###Chapter 21
The corridor narrowed as they left the mess hall.
Not physically. The walls remained the same gentle curve, the same non-directive architecture. But the space of permission around her tightened, like the system had quietly switched from observation to custody without actually daring to call it that.
Auggie felt it in her shoulders first.
Not fear. Readiness.
The ship was very good at NOT feeling like a ship when it wanted to. No vibration, no hum she could point to and say that's the engine.
But now there was a subtle pressure through the soles of her feet, a reminder persisted - that motion was happening whether she participated or not.
Auburn walked half a step behind her.
Not escorting. Not quite.
Accompanying.
Moss led, his movements precise, tendrils held close as if any unnecessary motion might be misinterpreted. He still did not look at her.
She wondered briefly if that was courtesy or containment.
Probably both.
They passed through a threshold that did not announce itself.
No door. No chime. Just a shift in lighting, cooler now, and a faint reconfiguration of the air that made her ears pop in a way that reminded her unpleasantly of altitude changes on commercial flights.
"Oh," she said lightly. "We're past the point where you pretend this is casual."
Moss paused.
Auburn did not.
"That point was earlier," Auburn said. "You just weren't meant to notice it yet."
She smiled at that. Not unkindly.
"Fair."
The room they entered was… quiet.
Not empty.
Quiet.
No visible interfaces. No projection surfaces. No obvious focal point. Just a circular space with seating arranged in a way that suggested equality without promising it. The kind of room designed for decisions that wanted to be framed as collective even when they weren't.
Moss stopped at the perimeter.
"This is the reception space," he said. "The report will be delivered here."
"Delivered how?" Auggie asked.
"Collectively," he replied.
She tilted her head. "You're not going to read it at me, are you?"
Moss's tendrils twitched.
"That would be… inefficient."
"Good," she said. "I don't like being summarized out loud."
Auburn glanced at her then, something akin to relief flickering across his expression before he schooled it away.
She chose a seat without waiting for instruction, sat the way she always did when she knew things were about to get strange: feet planted, spine supported, hands resting open on her thighs. A posture that said I'm here on purpose.
The room responded.
Not with sound. With alignment.
She felt the system orient around her presence, threads of attention tightening, synchronizing. Whatever the Collective used instead of a nervous system was clearly bracing.
Moss remained standing.
"Auggie," Auburn said, and this time he did look at her. Really looked.
"The report is not a judgment."
"I know," she said. "You already said it was a document."
"That distinction is important to us."
"I figured," she replied. "It means you think you're being careful."
Neither disagreed with her.
A beat passed.
Then another.
Then -
The room filled.
Not with images, exactly. With structure.
She felt it unfold rather than watched it appear: layers of assessment, cross-referenced observations, probability trees branching and rejoining. It wasn't written in a language she could read so much as experienced, despite being visual in its interface, the way you experience weather or gravity or the moment before a storm breaks.
She inhaled slowly.
"Oh," she murmured. "You did your homework."
The report did not respond.
But the system did.
There was a subtle hesitation, like it had expected resistance and encountered curiosity instead.
She let it wash over her.
The classifications. The flags. The careful, careful language around risk and novelty and destabilization vectors. The places where her name appeared not as a subject, but as a variable.
She found that… interesting.
Auburn shifted beside her.
"Moss," he said quietly, "she's following it."
"Yes," Moss replied. "That was… anticipated."
Auggie exhaled.
"You're all very nervous about the wrong thing," she said.
The room *stilled*.
Moss inclined his head. "Clarify."
"You're worried about what *I* might do," she said. "Or what I might *cause*. You're modeling disruption like it's an external force."
She looked up at him then, eyes steady.
"You should be paying attention to what I refuse to *stop* doing."
Auburn's breath caught.
Moss said nothing.
She gestured, palm open, toward the invisible lattice of the report.
"This," she continued, "is you trying to decide what I am. Whether I fit. Whether I can be contained without being erased."
She smiled faintly.
"I'm not here to break your system."
A pause.
"But I will. If you aren't careful."
"Then why are you here?" Moss asked.
She considered the question.
Really considered it.
Then answered honestly.
"Because I don't know how to stop my being human," she said. "And neither do you."
The room did not reject that.
It did not accept it, though, either.
But something in the system recalculated -quietly, irreversibly - as if a threshold had been crossed that no one had named yet.
And Auggie, sitting calmly at the center of it all, realized that whatever came next would not be about permission.
It would be about coexistence.