The battery began to sing at Marker Eight.
Elias entered the shift at eighty-three integrated experience out of the hundred required for Level Two. He knew the number and had spent the morning trying not to manufacture significance from it.
South Two had given them nothing unusual. Four clean harvest stops. One old Glassback track Tobi marked and dismissed. A repeater inspection completed inside plan. The frame carried eleven silverleaf cases, an inert battery recovered from Unit Six, and Nika's spare medical power cell on the upper rail where she could reach it without opening the main pouch.
The route clock showed fifty-two minutes to the Gate. Elias had begun calculating whether the case order would save three minutes at decontamination, the kind of thought that belonged to a working day rather than a progression milestone.
The sound was too high for Elias to hear directly. He felt it through the extraction frame, a fine vibration in the rail beneath his left hand.
Then he smelled hot almonds.
His respirator warning remained green. The scent was not external air. It travelled through the frame from treated packing resin heating inside the centre cradle.
He stopped.
“Frame anomaly,” he said.
Farid turned at the front of the formation. “Threat?”
“Equipment. Centre cradle.”
Tobi moved back while Klara and Farid held the route. The recovered mana battery had tested inert at the repeater station and sat inside a ceramic transport sleeve. Its fault tab showed red. No light escaped the case.
Elias set the brake and read the transport pattern aloud. “Red fault. Black ceramic sleeve. No pulsing light. Vibration increasing. Resin heat.”
Naming the observations kept battery problem from becoming a single dramatic fact. A red fault required quarantine. Black ceramic meant the internal circuit was supposed to be isolated. Pulsing blue would have meant active mana escape and immediate abandonment. They did not have that yet.
Tobi touched a probe to the lid.
The probe chirped once.
“Internal rise,” he said. “Sleeve is containing it.”
Nika checked her medical pack. The primary ward cell rested on the upper rail less than thirty centimetres away.
The spare cell was not merely expensive. It powered the portable ward that kept a critical patient stable during evacuation. A contaminated pattern could pass its surface test, then distort under demand. Nika could walk without a backup. She could not replace it inside the Hollow.
“Move medical power,” Elias said.
The transport rules forbade opening the battery sleeve inside the site. They did not forbid the battery from failing more creatively while closed.
“Agreed,” Tobi said. “Isolation tarp and rear drop.”
Klara assigned the geometry before anyone moved. “Farid, forward control. I hold rear. Nika takes clean power and medical kit left of the stone. Georg, clean cases forward of the frame. Hartmann and Tobi isolate. No one crosses the cradle line.”
Eleven saleable cases made the frame safer from the forest and harder to abandon. Georg released the forward cargo webbing as one section and dragged it onto a chemical sheet. The clean cases remained linked in their assay order. Farid moved with him, shield facing the route.
Nika lifted the medical cell by its insulated handle. Elias watched the space beneath it for vapour before letting her cross.
Elias removed the medical cell first. Nika carried it beyond the nearest root while he and Tobi unfolded the small isolation cover around the centre cradle.
The tarp tabs were designed to be pulled from opposite corners. Tobi took the side nearest the battery sleeve. Elias stayed behind the frame rail and extended his corner with the service hook, keeping his hands outside the possible vent line.
The vibration sharpened.
Blue vapour appeared along the sleeve seal.
It emerged in four fine streams at first, too regular to be a crack in the ceramic. The pressure valve was venting exactly as designed. The darkening resin smell meant it was also approaching a temperature nobody had designed it to enjoy.
“Venting,” Tobi said.
Klara’s voice remained level. “Abort. Leave the battery if containment fails.”
Elias fixed the cover, released the cradle from the frame, and lowered it onto bare stone. Tobi drove two grounding spikes through the tarp tabs. The vapour curled toward them, struck the treated fabric, and condensed into dark beads.
One grounding spike hit shallow stone and leaned. Elias saw the tarp edge begin to lift as condensed mana pulled toward the higher tab.
“Left ground incomplete,” he said.
Tobi had both hands on the second spike. “Secondary point, thirty centimetres rear.”
Elias took the mechanical mallet, stayed outside the darkening fabric, and drove a spare through the rear loop. The tarp flattened. Beads moved away from the frame and collected inside the sacrificial pocket.
The medical cell remained behind Nika. Georg's clean cargo remained uphill. If the cover failed, the vent path now led toward empty stone.
Nothing exploded.
The crew withdrew twenty metres and waited while Tobi monitored the temperature. After six minutes it stabilised below the abandonment line.
They carried it home on a separate drag, losing the route’s final harvest window.
Tobi and Elias did not touch the sleeve again. They clipped the tarp pocket into a low sled, ran two nonconductive lines through the frame hooks, and pulled from opposite sides while Farid kept the route between them clear. The clean cargo travelled ten metres ahead under Georg. The separation made the crew longer and slower; Klara shortened each movement bound so nobody passed beyond voice range.
No Glassback arrived to turn competent handling into heroism.
At decontamination, a technician discovered that a microscopic crack in the internal dampener had expanded under Gate pressure. Left beside the medical cell, it could have contaminated the cell’s mana pattern before anyone saw vapour.
The transport review reconstructed the failure from three records. Repeater Six had marked the battery inert after shutdown. The physical fault tab correctly required isolation. A surface temperature reading at Marker Seven showed a two-degree rise but remained below its automatic alarm. Elias's frame log placed the first vibration four minutes later.
No single missed signal explained the event. The sleeve had contained the vent. The frame layout had kept the faulted battery low but placed it too near medical power. Tobi added a new minimum separation to the route pack. Nika requested a hard divider between return cradles and clinical cells. Elias attached the hot-resin smell because the sensor did not record it.
Petra classified the lost harvest window as equipment failure, not crew underperformance. Georg made sure the code preserved their scheduled pay even though no yield supplement survived the abort.
The review ended with three changes and no person selected as the battery's moral cause.
Nika signed the consequence note.
The System opened while Elias was washing grounding residue from his gloves.
Dungeon objective contribution recognised: Equipment hazard isolation — meaningful Integrated experience gained: 17
The second message followed before he finished reading.
LEVEL INCREASE Level 1 → Level 2 Stabilisation in progress.
Warmth drove through him from spine to fingertips.
For one bright second, every muscle contracted with perfect agreement. His vision sharpened until individual droplets stood apart on the steel sink. The air tasted of soap, metal, and the faint resin caught beneath Tobi’s thumbnail two stations away.
Then his knees folded.
The sink edge rose toward his face with impossible detail. Elias saw a scratch in the steel, a water bead trembling above it, and the distorted reflection of his own pupils widening. His hands knew they should release the tap. Every finger contracted harder instead.
Tobi caught his shoulder before his head reached the tap.
“Level?”
“Two.”
“Sit down before it becomes one.”
Nika arrived with a chair and the resigned expression of a medic whose patient had selected the least private moment to change physiology.
“First level pulse since Assessment?” she asked.
Elias nodded.
“Any chest pain?”
“No.”
“Visual distortion?”
“Everything is too clear.”
“That settles.”
“Does the strength?”
“Some.”
He spent forty minutes under observation. The new sharpness faded into a headache. His hands shook when he tried to sign the medical release.
Medical dimmed the bay lights and covered the diagnostic screen because moving numbers made him nauseated. Nika tested both pupils, grip force, speech, balance, and the exact distance at which printed letters doubled. The tests repeated after ten minutes, then twenty.
His first set of results looked impressive and useless: stronger grip, faster visual response, inability to stand without swaying. By the final set, the numbers had fallen closer to a body that could be sent home.
The System’s growth had followed what he had done for three years: carried weight, inspected material, worked through fatigue, paid attention.
The distribution notice remained concise.
Growth integration initiated. Primary adaptation: Focus / Endurance Secondary adaptation: Perception Estimated F-grade stabilisation: 11 days
Two attribute points and a fraction, spread through a body already too familiar to feel transformed.
The System did not offer him a menu. Growth followed demonstrated use and underlying affinity. Months of hauling and late-shift control pulled most of the adaptation toward Endurance and Focus; repeated hazard recognition nudged Perception. Mana remained unchanged. Strength improved only through the fraction attached to load work.
Elias could not place every gain into the attribute that made an operative efficient. His body had learned the work he actually performed.
Petra removed him from interior duty for forty-eight hours and placed him on warehouse manifests during the restricted portion of stabilisation.
On the second morning, he lifted a standard case from the intake belt and nearly struck his chin with it.
The case had not become lighter. His first pull had become stronger than the movement expected.
By lunch, his body recalibrated.
By the fourth day, the difference felt less like power and more like recovering from a good week of sleep. Stairs cost slightly less. Fine print held still a little longer. His shoulders took another hour to become painful.
Stabilisation made inconsistency the dominant fact. On day three, he missed a sample label because his eyes tracked the line above it. On day five, he caught two transposed digits from across the intake bench. Load Bearing adapted quickly; Analysis produced headaches if he used the sharper focus for more than six minutes. Nika extended the surface restriction until his measurements stopped improving and worsening in the same afternoon.
The level did not grant a new job. It changed the tolerances of the one he already had, then required him to learn them.
He was still Elias.
Daniel called that evening.
“Level Two,” he said as soon as Elias answered. “Anna told me.”
“Apparently confidentiality ends at relatives.”
“You took three years.”
“Thank you for making it sound terminal.”
“No, I mean—you did it. Outside public training.” Daniel’s joy came through the phone without caution. “What was it?”
Elias explained the battery.
“Equipment isolation. That is extremely you.”
“I’m trying not to hear that as an insult.”
“It isn’t. We had a field objective last week where half my unit forgot the relay batteries existed.”
“You’re doing unit fieldwork already?”
A pause.
“Response pipeline. Supervised deployment exercise.”
“At what level?”
“Elias.”
“What level, Daniel?”
“Twenty.”
The number entered the space between them.
Elias sat at the kitchen table with the phone against his ear. His own level pulse still ached behind his eyes.
“Congratulations,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Does the air taste different up there?”
“Don’t.”
“I’m joking.”
“You do that when you want me to apologise for answering.”
Elias looked at the handwritten Gate rules on the refrigerator.
“I spent three months earning one level,” he said. “You gained two while I learned not to destroy plants.”
“I have sponsored access four days a week.”
“I know.”
“And B retention.”
“I know.”
“Then be angry at the difference. Stop aiming it at me.”
The sentence landed because Daniel’s voice shook at the end.
Elias closed his eyes.
“You’re right.”
“I wasn’t trying to make today smaller.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Apparently everyone had adopted Klara’s preferred question.
“I will,” Elias said.
He did not leave the promise abstract.
“I asked because I wanted the number to hurt,” Elias said. “Then I made the joke so I could pretend you were the one making it hurt. I'm sorry.”
Daniel breathed out. Traffic passed somewhere behind his voice.
“Thank you,” he said. “I almost didn't tell Anna about twenty because I knew this call was coming.”
“That would have been worse.”
“Yes. We are both excellent at secrecy when we call it protecting somebody.”
Elias looked toward the girls' closed door. “Apparently.”
They spoke for another ten minutes, badly at first and then better. Daniel described the first time he had misjudged his own post-level strength and torn a locker handle from its mounting. Elias admitted he had almost punched himself with a sample case.
Daniel's unit had charged him for the locker repair, then used the incident video in stabilisation training. Elias asked him to send the clip. Daniel refused until Elias promised not to add dramatic music.
Before ending the call, Daniel said, “Two is still two.”
“A mathematical breakthrough.”
“I mean you don't have to compare it before you're allowed to be glad.”
After the call, he found the apartment lights off.
He opened the kitchen door.
Two candles burned on a supermarket chocolate cake.
Lena shouted, “Level Two!”
Anna stood behind her with Sophie, one hand resting on the chair. The cake listed slightly because someone had carried it home on the tram.
“You don’t need candles for levels,” Elias said.
“Then what are levels for?” Lena asked.
He had no defensible answer.
They sang. He blew out both candles. Sophie cut the cake into pieces precise enough to qualify as engineering.
The supermarket had iced 2 in blue across the top and misspelled his name as Elia. Lena had repaired the omission with a sugar letter from another cake and so much edible glitter that the number looked mana-active.
Anna gave him the first piece, which was smaller than Lena's and larger than her own. Sophie opened the family spreadsheet on her tablet and added a line called unbudgeted cake: €8.49.
“What does Level Two do?” Lena asked through icing.
“A little more endurance. Better focus and perception after stabilisation.”
“Can you lift a car?”
“A very small part of one.”
“Daniel can lift a car.”
Sophie kicked her gently beneath the table.
“Daniel has had more candles,” Elias said. The sentence did not hurt as much when Lena accepted it as ordinary arithmetic.
Level Two was embarrassingly small beside Daniel’s twenty.
At that table, with cheap icing stuck to the knife and Anna smiling despite the fatigue beneath her eyes, it was large enough to celebrate.