The portal opens slowly.
A foot comes through first. A railwayman's work boot, leather scarred down to fiber, laces made of wire. Then a leg. Then the rest of him.
The Engineer.
He looks like a deep-sea diver who died inside his own suit and never took it off. Bronze diving helmet, corroded through in patches, the round visor fogged from the inside—something moves behind the glass and refuses to settle into a shape I can name. Hoses hang from the back of his suit like dead tentacles. The rig is rubber and metal, patched with plates of ship hull, riveted with rust, barnacles crusted along the shoulders like medals. He smells like the deep. Pressure. Salt. The dark of something that was never supposed to come up.
He stands fifty-five feet from me. The portal closes slowly behind him.
He doesn't move. He just exists where he stands.
255 climbs into view at the edge of the horizon.
We can't make it before 255 or the engine won't stop. The energy is location-based.
