Riven stared at the message on his screen. The job was simple enough — move a package across the border between dimensions. The client didn't say what was inside. They never did when it was illegal. The payout glowed at the bottom of the offer: enough to buy him three months of breathing room. Maybe four if he didn't eat much. He met the client in a storage bay that smelled like rust and old fuel. The man placed a sealed container on the table between them. Through the transparent lid, Riven saw an orb wrapped in swirling mist. A galaxy turned inside it, purple and blue light spinning in impossible patterns. Beautiful. Deadly. He recognized it from the interdimensional codes — a reality anchor, banned in every dimension because it could tear holes between worlds. The client named his price again. Riven thought about the compound interest eating through his account while he slept. He thought about the promise he'd made to his colony, the only thing he still owned. He picked up the container without asking questions he didn't want answered. The pickup was set for the old observatory past the border zone. Riven drove through the checkpoint with the orb hidden in a false panel. His hands didn't shake. They hadn't shaken in months. When you stopped caring what happened to you, your body got the message. The observatory appeared through the mist, its shattered dome open to three moons. Vines with glowing flowers crawled up the broken walls. The place existed in legal shadow, technically outside any jurisdiction. That's why people used it. He saw the cage first. Iron bars wrapped around a skeleton, energy crackling between the metal. A reminder from the interdimensional authority about what happened to smugglers they caught. Riven walked past it without slowing. The debt was execution on its own terms, just slower. At least this way, if they caught him, it would be over fast. He entered the observatory and set the container on the broken floor. The client's agent would collect it in an hour. Three months of debt, paid. Then he would do it again. And again. Until the promise was kept or they finally stopped him.

Riven heard the footsteps before he saw the light. Someone was coming up the path to the observatory. Too soon. The pickup wasn't scheduled for another hour. He moved to the broken window and looked out through the vines. A figure in a long coat walked toward the entrance, scanning the ground with a handheld device. The device pulsed with rainbow light, its crystal lens throwing patterns across the mist. An inspector's scanner. Riven recognized it from the border checkpoints — designed to detect reality anchors and dimensional violations. The inspector swept it slowly across the observatory grounds, moving closer to where Riven had entered. Behind the inspector, purple energy crackled between crystalline pillars, sealing off the path back to the road. The barrier hadn't been there when Riven arrived. They'd locked him in. Riven looked at the sealed container on the floor. The orb inside still swirled with its galaxy patterns. If the inspector got close enough with that scanner, it would light up like a beacon. He could run deeper into the ruins and hope the inspector missed it, but that meant leaving evidence with his traces all over it. He could stay and claim he was just passing through, but his transport was parked fifty meters away. The inspector would check it. Find the hidden panel. Connect him to every job he'd ever run. The debt would die with him, and the colony would get nothing. He picked up the container. The inspector's footsteps echoed in the entrance hall below. Riven climbed through the back window and dropped into the overgrown garden behind the observatory. A floating wagon sat between two crumbling walls, its canvas cover weathered and torn. A green ox with curved horns stood hitched to it, chewing on the glowing flowers. The beast turned its massive head toward him but didn't move. Riven threw the container into the wagon bed and climbed up beside it. The ox snorted. Purple light flashed through the observatory windows — the scanner, sweeping the room where he'd just been standing. Riven grabbed the reins and snapped them once. The ox lurched forward, pulling the wagon into the air. They rose above the ruins as the inspector emerged from the back window, scanner raised and pulsing. But Riven was already disappearing into the mist between the moons, the container secure, the promise still his to keep.