Chapter 3: The Broken Plates
On the twelfth cycle after the encounter with the child, Shuun-Vo noticed that one of his plates was cracked.
It wasn't a large crack. A thin fissure, almost invisible, at the edge of the plate covering his left shoulder. He noticed it while washing himself in a stream near the forty-ninth space, a habit he had recently acquired, after realizing that the moss seemed to prefer when he was clean.
The fissure didn't hurt. But it was there.
Shuun-Vo ran his fingers over the plate, feeling the rough texture of the broken edge. The plates of inverse biomatter had never cracked before. They had been part of him since he was born in the Sterile Fields of Helyon, an armor that rejected the world and protected him from any attempt at symbiosis.
But now they were cracking.
- "You're wearing down - Kael-Zhur had said, weeks ago."
- "No. I'm spreading - Shuun-Vo had replied."
Now, looking at the fissure, he wasn't so sure.
Shuun-Vo spent the following days observing his plates more closely. There were other fissures. Small, almost imperceptible, but present. On his right elbow. On the edge of the plate covering his left thigh. On the smaller plate above his eyebrow.
They didn't hurt. But they seemed... tired.
- "You're old - said a voice."
Shuun-Vo turned. It was a woman, maybe forty cycles old, with graying hair and a respiratory symbiote glowing softly in her chest. She was sitting on the central stone of the unregistered space, as if she had every right to be there.
Which, in a way, she did.
- "I'm not old - Shuun-Vo replied." - "I'm spreading."
- "That's what people say when they don't want to admit they're tired."
Shuun-Vo frowned. Who was this woman to speak to him like that? He was Shuun-Vo. The Rejected Presence. The one who nullified symbiosis. People didn't speak to him like that.
- "Who are you? - he asked."
- "Someone who's been using your spaces for cycles - the woman said." - "You've never seen me because you never paid attention."
It was true. Shuun-Vo created the spaces, but he rarely observed who used them. He was always moving, always creating the next one, always spreading.
- "What's your name? - he asked."
- "Names don't matter - the woman said." - "What matters is that you're wearing down. Those plates won't last forever."
- "I know."
- "And what will you do when they break?"
Shuun-Vo didn't answer. He had never thought about it. The plates had always been there. They were his identity, his function, his reason for existing. If they broke, what would be left?
The woman stood and walked toward him. She stopped a step away, close enough for Shuun-Vo to feel the warmth of her body, but not enough to touch him.
- "You've spent cycles creating places where people can rest - she said." - "Maybe it's time for you to rest too."
Shuun-Vo didn't answer. The woman smiled and left.
That night, Shuun-Vo sat on the central stone and touched the fissure on his left shoulder. For the first time, he felt something beyond irritation or indifference.
He felt fear.