Limitless Evolution As a Snake

Harden offered to forgive me if I left the rig, which sounded generous until he mentioned leaving the controller and remaining where his men could collect me.

I had received better invitations from vending machines that swallowed my money. At least those only wanted a dollar before ruining my afternoon.

”That was a lovely offer, Uncle, but I’d already made plans involving not being yours to collect. We could discuss compensation once you learned to own a hobby instead of a nephew.”

He smiled without finding anything funny. The pressure gauge kept climbing behind his image, and I stopped wasting attention on his face when the emergency diagram showed a mechanical bypass below the station.

Remote control could lock the powered valves. It couldn’t prevent someone physically removing the bypass’s retaining ring, provided that someone could reach it without being flattened by the chamber’s moving parts.

[System: Family reunion’s going beautifully, mate. You’ve insulted his parenting, stolen his remote and turned his employee into camping food. Maybe ask about Christmas before the bastard floods the suburb.]

If he wanted a gift list, I would start with a personality and work toward something harder to buy.

I slid below the control platform. The retaining ring sat behind a clear service panel, close enough for my skill but too enclosed for me to see the whole object properly.

The panel had ordinary screws. My tendrils could turn them, which felt painfully slow while a gauge measured how close our apartment was to becoming a wet memory, but pretending I could steal through an opaque housing wouldn’t make the rule change.

Above me, Harden ordered the remaining guards to open the security shutter. Their powered release had lost access with the same override he had imposed, and the resulting argument gave me several useful seconds of family efficiency.

Bridget called again. The dry station had completed its service isolation, but the external junction’s pressure reading was rising from the rig’s line rather than the district’s own pumps.

She had the club’s location marked on the same map. One branch ran directly beneath our rear service room, where I had so proudly delivered the heater that morning.

”I was dealing with it, sweetheart. If anyone offered you a refund on the apartment, tell them I’d prefer the actual apartment to remain available.”

”I preferred you available too,” she said. ”Tell Lukas what you needed before trying to carry the entire problem in your teeth.”

I opened a shared call and read the bypass instructions. The stolen controller contained a manual actuator block that could hold the relief gate open even with the main system locked, but using it required docking the cabinet in the rig’s external service port.

The pressure would wreck its delicate control unit. A red warning made that part clear, alongside a replacement price high enough to make my entire body feel financially threatened.

I had stolen a very expensive controller so I could destroy a very expensive controller. The universe appeared determined to test whether revenge included accepting terrible profit margins.

[System: You could keep it, mate. Lovely souvenir for the new underwater bedroom, assuming you’re happy with the bed being somewhere near the fucking moon.]

I understood the choice, you furry little accountant. I just wanted a few seconds to dislike it properly.

Harden kept talking while I worked, offering money now that the collection threat had failed. He still described it as an allowance, which did a wonderful job of reminding me why accepting would feel worse than losing the controller.

I wanted the bastard to understand that expensive things could stop belonging to him, including people he’d mistaken for expensive things.

The panel came free. I selected the retaining ring, brought it into the space against my lower coils and felt its full weight slam onto the platform beside me.

Mine Now started its cooldown. The ring was gone, but the relief gate remained shut until the actuator could push it, and the diagram’s warning about stored pressure suggested kicking it would only shorten the story.

Lukas steered the sub toward the external service port using Bridget’s map and my chamber view. He kept the cabin sealed and used the loading cradle to present the cabinet, leaving the heavy work to the mechanism rather than his recovering ribs.

The guards broke the shutter’s side latch. I heard boots on the stairs and sent a solid tendril across the narrow passage to pull an empty tool cart into their path.

The cart bought a collision and some swearing, not a victory. One guard climbed over it while the other tried to find a clear line to shoot through the railings.

I moved toward the chamber’s lower maintenance door. The natural deepbell followed me through its window, eye tracking the only person in the room who hadn’t recently pressed a control to hurt it.

That didn’t make us friends. It simply made me less immediately offensive than its employer, a low bar I was happy to clear without writing poetry about the bond.

Harden realized what Lukas was doing when the external docking signal appeared on his display. His voice lost its smugness, which improved my day more than several thousand in imaginary resale profit ever could.

He ordered the final pressure discharge. The rig locked its forward line onto the exposed junction, and the charge indicator began counting down while Lukas struggled to align the cabinet’s docking catches.

Bridget read the alignment marks from the transmitted camera. Lukas corrected gently, the catches engaged and the manual actuator’s status light finally turned green.

The cabinet needed one more command from the local station, and I had left that station above two armed guards who now stood between me and the controls.

Old Mate asked whether I wanted to save the bed or keep arguing about the money. I looked at the chamber window, the deepbell’s powerful body and the partly released harness behind it, then decided my uncle’s expensive animal was about to receive a very early lunch break.