“Dialogue with a demon…” I said, sipping my juice-ced alcohol. “Not sure if that’s news to you, but I’ve had a few of those before. And every single one ended the same way. The bastard tried to kill me.”

  “I won’t!” my guest swore, raising his hands, palms up, for extra emphasis. “You can tie me up if you want, but that thing should have the capability to prevent any surprises.” He pointed at the sphere of the security AI.

  “How do you know about it? I thought it wasn’t exactly common.”

  “I was involved in the early concept phase,” the demon said. “They cssified everything ter, once the first results started to show.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  Didn’t know how to respond to that. I hoped he was just messing with me, but it would’ve been stupid to rule it out entirely.

  “Then you should know about the backdoor,” I said.

  “These things weren’t supposed to have one,” the demon replied. “That was the whole point. Did they mess it up?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But there has to be some sort of master key. Just in case the thing goes rogue.”

  “Well, that was a known weak point even back then. No idea if they ever solved it. I’ve changed bodies three times since.”

  “Right…”

  “You see?” the demon added, calling back to his original point. “Casual conversation, no one trying to kill anyone.”

  “For now,” I insisted.

  “I swear to you,” he said again, lifting his hands, “the only one dying today will be me.”

  “That doesn’t count,” I said. “They’ll just move you to another body. Some poor bastard’s going to die for you.”

  “Well…” he didn’t have a good comeback for that, so he changed the subject. “Do you know how we get here?”

  “You mean into the body, or into the school?” I crified. “You lot have been around since the invasion, haven’t you?”

  “I mean this star system.”

  “On starships?” I guessed.

  “Your sense of humour needs work,” he said ftly. “I mean the specifics.”

  "Mate..." Had I just called him mate? No distractions. "I'm not a physicist, not an astronomer, not an engineer. And I haven't had centuries to think things over in other bodies. I know what a second-period cadet would know, nothing more."

  "Ordinary second-period cadets don’t hunt demons," he said. "Let alone get sent to another school for it."

  I ughed. There was a lot I could say about that.

  "Mate," I repeated. Fine. Let’s py friendly. "I'm not here to hunt demons."

  "So it’s a coincidence that Soro found me right after speaking with you?" he asked, sceptically.

  "And it didn’t strike you as odd," I said, then immediately regretted it, "that no one’s repeated her manoeuvre since she died?"

  Mendoza didn’t like that. She hissed in my ear.

  "If you're going to keep talking to him, at least don’t spill our secrets. And while you’re at it, maybe get some useful intel, please!"

  Still, I noticed my question had cracked the demon’s sarcasm. His mask slipped, just a little. That meant I had to keep the act going.

  "If I had known how she pulled it off," I continued, "I’d have told Mendoza, she’d have bagged you up already, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. What was it, by the way?"

  He ignored the question as casually as I asked it.

  "If we assume you're not here to hunt, then why are you here?"

  "What have I been doing the st few days?" I parried back, mimicking his sarcastic tone. I wanted to see how much they knew.

  "Walking around the Gardens."

  I made a circling gesture with my hand, inviting him to go on.

  "I have no idea why, though," he said.

  I sighed, deeply and bitterly.

  "You’d think after all these years, you lot would have learned something about reading humans. I'm trying to expand my arsenal. I ck penetration."

  He frowned.

  "You were looking for penetration power in the Water and Lightning Gardens? You need Fire."

  "I went there today. And I have a thorough approach. Wanted to rule out the other options first."

  I took a sip to buy myself a moment to think. My gss was empty. Thousand Sparks burned calories like crazy. The alcohol was breaking down faster than it could even begin to affect me. Or at least, that’s how it felt.

  So, having finished my own gss, I reached for the one I’d offered the demon earlier and took a demonstrative sip.

  “You haven’t mentioned the Finger...” They didn’t know I’d been there?

  “The explosive beam?” the demon mused. “That’s more about striking a weak point than about adding penetration. Penetration power — that’s Fire.”

  “Let me guess,” I said.

  “Not in this iteration,” he shook his head. “This body leans toward Earth.”

  “And Earth definitely isn’t about penetration. Bde?”

  “Never understood it,” the guest replied. “Bde is like a bargain-bin version of Point. The movement techniques are just trash. Why didn’t you go for Point? You wouldn’t have had to transfer anywhere.”

  I took another sip and gave the question a moment’s thought. I could’ve said I still might switch, but truthfully...

  I leaned back from the table and patted my stomach.

  “I’ve been stabbed so many times, switching to Point would feel like self-betrayal.”

  Mendoza had kept quiet for a while, but she didn’t like what she was hearing. She hissed again in my ear.

  “If you’re not going to extract anything useful, at least stop interrupting. The space stuff was interesting.”

  Because of her, I missed half of what the demon had just said.

  “...not exactly...”

  “Space travel!” I cut him off.

  “Right. Interstelr travel. Big difference. You lot already travel through space at sublight. Let me be clear, there’s no such thing as faster-than-light travel. Not for you, not for us, not for anyone. You can’t outrun information. You can’t outrun causality.”

  “I feel a ‘but’ coming,” I said.

  “Natural wormholes. Spatial nodes. They’re rare, usually appear on the edges of star systems, where gravitational interference is weak enough for stability. Control over key wormholes defines the borders of interstelr powers and alliances.”

  The demon paused, watching for my reaction.

  There was none, because he’d said too much and not enough at the same time. He had to keep talking if he wanted to hold my attention.

  “Until recently, it was believed your Sor System was a dead end. Two wormholes, both leading to sparsely poputed, low-value worlds under the control of minor cns. But not long ago, one of our probes detected a new anomaly. Another wormhole. And if the data’s right, it leads straight into the back yard of the Ka Federation.

  “This changes everything. The next raid could very well be the st for all of you. The very life will be drained from your little blue sphere. Earth will become a dead rock.”

  “The Federation isn’t your side?” I crified.

  “The Cn Union is a kind of federation too, in a way,” he said. “But I’m talking about a different one. They share more of your values: populism, the illusion of democracy, freedom of choice.”

  It was starting to smell like Star Trek.

  “And how exactly is humanity’s destruction connected to this new federation?”

  “Not all of humanity. Just the small portion occupying this system.”

  “There are humans in other systems?” I blurted.

  “You, like us, are a widespread species,” the demon waved the question away.

  That opened up a whole new set of questions I forced myself to bury. Regur raids had always been an existential issue for Earth’s popution. They shaped local culture, influenced technological development, but they had never been total, absolute extermination. Which meant I had to dig deeper.

  Which meant I had to shut up and let the demon talk.

  “It all comes down to politics,” he said. “The Cn Union, the Bakliya Republic, the Ka Federation, the League of United Fleets. Friends today, enemies tomorrow. A few thousand years ter — interbred. But from a geopolitical, or rather astropolitical, standpoint, if this new wormhole really leads into Ka space, it reshapes the map. Your world isn’t a dead end anymore. It’s a crossroads.

  “Your people don’t understand what kind of window they’re peeking through,” the demon continued, leaning forward on his elbows. His voice shifted slightly, less arrogance, more weary honesty. “How can I expin interstelr politics? The Cn Union is a collection of space-faring feudal lords under a paranoid dictatorship. Imagine a state where each great cn is its own miniature empire. Its own army, ws, gods. They worship strength and fear weakness.”

  “But that doesn’t stop them flying between stars,” I muttered.

  “They do it on the backs of worlds like yours. You can synthesise nearly everything. There are lots of metals, gases, even some complex elements. There are pnets made entirely of gold or titanium. All you need is one automated shipyard and a handful of AI miners, and in ten years you’ve got a fleet. But who do you put on those ships? AI? They lose to living cultivators nine times out of ten. Qi is the universal exception. The foundation of all power, and it can’t be synthesised.”

  “We’ve milked you for millennia like cattle, because no one saw you as a threat. Your world was at the arse-end of the gaxy. Until now.”

  The demon ran a finger across the table, drawing an invisible line.

  “The Ka Federation is a different story. If the Union is a feudal dictatorship, then the Federation is a corporate democracy. Still an empire, but with a different facade. They sell freedom, advertise morality, and cut down the weak behind the curtains. But... they do have one thing: stability. Rules. And most importantly, no racial discrimination. Humans are even recognised there as one of the primary species. Unlike us, in their system humans aren’t a lower css. They’re equal citizens.”

  He stopped, locking eyes with me.

  “You see where I’m going with this, don’t you? If you Earthlings speak up and ask for help... the Federation might listen. Because, formally, you're one of theirs. Realistically, it'll only happen if the corpos smell profit.

  “But if they do respond, the Union will see it as an invasion. Because what's at stake won’t just be Earth, but the two Union star systems bordering the new wormhole.”

  “So Earth gets wiped out pre-emptively?” I asked.

  “More precisely, a pnetary-scale harvest ritual. Same kind we use on major cities, just scaled up to the whole damn pnet.”

  He said it cheerfully, like someone who'd just checkmated their opponent.

  “But there’s a way out!” he added with a wink. “Leave us alone. There aren’t many of us here. We’re not a threat. And we’re ready to hand over the technology for wormhole detection and stabilisation. If —” he lifted his index finger theatrically, “you let us go through the wormhole first.”

  “So you can alert your people?!” I snapped. I couldn’t believe the entire performance had been for this.

  “Oh, no. The Cns can go fuck themselves. We want the Federation.”

  My brain locked up.

  Maybe the alcohol was affecting me after all.

  “You get it, right?” the demon continued. “This isn’t just a chance. It’s a window. A leap. Freedom. For us. For you. Everyone wants out. We... you... Especially you, because if you refuse, we go back to the old pn.

  “Still,” he said, rising from his chair, “I understand this is above your paygrade. But I also understand that Master Mendoza is listening.”

  He turned to the central node of the security AI and delivered his final words directly into the lens focused on him.

  “I’ll await your answer, Master.”

  MaksymPachesiuk