Chapter 1
She woke up and reached for him. Her hand hit empty air.
The sheets were cold. Not just the station’s standard chill, but the deep, settled cold of a bed that hadn’t been slept in for a week. She kept her arm out, fingers curled, waiting for the warmth of his shoulder. Waiting for his chest to rise.
The air cycler hummed. A low vibration in the floor grates that traveled up her legs.
She pulled her hand back. Tucked it under her chin. Stared at the ceiling. Seamless white panels. Dim amber night-lights. Her eyes were dry. They scratched against her lids, but no tears came. She hadn’t cried since the bunker doors locked.
She threw off the blanket. Bare feet on the cold floor. She walked to the viewport.
The blast shields were open. The Blue Sky.
It wasn’t the sky from the surface. Not the bruised purple smog of the lower levels, or the rust-orange of the mid-zones. It was the real one. The black of space, cut by the thin, bright curve of the Earth’s atmosphere. The sun was coming up over the edge, throwing a sharp line of light across the console.
It was beautiful. It was exactly what they had bled to see.
Yuki pressed her hand against the permaglass. She was the Architect. She had built the life-support. She had pulled the lever. She had made it to the top. She was supposed to feel triumphant. She was supposed to feel alive.
She just felt hollow.
She turned away and left the quarters.
The corridor was a long curve of brushed steel. The station was built for two. Everything was doubled. Two airlocks. Two hydroponics bays. Two chairs in the mess hall. It was supposed to be safe. Now, the extra space just made the quiet louder.
Her boots clicked on the grates. Clack. Clack.
Too loud. She stopped. The silence pressed in, heavy and thick.
She walked past the life-support monitors. Green lights. Normal. Past the med-bay. Empty. She stopped in the mess hall.
Two chairs were pushed neatly under the magnetic table. His chair.
She reached out and touched the back of it. The metal was freezing. She wiped her fingers on her pants, like she’d touched something dirty. She didn’t sit. Just stood there, listening to the station breathe.
Her left forearm itched. A deep, dull itch right under the skin.
She scratched it. A grey flake of dead skin peeled off and drifted to the floor. She rubbed the spot. The skin underneath felt hard, like plastic. The Sabire-byō was moving up her arm. She knew it. She didn’t care.
She needed to hear him.
She walked to the central comms hub. The main console was dark, except for the blinking green cursor and the soft glow of the terminal. She sat in the operator’s chair. The cushion was still dented from his weight. It smelled like him. Stale sweat and the artificial cherry of his chewing gum.
She woke the terminal. The screen flared blue.
She opened the audio logs. Her fingers moved over the keys. She didn’t have to look at them. She scrolled past the telemetry. Past the orbital numbers. Past the final burst of static from the surface. Past the Raijin breach.
She found the file.
Audio_004.wav.
Duration: 0.3 seconds.
She put on the headset. The foam pads sealed over her ears, blocking out the cycler. Total silence.
She pressed play.
A sharp intake of breath. A shift in pitch. The faintest, brightest ghost of a laugh, cut off by the hard click of the file ending.
0.3 seconds.
She pressed play again.
Breath. Pitch. Laugh. Click.
Again. And again.
She held her finger on the haptic key, looping him in the fraction of a second before the pod launched. As long as it played, he was breathing. As long as she looped it, he was still there, still smiling at her through the cracked glass. If she let it stop, the silence would come back. If she let it stop, he was gone.
The counter hit fifty loops. Then a hundred.
Her finger cramped, but she didn’t stop. She just watched the green waveform on the screen, watching the spikes of his voice.
Then she saw it.
At the very edge of the waveform, right where his laugh peaked, the green line was fraying. Tiny, jagged spikes of digital noise were bleeding into the track.
She pressed play.
Breath. Pitch. Laugh.
But under the laugh, there was a new sound. A faint, wet hiss. The sound of degrading code.
The static was eating him.
She pressed it again. Her breath caught. The hiss was louder. The laugh was thinner, stretched out and distorted.
She was losing him. Not to time. To the wire. One millisecond at a time.
She pressed play again. Her hand was shaking.
This time, the laugh didn’t play.
Just the hiss.
