He downloaded the Lishui programming suite—a clunky, Chinese-English hybrid software that felt like flying a Soviet helicopter blindfolded. The controller was a standard LS-05, the kind found in a million delivery scooters. But the CAN bus protocol had been... mutated. Karl had rewritten the low-level torque curves, not for speed, but for timing .

“Tell Elias to burn the controller,” Karl whispered, seeing him. “It doesn’t travel space. It travels . And Lishui controllers remember every firmware flash. They’re learning.”

Elias adjusted a variable resistor on the controller’s daughterboard. The countdown reset. A new time appeared: .