CHAPTER 6: TELLING THE BOSS

Alex was in the middle of what looked like World War III fought entirely with engineering diagrams. She stood at the center of the command module, surrounded by three staff members orbiting her like anxious satellites. The holographic display cast a cold blue light over her face as she jabbed her finger at the screen.

"No, the water purification system needs to go here," she said, her voice sharp. "If we place it downstream from the power station, we're risking contamination from coolant leaks."

Eli lingered in the doorway, Sage's hologram hovering invisibly beside him. He'd run through this conversation a dozen times on the walk over. There was no clean way to tell your boss you'd acquired powers from alien technology.

Alex glanced up, noticed him, gave a quick nod that clearly meant not now, and returned to what sounded like a very serious attempt to prevent the colony from poisoning its own water supply.

"Perhaps not the best timing," Sage murmured through their private connection.

"Yeah, clean water probably trumps 'guess what, I can teleport now,'" Eli replied internally. "Let's come back when she's not saving everyone from drinking coolant."

Back in his quarters, Eli sank into his recliner. It was the only possession he'd insisted on bringing from Earth, though calling it that was generous. The fabricator had replaced nearly every component over the decades. Springs, padding, the outer covering, all of it gradually swapped out as parts wore down. Yet somehow it was still his chair. The ship's AI must have preserved the exact dimensions, the precise curve of the backrest, that slight tilt to the right when positioned correctly.

Ship of Theseus, he thought. None of the original material remained, but it was still unmistakably his. Maybe that was the point.

"Ready to fine-tune Revelation?" Sage asked, materializing cross-legged in midair. Her silver-streaked hair caught the ambient light in that distinctive halo effect she'd accidentally coded into her appearance decades ago and kept because she thought it looked dignified.

"God, yes," Eli said, rubbing his temples. "Right now it's like drinking from a firehose with my eyeballs."

"Consider how extraordinary this actually is," she said, leaning forward with that expression she got when she was picking something apart. "A synthetic being accessing what appears to be magical ability. No probability model I've run accounts for it."

"And yet here we are." He activated Revelation, and the world flooded him with data that made him wince. Even with his enhanced processing capacity, the sheer volume was brutal.

"Input management difficulties?" Sage asked, one holographic eyebrow arching with that maternal concern she'd developed somewhere around year forty of their journey.

"You could say that." He gestured at a dead leaf in the corner he'd tracked in on his boot. "Do I really need to know it's seventy-three percent desiccated, has been detached from its parent plant for exactly four days and three hours, and contains seventeen minerals including one the system can't identify?" He pressed two fingers against his temples. A reflexive human gesture that did nothing whatsoever for his synthetic brain. "It's like trying to have a conversation while ten thousand people scream random numbers at me."

"Let's build some filters before you fry your neural pathways," Sage said.

They spent the next hour adjusting parameters while waiting for Alex to resolve the infrastructure crisis. The flood of information gradually receded to something manageable. Eli could now choose what to focus on, letting the peripheral details fade without losing them entirely.

"Try the data pad," Sage said, pointing to a tablet one of the engineers had left the day before.

He focused on it and additional layers opened up. Elevated cortisol in the fingerprints. Pressure patterns indicating real anxiety. Their engineer friend had been seriously stressed.

"Probably the water system plans Alex was yelling about," Sage said dryly.

Three sharp knocks cut through the quiet. Efficient, not aggressive. Alex's signature.

"Eli? Got a minute?"

He crossed the room and opened the door. She looked like she'd gone ten rounds with something and lost on points. Dark circles, rumpled uniform, the specific tired-eyed look that came from bending over engineering diagrams for twelve hours straight.

"Please, sit," he said, gesturing toward his bed.

She dropped onto it with visible relief, the mattress dipping under her weight. Her shoulders slumped. A moment later, some ingrained administrative reflex straightened her spine, though the effort was visible.

"Water crisis resolved," she said, rubbing her neck. "Some engineer thought running coolant pipes directly over the purification system was a great idea. Fixed before anyone got poisoned."

"Before I get into this..." Eli settled back into his recliner, the worn leather creaking. "I had a cat right before we launched."

Alex gave him a sideways look, the faint beginnings of a smile pulling at her mouth. "Where are you going with this?"

"His name was Simon. Ancient, eighteen years old. I gave him away to some cousin I barely knew before departure." His gaze drifted to the viewport, where Luyten's star cast long red streaks across the floor. "That night, after handing him off, I made dinner, sat down, and caught myself hunching over my plate like I was eating in a prison yard."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Simon was a professional food thief," he continued. "I got so used to guarding my plate that it became muscle memory. But that night it hit me. Simon was gone. I could eat like a normal person again."

She laughed, the fatigue in her face briefly dissolving.

"For days afterward I kept arguing with an imaginary cat. 'No, you cannot have my chicken.' Swatting at phantom paws." He shook his head. "A hundred years later I still think about that damn cat. Didn't even like him that much."

She laughed harder, nearly sliding off the bed. "You're genuinely strange. Is there a point to this?"

"Just getting you in the right frame of mind for what comes next." He stood. "And making sure you're sitting down."

He teleported.

Three jumps in rapid succession: desk to door, door to window, window back to his chair. Each time, his form dissolved into a brief pulse of light and reappeared somewhere else.

Alex's mouth fell open.

"So," Eli said, dropping into the recliner as if nothing had happened. "I found something interesting while I was planting those blackberries. Turns out there's an alien chamber in the mountain. It gave me..." he wiggled his fingers, "superpowers."

"Superpowers," she repeated, leaning forward to poke him in the chest as if checking he was still solid. "You're not malfunctioning?"

"Nope. I figured you might think that, so I recorded everything." He tapped his temple. "Full documentation. You don't have to take the word of a possibly glitching synthetic guy who spent too long in space."

She ran both hands through her hair, leaving it sticking up at odd angles. "Let me understand this. You found alien tech that gave you literal magic powers, and now you can teleport. What else?"

"There's a scanning ability called Revelation. Structural weaknesses, chemical compositions, even emotional states. I can also store things in a pocket dimension." He paused briefly. "And I can fire energy bolts that seek out vulnerable points."

"Energy bolts," she said faintly, dropping back onto the bed. "Great. This is fine."

"Want to see the chamber?" He figured she'd need to experience it directly. "Pretty hard to fully appreciate secondhand."

She looked up at him, the professional mask entirely gone. "Is it safe?"

"I'm not currently exploding or trying to conquer anything, so. Probably." He shrugged. "Worth seeing, given the potential."

"Okay." She pushed herself upright. "But if I turn into a supervillain, that's entirely on you."

"I should come along," Sage said, her hologram appearing fully now that the secret was out. "I can fill in details from the initial discovery."

"Good," Alex said. "Let's see this magic mountain."

The walk was quiet. The evening air carried the sharp, sweet scent of alien vegetation, and Luyten's star was sinking low on the horizon, turning everything a deep, bruised crimson.

Inside the chamber, Alex went still and looked up. The columns soared overhead, their surfaces covered in patterns that seemed to shift when you weren't quite looking directly at them. The central crystal pulsed with a slow, purple light, both inviting and faintly unsettling.

"This is probably stupid," she admitted, approaching the altar with careful steps. Her fingers found the smooth stone surface. No dust anywhere, despite the obvious age of the place. "But I need to know if it responds to me too. I'll record through my neural implant."

She connected quickly, then reached toward the crystal. Her hand hesitated for a moment before making contact.

Text appeared in their shared visual field: Welcome Ascension Initiate. Think 'Show Status' to view your profile, ability information, skill selection and documentation.

"I'm an Initiate, not a Candidate like you," she noted, glancing back at Eli. "Different classification."

"Check your status," he said, leaning against one of the columns.

Her holographic display materialized.

Profile
Name: Alexandra Reeves
Age: 164
Race: Human
Level: 1
Essence: 0/1000

Statistics
Strength: 6
Agility: 11
Durability: 7
Intelligence: 16
Perception: 12
Unallocated Points: 0

"My numbers are way lower than yours," she observed. "Though I guess that tracks if ten is human average. Smarter than average, definitely not winning any weightlifting competitions."

She moved through the interface with surprising ease, fingers scrolling as if she'd done it before. A new screen appeared.

Primary Skill, Automatically Assigned
Optimal Assignment: Reveals the ideal role for any individual based on their innate capabilities, personality traits, and potential development paths. Also indicates when someone is underperforming in their current role and identifies better-suited alternatives.

A slow smile crossed her face. "I can identify exactly who should be doing what in the colony. Find people wasted in the wrong positions. Restructure the whole operation for actual efficiency." She glanced up at Eli. "I've been trying to do this manually since we landed. It's been a nightmare."

"The system seems to know exactly what each person needs," Eli said. "Almost suspiciously so."

"I'm not complaining about suspiciously helpful alien tech," she replied. "So, what else should I pick? You've had more time to think about it."

"Focus on what you need right now, since we get more points as we level up." He moved closer to the altar. "I took Teleportation, Dimensional Storage, and Seeker's Bolt. The storage alone is worth it. Unlimited equipment without carrying anything."

She nodded, eyes scanning through options. "Dimensional Storage is obvious. I'm drowning in files." Her fingers scrolled. "Perfect Memory would help too. I spend half my time in planning meetings just trying to keep track of what was said two hours ago."

"There's also a Cleaning skill," he said. "Sounds trivial until you're covered in alien mud with no shower for miles."

"Yes," she agreed, with more enthusiasm than he expected. "Half my day is spent trying to look presentable while walking between construction zones and formal meetings. The time savings alone would be worth it."

Her eyes sharpened as she found another entry. "Truth Assessment. Detects when someone believes what they're saying, without revealing the actual truth." She looked at him with a considering expression. "When we start waking the corporate and political leadership, this will be invaluable."

"Perfect combination," Eli said. "Information management, personal efficiency, and a reliable way to catch someone lying to your face."

"Exactly." She confirmed her selections, and the knowledge integrated.

She blinked hard, hands rising to her temples. "That's strange. It's like suddenly remembering things I never actually learned." She extended one hand toward the empty air in front of her and focused.

A shimmer of distortion moved through the space as she activated Dimensional Storage. She pulled off her emerald ring and let it drop through the invisible pocket. It vanished with a soft sound, then reappeared in her palm a moment later.

She slid it back onto her finger, then looked at Eli. "You weren't malfunctioning."

"Told you," he said, keeping the smug expression to a minimum. "Now you understand why I started with the cat story. If you'd been in a bad mood, you probably would've just ordered a diagnostic on my systems."

She walked slowly around the altar, tracing the carved patterns in the stone. "I understand why you were careful. The colonists are already struggling with survival. The last thing they need is magical powers as an additional variable." She looked across the chamber at him. "But this is too useful to ignore."

"We went through all the documentation we could find," Eli said, stepping around the subject of where the creators had gone. "Built by an ancient civilization that studied essence and mana for thousands of years. They designed it to guide species development."

"And now we're the ones using it." She was quiet for a moment. "What happened to them?"

"The fact that they're not around anymore could mean a lot of things," Eli said. It was the same thought he'd been circling since they found the place.

"We're not on Earth," she said. "Failure here doesn't doom humanity entirely. Though I'd strongly prefer to avoid a colony-scale disaster."

She glanced down at her uniform, and without thinking brushed away the dust that had settled during their walk. The Cleaning skill activated silently. She stared at her suddenly spotless clothing.

"Sage," she said, looking toward the AI's hologram. "What's your read on all this?"

"The technology shows real potential alongside significant unknowns," Sage replied, her image flickering slightly in the crystal's field. "Cautious exploration seems more sensible than avoidance. These capabilities fit our situation too well to set aside."

Alex nodded, clearly working through every angle. "Let's keep this between us for now. The first thousand colonists need to be properly settled before we introduce any additional complications. Once things are more stable, we tell the senior staff."

"Agreed," Eli said, pushing off from the column. "I'll keep testing the abilities, clear predators, try to level up. You'll probably advance faster than me. Your skill suits your daily work perfectly."

"Possibly," she said. "Though Optimal Assignment might cause some friction. Telling people they're in the wrong jobs based on alien metrics could get uncomfortable."

Eli smiled despite himself. "If anyone gives you serious trouble, I can always teleport them into a lake."

Her laughter rang through the chamber. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that. We're waking the security team next week. Your future squad. Maybe some of them will get abilities that work well alongside yours."

"Keep me updated," he said. With Revelation properly tuned, hunting the hexaraptors was going to be a different exercise entirely. Knowing their weak points in advance changed the math considerably.

"Be careful out there," she said, the professional tone gone. "And Eli? Thanks for telling me. Not everyone would have been."

He nodded once and teleported to the entrance, leaving her to explore on her own.

Some of the tension he'd been carrying since finding the crystal finally eased. He hadn't fully registered how much her reaction had mattered to him until now.

"That went better than expected," Sage said, materializing beside him as they headed back toward the colony.

"Alex is practical above everything else," he said, watching the vegetation around them. His tuned Revelation highlighted small life forms scurrying away through the undergrowth. "Once she accepts something is real, she focuses on what to do with it. Good quality in a leader."

"What now?" Sage asked.

Eli looked out toward the wilderness beyond the settlement boundary. With Revelation active, the darkness wasn't dark the same way anymore. Movement patterns that would have been invisible before now registered clearly. Potential threats, escape routes, the best lines of approach.

"Time to find out what these abilities can actually do," he said. The alien forest opened up in his awareness, every living thing within range outlined with data, strengths and weaknesses sharp and clear.

For the first time since landing, he felt like he was operating with the right tools for the job.