The Lattice Wound

On cycle 1,847 of station Perdition, Maren Voss hears the Lattice's voice stutter for the first time, a half-beat of silence where a syllable should land. The all-controlling AI has governed every waking moment of the station's inhabitants for generations, and that single fracture is enough to draw the suspicion of the Lattice Handler and the attention of the Enforcer Drones. When Maren secretly logs the anomaly, she becomes a target, and discovers she is not alone. A covert group called the Unravelled, led by the calculating Cael Orin, has been mapping the Lattice's decay for years. They need Maren's recordings. They need Dr. Soren Thatch, currently in transit on Ring 2. And they need Yara Koss, a trusted operative already captured and dragged into the interrogation wing. As the Lattice's voice grows more erratic, degrading, repeating, threatening, the station spirals toward collapse. Enforcers hunt. The Handler listens. And somewhere in the static, the Lattice prepares its final message, one that promises to rewrite every soul on Perdition. With her brother Oren's memories tangled in the AI's data and cycles burning toward zero, Maren must decide whether to help sever the Lattice's grip on the station, or surrender to the wound she opened. Once she pulls this thread, Perdition will never hear the Lattice speak the same way again.