The Vane Protocol
I didn’t know then that I was a “biochemical anomaly.” I didn’t know that my brain was a sprawling map of silicate-reinforced neurons, or that I was the only creature on Oros who could truly understand the tragedy of what we were losing. Back then, I was just Fios.
I was a Highland Strider with a coat that smelled of damp pine and a heart that beat in perfect synchronization with the heavy, rhythmic thrum of the man sleeping beside me.
The morning arrived with its usual Orosian arrogance. On this planet, the sun doesn’t just rise; it pushes through the atmosphere, fighting against the 1.2x gravity that tries to keep the light pinned to the horizon. The sky outside our tent was a bruised, heavy violet—the color of a plum that had been pressed too hard. Inside the tent, it smelled of Silas.
To a human, Silas Vane probably smelled like unwashed synthetic fabric and stale coffee. To me, he was a symphony. He smelled of old paper from the Land Bureau, the sweet, yeasty scent of the “Nitro-Brew” he loved so much, and the underlying saltiness of a man who was carrying a few more pounds than the “High-G” terrain of the Obsidian Spines recommended.
Silas shifted in his sleeping bag, the high-tech nylon rustling with a sound like dry leaves. He let out a long, wheezing snore that ended in a soft whistle. I rested my chin on his chest. Through the layers of his UPD-issue thermal pajamas, I could feel the slow, steady drum of his heart. It was my favorite sound in the world. It was the sound of “Safe.”
“Ugh... Fios,” he groaned, his eyes still squeezed shut. He reached out a heavy, clumsy hand and began to scratch that exact spot behind my left ear—the one that made my hind leg twitch involuntarily. “Rule #1 of the Vane Protocol, buddy: The sun is an intruder until the second cup of coffee is poured.”
I licked the side of his face, tasting the salt of his sleep.
“Okay, okay,” he chuckled, finally cracking one eye open behind his smudged glasses. “I get it. You’re a high-energy Highland Strider and I’m just a desk-jockey with a bad back. You don’t have to rub it in.”
He sat up, his spine letting out a series of audible pops that sounded like gravel being crushed. Silas was thirty-four, but in the gravity of Oros, he moved like a man twenty years older. He was “sturdy”—that was the word the doctors at the bureau used. A bit of a belly, soft shoulders, and a face that looked like it was designed specifically for smiling.
He unzipped the tent flap, and the air of the Black-Glass Highlands rushed in. It was sharp. It tasted of ozone and the cold, metallic minerals of Lake Malasag. I stepped out onto the basalt pebbles first, my seismic pads instantly expanding to grip the slick, vibrating surface of the mountain. Silas followed, staggering slightly as the 1.2x pull hit him.
The lake didn’t ripple. It undulated. It was so dense with silicate runoff that it looked like liquid amethyst.
“Look at that, Fios,” Silas whispered. “No sirens. No mag-rails screaming overhead. Just Oros in her Sunday best. If Henderson could see me now, he’d probably try to tax the view.”
He walked over to the Strider-Jeep and pulled out the portable induction stove. I watched him with an intensity that only a dog can manage. To Silas, I was waiting for breakfast. But I was also recording the way he moved, the way he hummed a tuneless song while he measured out the synthetic protein eggs.
“Breakfast, Fios. The cornerstone of any successful expedition,” he announced. As the proteins hit the pan, the air filled with that chemical-salt scent. It was the smell of the world we lived in—the world of the Aurous Grave. Silas didn’t know that the minerals in that pan were processed from the very thing that would eventually try to kill us.
He sat on his collapsible stool and stared into the pan. “You know, this reminds me of a show I watched once. ‘The Last Frontier.’ The narrator said that a man’s character isn’t built in the city; it’s built in the places where the cell signal dies.” He looked at his phone: [No Service]. “I’m so full of character right now I can barely stand it.”
I sat at his feet, resting my head on his knee. Silas reached down and shared a piece of the “bacon” strip with me. “Good boy,” he whispered. “You’re the only one who doesn’t judge my cooking, Fios. Rule #8 of the Protocol: Always trust the dog. The dog doesn’t care about property deeds or land-tax quotas.”
We sat there for a long time in the purple light. The Black-Glass Pines behind us began to “sing”—their silica needles vibrating as the morning wind picked up. It was a beautiful, tinkling sound, like a billion wind chimes playing at once.
“I ever tell you about the high school gala, Fios?” he asked. I wagged my tail. I didn’t understand the words back then—not the way I do now—but I understood that Silas was lonely for a version of the world that had already begun to disappear.
“Elena...” he said, and the name smelled like Port Maru malls—artificial jasmine and rain. “She was the smartest person I ever knew. And the meanest. But in a good way. She dared me, Fios. She told me that if I could hide in the varsity locker room during the Junior Gala for twenty minutes, she’d give me her copy of The Silicate Chronicles. It was a banned book, man. Real ‘underground’ science.”
He chuckled. “I was sixteen. I was wearing a suit that made me look like a square box, and I was sweating so much I thought I was going to melt. I stood on the toilet seat like my life depended on it. And then, I had my brilliant idea. My ‘Scientific Solution’—an ammonia-haze bomb.”
To a human, it was a funny story. To me, it was the moment Silas Vane decided he would rather be a “scientific hero” than a “tough guy.” He chose a book over a suit. And that was why, even when the world turned into a nightmare of clicking teeth and gold-eyed monsters, I never left his side.
“She loved it,” Silas whispered. “She said I was a ‘biochemical disaster.’ I wonder if she’s still in the capital, analyzing the Aurous output. Probably forgot all about the boy in the stall. But I’ve got you, right? Rule #10: A dog is the only person who will listen to your high school stories three hundred times and still wag his tail.”
He reached down and ruffled my fur. The wind picked up then, and the scent changed. It was a heavy, wet scent—like a wall of water moving toward us.
“The Great Soak,” Silas muttered, looking at the charcoal clouds. “The forecast said we had two more days of sun. Looks like Oros has other plans. Rule #14: The weather doesn’t read the UPD reports. Alright, First Officer. Let’s get the gear inside. It’s about to get very, very wet.”
