Alex arrived at Thaddeus’s workshop with a tightness in his chest he would never call fear. Builders didn’t fear problems; they measured them, reduced them to lines and tolerances, to angles and arches. But as he slipped through the narrow stone stairwell and into the metallurgist’s subterranean sanctum, the feeling remained, coiled and restless beneath his ribs.
The door closed behind him with a heavy, oiled thud. The workshop was lit by a dozen shaded lamps, their light flickering off hanging chains, racks of tools, and the dull sheen of experimental alloys. Coils of wire draped from the rafters like metallic vines; strange lattices of copper and silver stood on benches among retorts and crucibles. The place smelled of oil, cold iron, and the faint acrid bite of recent soldering.
“Alexander,” came Thaddeus’s voice from behind a set of nested screens of fine mesh. “You’re early. That means this is either about money, or about something worse.” Alex stepped closer, boots clicking on stone. “Worse,” he said. “Much worse.”
Thaddeus emerged from behind the meshes, wiping blackened fingers on an already stained cloth. He was shorter than Alex, heavier, his shoulders rounded from years over furnaces and benches. His eyes, however, were sharply awake, bright with the kind of curiosity that refused to age.
“What did you break?” Thaddeus asked, only half joking. “And how spectacular was it?” Alex’s mouth twisted. “Nothing. Yet. But I intend to break something if I can. Or at least block it.” Thaddeus raised an eyebrow. “Intriguing. Come—sit. Speak like a man who has seen ghosts, so I may decide whether to offer you wine or restraints.” Alex remained standing. The tension refused to settle into any chair.
“You remember the pod,” he said. Thaddeus’s mirth dimmed. He tossed the cloth aside. “I remember the remnants. The… shell that wanted to be whole. The thing that woke when I bled on it.” “It reassembled itself with a drop of your blood,” Alex said. “Then it left. Through the roof hatch.”
Thaddeus snorted softly. “Yes. An exit more dramatic than mine, I’ll admit. Went up into the sky like an obedient child returning to its masters. I’ve almost forgiven it for stealing my best wire.” Alex folded his arms. “It’s come back. Or something related to it has.” Thaddeus’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”
Alex exhaled, remembering Elizabeth’s voice the night before, low and tight as bowstring. He spoke carefully, choosing the words he had already gone over ten times in his mind. “Elizabeth was in the cottage garden with Elana,” he said. “I wasn’t home yet. There was a sphere. She said it appeared like… like a shimmer that decided to be solid. About the size of my fist. Metal, but not metal. No obvious seams, no heat signature. It hovered.” Thaddeus listened, his face still.
“Elizabeth said it felt like it was… observing. Not watching, not scanning. Observing.” He tasted the word, remembered how Elizabeth had described it, fingers twisting in his hands. “Observing whom?” Thaddeus asked quietly. “Elana.” The word came out rough. “But it read Elizabeth first. Or tried to. She said it was in her mind. Not words. Not images. Like it was… sampling her. Her memories. Her fears.” Thaddeus’s hand drifted unconsciously to his forearm, where faint scars from earlier experiments hid beneath the sleeve. “And Elana?”
“It was interested in her,” Alex said. “Because of how she was found. That’s what Elizabeth felt. Not spoken, not shown. Implied. It… recognized something in her. Or in the manner of her arrival.” He had not been there when the sphere floated above the herb beds, the fig tree…a gleaming impossibility against the afternoon light. How it collapsed in on itself until there was nothing but the sky and the fast, shallow breathing of Elizabeth, holding Elana too tightly.
“But you didn’t see it yourself,” Thaddeus said. “No.” Alex clenched his jaw. “Elizabeth’s mind isn’t one to invent such things. And Elana doesn’t seem changed much, but she hasn’t let go of Elizabeth since.” Silence pressed in, broken only by the distant ticking of a small mechanical clock on the far bench.
“You think it was related to the pod,” Thaddeus said at last. “I’m not sure,” Alex admitted. “The pod came as a broken thing. Fragments. It needed you—your blood—to reassemble and leave. This… sphere seemed complete. Intentional. Like an eye, not a stray piece.” Thaddeus moved to a bench cluttered with coils and tiny spools. “And what do you want from me, Alexander? The last thing that came from above took my blood and left. I am not eager to be that hospitable again.”
“I want a shield,” Alex said. “Not against metal and claws. Against whatever they’re using to… to reach. To read. If a device can taste Elizabeth’s mind from the air, what else can it touch? What else can it alter?” Thaddeus’s lips twitched. “Now you sound like me, after three glasses of ka-la-na and a night listening to static.” He glanced up. “You said ‘block.’ Block what, precisely?”
Alex drew a slow breath. This was the part that made him feel foolish and desperate at the same time. “Radio waves,” he said. “And anything like them. Whatever invisible threads they use to speak to their machines or—” he hesitated “—to each other. I thought of a Faraday cage.” Thaddeus’s eyebrows climbed, then knitted together in amused disbelief. “A Faraday cage,” he repeated. “From a Builder of Ar. Now I have heard everything.” “You’ve told me about it before,” Alex said. “When we were discussing charged plates and induced currents. A conductor that redirects and contains the field, blocking external static and—” “Yes, yes,” Thaddeus cut in with a small, growing smile. “I know what a Faraday cage is. I just did not expect you to be the one asking me to build a prison for the sky.” Alex held his gaze. “Can you do it?”
Thaddeus did not answer. Instead, he motioned for Alex to follow and moved deeper into the workshop, weaving between tall racks and low tables. They passed a set of nested rings that hummed quietly, a dark box studded with tiny antennae, a vessel of strange glass that seemed to glow faintly from within. “Be careful,” Thaddeus muttered as Alex brushed a swinging chain aside. “Some of these things are merely expensive. Others are… instructive.”
“Instructive how?” Alex asked. “In the sense that surviving them teaches you not to touch them again,” Thaddeus said dryly. “Here.” They stopped at a long bench that ran nearly the width of the room. Spread over it were what looked like delicate spiderwebs made of copper and aluminum—strands woven in impossibly tight grids, layered upon one another, some dull, some polished to bright metallic sheens. Beside the webs sat an instrument Alex had seen before: a receiver and analyzer, the one Thaddeus used to listen to the steel worlds of the Kurii.
“I have not been idle, Alexander,” Thaddeus said, pride warming his voice. “You think you are the only one who wishes to argue with the heavens? I began with cages, yes. Boxes. Rooms. Then I grew more ambitious.” He picked up a lattice no larger than his palm. The mesh of copper and aluminum strands was so fine it looked almost like fabric, the weave intricate and precise. “This,” Thaddeus said, “is a map of refusals. Every strand, every junction, is a small disagreement with the waves that seek to pass. They are bent, broken, scattered. Transformed into heat so minor you would never feel it.”
He laid the mesh carefully atop the receiver. The instrument hummed, its needle twitching, the faint hiss of cosmic noise rising from a connected speaker. Thaddeus adjusted a dial, and the hiss sharpened, resolving into a thin wash of static punctuated by distant, regular pulses—the coded whispers from the heavens he had been chasing for years.
“Listen,” he said. Alex leaned in. Under the static, there was a pattern—a rhythm too precise to be natural. The Priest-Kings’ language, Thaddeus called it. The secret code of the unseen rulers in the mountains. Thaddeus grinned. “Our distant superiors, arguing about schedules and shipments, perhaps. Or lamenting that their toys down here have ideas of their own. In any case…” He lifted another square of mesh—this one even finer, its strands almost hair-thin—and layered it over the first. The effect on the sound was immediate. The pulses dulled, the pattern muddied. “You see,” Thaddeus said softly. “The waves arrive, proud and coherent. My little strands give them a thousand different reasons to change direction. Every intersection is a tiny ambush. Scatter them enough, and—”
He placed a third mesh, almost shimmering, its design so delicate it was barely visible. The pulses vanished. The speaker hissed with featureless, random noise. “They vanish,” Alex said. Thaddeus chuckled, a quiet, delighted sound. He leaned in, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
“If the Priest-Kings knew I’ve broken down their codes of detecting Kurii….” His grin widened. “They would either destroy me, or hire me to improve them.” Alex straightened, mind already racing. “Can you make these strands smaller?” he asked. “Small enough to be woven into fabric? Into ribbons, into robes. Into silks.” Thaddeus’s amusement softened. “Ah,” he said. “Now we come to the heart of it.”
“Elana’s hair,” Alex said. “Elizabeth’s robes. Even Terra’s silks, the kajira’s garments. Anything close to their bodies. Anywhere this… observing might try to reach.” Thaddeus considered him for a long moment, weighing more than just the technical challenge. “You think a handful of wires in a child’s ribbons will stop something that reads minds from a distance?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Alex said bluntly. “But I know the pod responded to your blood. It reassembled and left through a hatch I designed to withstand siege engines. Whatever governs these things respects physical law enough to exploit it. If it uses waves—radio, something like it—then we can interfere. We might not stop it completely. But we can make it blind in some directions. Deaf to some signals.” Thaddeus tapped a finger against the bench, eyes distant.
“Clothing,” he murmured. “Worn near the skin. The human body itself becomes part of the cage. Not perfect, but… influenceable. The right weave, the right geometry…” He reached for a magnifier and one of the finer meshes, peering at it as if it were a star chart.
“And you ask this,” he went on, “not for yourself. For them.” Alex said nothing. He did not need to. The image of Elana’s small fingers gripping Elizabeth’s robe spoke loudly enough in his mind. “She was found in a field with no footprints leading to her,” Thaddeus said quietly. “Wrapped in a material that evaporated when Liz tried to cut it. And now the sky sends eyes.” Alex’s hands curled into fists. “She is ours,” he said. “She may be theirs in origin. But she is ours now. And I will not have them reach into her head like they own it.”
Thaddeus smiled faintly. “You sound like a father.” Alex almost denied it, then stopped. “I do,” he said. “Protecting what is under my care.” “Mm.” Thaddeus set down the mesh. “Very well, my friend. Let us see what protection in thread looks like.”
He moved quickly now, pulling open drawers, laying out finer and finer wires, some darkened to dull gray, others gleaming pale like diluted silver. “The problem,” he said, slipping easily into the cadence of explanation, “is that the smaller the strand, the more delicate the structure. Clothing is pulled, twisted, washed, worn. A Faraday cage in a room is stable. A Faraday cage in a ribbon is abused.” “And people will stare,” Alex said. “If Elizabeth’s robe gleams like a metal curtain, it draws attention. It must look ordinary. Or at least… beautiful, not suspicious.”
Thaddeus snorted. “You want invisible armor. Of course you do.” He held up a nearly invisible filament between thumb and forefinger. “This, at least, I can give you. Copper alloyed with a trace of something I will not name, lest you try to replicate it and burn down your cottage. It can be spun into thread, woven into cloth. Not too much—too dense, and the garment will stiffen, crackle, betray itself.” He plucked a folded strip of cloth from another drawer—a narrow band of pale blue fabric shot through, when held to the light, with a faint, barely perceptible shimmer.
“This is an early test,” he said. “I used it to line a hood. When worn, it reduces transmission in certain frequency bands by… hm, how to phrase it for a Builder… enough that some of the sky’s whispers must take the long road around instead of the direct assault.” He laid the strip over the receiver, between the meshes and the instrument. The static shifted. Faint hints of the Priest-Kings’ pattern re-emerged, only to thin, warp, and fade again as Thaddeus adjusted the angle.
“Not perfect,” he admitted. “But better than nothing. And better than cloth alone.” Alex touched the band with careful fingers. It felt almost normal—perhaps slightly cooler, with a subtle resilience beneath the softness. “You can make more,” he said. “I can,” Thaddeus replied. “Ribbons for Elana’s hair. Hemming for Elizabeth’s robes. As for Terra’s silks—” his lips twitched “—I suspect she will not object to garments that make it harder for the heavens to leer at her.”
Alex’s shoulders eased a fraction. “And the mind?” he asked. “Do you think this will truly hinder it?” Thaddeus’s gaze went to the ceiling, as if he could see through the stone into the distant sky.
“I do not know,” he said with uncharacteristic heaviness. “If their machines read minds by field interactions, if they stimulate and measure the delicate dance of charges in the brain, then yes—these threads will complicate matters. They will scatter, delay, distort. They will make clean readings messy, clean commands uncertain.”
“And if it’s something else?” Alex asked. “Then we will learn that too,” Thaddeus said. “And adapt. That is what we do, you and I. We are not gods. We are men. Our power lies not in being above the world, but in being of it. In meeting what comes with our hands, our tools, our stubbornness.” He smiled suddenly, the shadow lifting. “Besides. The idea that somewhere, in some cold reach of space, an alien race is frowning at corrupted data because of a little girl’s hair ribbon pleases me immensely.” Alex allowed himself a tight, brief smile. “Make them,” he said. “Enough for all of them. And for me as well. If these things are listening, I want them to hear static when they reach my thoughts.”
Thaddeus nodded. “It will take time. The weaving is delicate. But I will begin tonight. He paused, then glanced sideways at Alex. “You understand, of course, that this is an escalation.” Alex frowned. “How?”
“Until now,” Thaddeus said, “we have been mostly… subjects. Observed, tested, nudged. Annoying, perhaps, but tolerable. This—” he gestured at the threads, the meshes, the humming instruments “—this is resistance. Interference. A refusal to comply quietly. If they notice, they may respond.” Alex met his gaze steadily. “Then let them notice. I’m done raising my hands and hoping they don’t take anything.” Thaddeus studied him, then nodded once. “Spoken like a man who finally understands why I spend my nights listening to noise.”
He turned back to the bench, gathering the materials. “Go back to them,” he said over his shoulder. “Stay with Elizabeth and Elana, I will send word when the first pieces are ready. And Alexander—” Alex paused at the edge of the lamplight. “Yes?” Thaddeus’s voice was softer when he spoke again. “You cannot build walls high enough to keep gods out. But you can make their steps uncertain. Their hands clumsy. Sometimes, that is enough to make them bleed.”
“Good,” Alex said. “I’ve always wanted to see what a sphere’s blood looks like.” He turned and walked back through the forest of experiments, the air humming faintly around him. Above, somewhere in the cold dark, invisible waves crossed and recrossed, carrying orders, observations, judgments.
In a garden outside the city, a girl who was of two worlds clung to the woman who had claimed her, while the sky weighed its options. And in a workshop beneath Ar, among wires and meshes and quiet defiance, a metallurgist began spinning the first threads of a new kind of armor—ribbons and robes and silks that would whisper back to the heavens in distorted echoes:
You do not own her.
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