The map clearly marked the place as “safe,” which immediately made her suspicious. Out here, in open ocean, safe didn’t exist. There were only gradients of danger—storms, hunger, thirst, and the slow, creeping certainty of being forgotten. Yet there it was on the navigation screen: a fixed point, blinking green. SAFE. “Land?” Ortiz asked weakly from the corner of the lifeboat. “Maybe,” she said. “Or something pretending to be.” Still, she adjusted their course. They drifted for hours before the fog parted. It wasn’t land. It was a platform. Perfectly circular. Smooth. Metallic. Floating without visible support. “No markings,” she said. “No flags.” “Still better than dying out here,” Ortiz replied. They docked carefully. The surface was warm under her boots, humming faintly. At the center stood a hatch. Open. “Of course it is,” she muttered. Inside, they found food. Water. Beds. Clean. Untouched. Safe. Ortiz laughed, a ragged, disbelieving sound. “We made it.” She didn’t answer. Because she had noticed something. The walls. Scratched. Not randomly—deliberately. Marks, layered over each other, carved by many hands. She leaned closer. Words. DON’T TRUST— The rest had been scraped away. A soft chime echoed through the chamber. “Occupancy detected,” a calm voice said. Ortiz froze. “You heard that?” She nodded slowly. “Safety capacity exceeded,” the voice continued. The hatch above them sealed shut. Ortiz staggered back. “What does that mean?” She already knew. This place wasn’t a refuge. It was a system. And systems optimized. For balance. For efficiency. For safety. One of them was now unnecessary. In the end, the fire alarm worked perfectly; it just warned the wrong people.