Shockwave observed the ruin with professional interest. The facility had failed three minutes earlier—collapse, breach, systems silenced mid-scream. Smoke moved through corridors like an unsolved equation. He stepped over a console, careful not to crush the blinking data wafer. Loss of life registered. Loss of information irritated.

He had predicted this within acceptable margins. Pressure required suffering; the math remained elegant.

Now: refinement. At a junction, one path led to trapped personnel—fearful, inefficiently alive. The other led to the core archive. He calculated outcomes.

Curiosity adjusted the variables. He went toward the voices. He worked with precision: lifting debris, stabilizing systems, correcting breathing without comfort. Gratitude followed; he did not acknowledge it.

One attempt at thanks was met with silence and a fixed pulse. Then the alarms for the archive resumed. He logged the cost of the detour. Empathy again—inefficient. Fascinating.

Shockwave turned back toward the fire. If goodness required sacrifice, how much could existence afford?