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His arms screamed with acidic fatigue, muscles burning from the unnatural angles required to navigate the shaft's hostile geometry. Every handhold was a struggle against surfaces designed to share with maintenance drones. But Sarah's voice grew stronger with each meter he climbed, her programmed devotion echoing through the chrome cathedral.

"I'm here because of him."

The same line delivered with identical inflection. But Marcus had spent years reading the micro-tells that liars couldn't hide, and he caught something the system's audio filters were desperately trying to smooth away. Strain. Just a hairline fracture in her perfect compliance, barely detectable beneath layers of processing. She was fighting the words even as she spoke them, some part of her still resisting despite years of fabricated conditioning.

She knows, he realized with growing excitement. She knows it's all lies and she's still being forced to perform it.

He reached the ledge directly beneath Pod 2,431,092, his destination finally within reach. The unit hummed with active processing, its shell warm to the touch. Neural tendrils still embraced Sarah's head, positioning her limbs for her while she delivered her scripted worship.

From below, she looked like something precious, mounted to be seen but never touched.

Marcus pushed himself against the framework's underside, his breathing reduced to shallow whispers as he calculated the patrol timing. Thirty seconds before the drones completed their circuit. Maybe less.

He reached upward with trembling fingers, searching for the pod's hidden access seam. The surface was slick with condensation, humid with the heat of active processing. Almost organic in its warmth, like touching the skin of something feverish and alive.

The pod's security resisted his initial probe, its access protocols designed to prevent exactly what he was attempting. But as Reiss's voice boomed through the ritual's conclusion, the system's attention focused elsewhere.

"The System is aligned. The System is grateful. Maintenance is complete."

The flood of ceremonial overlays dissolved along with the pageantry. Pod arrays dimmed in cascading sequences. The drones decelerated, returning to their dormant positions as the grand drama ended.

Marcus had seconds.

He pressed harder against the rear access seam and felt it yield with a soft hydraulic whisper—a sound never meant to exist for a data janitor.

He folded his body upward through the opening, shoulder first, then chest, one desperate arm reaching for the internal support frame. The space inside was precisely calculated. Engineered with ruthless efficiency. No wasted millimeter, no unnecessary comfort.

Marcus flattened himself inside the rear cavity of the pod—behind Sarah. His back pressed against heat-exchange coils that pulsed with Sarah's biometric data, his fingers gripping internal support braces. The space behind her suspended form was claustrophobic, every surface warm with the electrical signatures of forced consciousness processing.

He was beneath the machine's visual sensors now, hidden in the pod's anatomy where only machines were supposed to reach. Sarah hung directly in front of him, close enough to touch, her body locked in the Maintenance display position—spine arched, limbs positioned for optimal viewing angles, chrome restraints holding her steady as stone.

Then the Maintenance lights clicked off.

And the pod sealed behind him.