looked ashamed of flavor.
Dot leaned over his shoulder with immediate interest.
"If you cook anything in here, I expect tasting rights."
"You do not have a stomach."
"That has not stopped my enthusiasm from developing standards."
He shut the fridge and unpacked only what he needed. Phone. Charger. Spare clothes. The little packet of cash he no longer trusted would matter inside a place that tracked his socks. Last came his father's knife.
He set it on the dresser with care.
The blade looked wrong under the pod light. Too personal. Too old. It belonged in a kitchen drawer, in his hand after a long shift, in the awkward space between memory and debt. Here, it looked like evidence.
A folded note waited on the pillow.
CHANGE INTO GREEN ON GREEN.
Elias opened the dresser and found the outfit. Long sleeved top. Matching pants. White stripe down the sides. Soft, flexible, and impossible to mistake for personal choice.
"The clothes say we are all individuals with identical laundry."
Dot circled the shirt. "At least the stripe suggests you might move eventually."
"That is a desperate compliment from someone without legs."
"I refuse to be limited by anatomy."
He changed quickly. The material fit close without squeezing and made him look less like a chef and more like a patient who had been issued a training schedule. When he checked his phone, the signal icon showed nothing.
No calls from the restaurant.
No messages from anyone who knew him before the cube.
No easy proof that the outside world had not continued without him.
He put the phone away before staring at it became another way to lose.
Back in the main block, Kikaru was doing push ups near the mats.
She counted under her breath. No audience. No music. No wasted motion. Each rep matched the one before it close enough that Elias wondered whether she had practiced making effort look like a threat.
He slowed for half a step.
Kikaru did not look up. "If you are about to ask whether I train often, save us both the pain."
"I was considering a better question than that."
"Then keep considering until it improves further."
Elias accepted the mercy hidden in the insult and kept moving.
Tid passed through a side door near the lounge. The snake Ikona on the couch lifted its head as he went. Dot noticed. The snake noticed Dot noticing. For two creatures that did not speak the same language, they seemed very ready to create a diplomatic incident.
Elias followed at a distance because curiosity had survived every attempt he made to kill it.
The side door opened into a recreational room.
That stopped him harder than the training glass had.
Screens covered one wall with leaderboards, music feeds, and live match stats. Gaming stations filled the corners. Reinforced couches formed a rough square around low tables stocked with energy bars, drinks, and neatly stacked controllers. Three shard bearers argued over a multiplayer match with the focus of people who preferred fake explosions to real questions.
Ikonas lounged around them in the wrong places. A bird pecked at a wrapper. A puff shaped one slept in the curve of a chair. the snake slid along the couch back, watching Dot with patient interest.
Cameras watched all of them.
Elias found three before he tried. One above the fridge. One inside the corner of a leaderboard display. One behind a black dome near the ceiling, tilted toward the gaming pit.
Tid dropped into a seat and pointed his knife toward the small fridge.
"If you are going to stand there looking betrayed by the concept of fun, grab a drink."
"I am still adjusting to the prison having a gaming lounge."
"Staff says containment residence, which means prison with nicer lies."
"That term has too many syllables for a cage."
Tid smiled a little. "Good, because they hate when we use the short word."
Elias took a water and stayed standing.
The room explained more than Oliver had. Command wanted them contained, but not desperate. Comfortable people stayed longer in rooms with cameras. Bored people showed habits. Gamers showed temper, patience, cooperation, spite, and who blamed the controller when they lost.
The leaderboards were not for entertainment alone.
The couch pit was not kindness.
Dot settled on his shoulder. "You are doing the face where you ruin a nice room by thinking."
"Someone built this before they knew us, which means someone expected to need it."
One of the players cursed at the screen. His Ikona sparked in irritation, small blue jumps popping over its shell. A sensor above the display changed from green to yellow.
Elias watched the color shift.
Tid caught his blade by the handle and stopped flipping it.
"Now the new guy is learning," he said.
The yellow sensor stayed yellow for three breaths before fading back to green.