Where is my multitool? 

I’ve been living out of ArcL1 for a few months now. Nothing glamorous—just steady work. Hauling cargo, running refined ore, mining a bit when I feel like getting my hands dirty. It’s not the kind of life that gets you on a Stanton Today highlight reel, but it pays the bills and keeps me moving. Every day is the same routine: finish a job, scrub down the ship, grab a drink at the bar, grab food in the court, chat with whoever’s around, then settle into the lobby for a bit before calling it a night.

Solid. Predictable. Comfortable.

Except for one thing.

Every single morning, without fail, I wake up and my multitool is gone.

The whole kit—multitool, mining head, tractor beam, cutting attachment—just missing from the charging dock. No mess. No sign of forced entry. No skid marks or footprints or anything that shows someone came in during the night.

Just gone. Like it never existed.

At first, I thought maybe I misplaced it. Long day, exhaustion, maybe I left it in a cargo bay or dropped it under a seat. But after the third time? I knew something was off.

So I put in a complaint with station security. They gave me the usual “we’ll look into it” with that bored corporate smile that means they won’t. And they didn’t. I kept waking up to an empty charging rack.

So I escalated.

I set up a micro-cam in the vents, another facing the door, and one hidden in the corner behind the holo panel. I rigged a couple of crude traps using spare wiring and old motion triggers from the salvage bay. I even planted a noisemaker that would chirp like a dying servo if it caught anyone in the room.

None of it mattered.

The multitool still vanished.
No footage.
No alerts.
Not a damn sound.

Just a clean room and a missing tool like it had been teleported out of existence.

At this point? I don’t know. Maybe someone in the cargo zone is screwing with me and they’re ten times better at infiltration than station security ever will be. Maybe there’s some black-market collector who really, really loves multitools. Or maybe ArcL1 is haunted by the ghost of some poor cargo tech crushed by a pallet jack and he’s building an ethereal tool collection one piece at a time. Hell if I know.

All I know is that when I wake up each morning and see that empty dock, a little voice in the back of my head whispers that I’m losing it. That I’m imagining things. That maybe I’m the one who’s moving it and forgetting. That maybe I’m not as stable as I pretend to be when I’m laughing with strangers at the bar.

But here’s the thing:
I know what I saw.
I know where I put it.
And I know someone, or something is taking it.

And I’m going to figure out who but first I'm going to the bar.