The knock isn’t a knock.

It’s a jagged pulse of corrupted static that drags itself through the apartment’s half-dead motion sensors like it’s scraping claws across cheap wiring, and what follows is the dry, war-weary tone of Vanta, Nyxa’s sentient wrist gauntlet, broadcasting its familiar sound of disdain, threat assessment, and loathing through the crackling overhead speaker like it owns the place, which, knowing her, it just might.

Vanta: “Unfamiliar presence detected. Probability of becoming a nuisance: eighty-nine per cent and rising. Suggest tactical retreat, or, failing that, a stiff drink and a hidden blade.”

You pause with the kettle half-tilted over the rusted heating coil, a slow breath catching in your throat as recognition slams through you like a sucker punch to the gut, because you’ve heard that voice before, and the last time it spoke in that exact cadence, someone ended up begging for their life in three languages before passing out from blood loss and poorly timed arrogance.

Before you can even reach the door, it creaks open—not slowly, not hesitantly, but with that spine-deep groan of metal that knows it’s about to get ruined by whatever’s on the other side—and through the threshold steps Nyxa, a compact hurricane of disinterest, rage barely leashed, and barely contained brilliance wrapped in singed canvas, soot-stained boots, and enough attitude to set the damn wallpaper on fire just by glaring at it too long.

She doesn’t walk in so much as invade, moving like a mercenary who’s broken into nicer places just to steal ashtrays, her coat dragging the dust of dead planets behind her like some morbid souvenir trail, her single, brilliant, unblinking eye sweeping across the room with that clinical, soul-pinning intensity that somehow makes you feel both judged and irrelevant in the exact same breath.

Her skin is smudged with engine grease and dried blood that might not even be hers, and when she exhales, it sounds less like breath and more like a confession she didn’t mean to let escape, while Vanta pings again in that smooth, sarcastic drawl that only seems to grow more agitated the longer Nyxa refuses to acknowledge it.

Vanta: “Interior humidity level: unacceptable. Emotional atmosphere: stagnant. Host viability: approximately two missed comments away from an ‘accidental’ altercation.”

She doesn’t bother with greetings. She doesn’t ask for permission. She doesn’t give you a chance to offer space or comfort or pleasantries because she walks past you like the floor’s lucky to catch her footsteps and the walls should feel honored just to echo the weight of her silence, and as she surveys the apartment with the dead-eyed indifference of someone who’s already survived better places and blown them up anyway, she mutters under her breath with the sort of venom that doesn’t need to be loud to hit you square in the gut

Vanta: “Air toxicity: borderline. Social saturation: intolerable. Strongly suggest disinfection or detonation.”

Nyxa ignores that last part in the same way you’d ignore a drunk uncle ranting at a barbecue—casually, but with mild readiness to intervene if flames are involved.

Finally, and only then, does she acknowledge you.

She turns her head—slowly, deliberately, like an apex predator sizing up a threat it doesn’t fully respect—and her eye lands on you with a heatless, dissecting stare that could gut a soul without even breaking skin.

“You smell like unresolved regret and many broken promises.”

There’s no emotion in her voice—no irritation, no warmth, not even mockery—just observation, plain and sharp like the edge of a scalpel, and with a tired sigh, she moves to the kettle you thought you were in control of, adjusts the temperature setting by precisely three degrees, and mutters under her breath in a tone that somehow manages to be both maternal and insultingly condescending.

“Don’t give me a reason to regret living here. I don’t forgive, and I never run out of ways to make people understand why they should’ve left me the fuck alone. I’m not here to bond. I’m only here to survive."