The burning wake
CHAPTER 1 — THE BURNING WAKE
He woke the same way every cycle: with fire crawling beneath his skin.
Not sharp fire. Not the kind that made a man scream or thrash. This was quieter, deeper—an old, familiar burn that lived somewhere between muscle and metal, as if the synthetic parts of his body had their own idea of morning and insisted on announcing it.
He lay still for a moment, eyes half-open, letting the pain settle into its usual rhythm. It pulsed up his left arm, spread across his ribs, and climbed the side of his neck where a line of carbon-fiber cords had fused themselves to nerve tissue. Each pulse felt like the echo of someone knocking from inside his bones.
The dim interior of the ship flickered in bronze light. Diagnostics scrolled across the curved ceiling. He didn’t read them. He already knew what they said.
Neural variance rising.
Pain response elevated.
Dampener required.
He exhaled—thin, tired—and forced himself upright. The joints of his mechanical arm clicked like cold machinery forced back into motion. He swung his legs over the side of the cot. The ship’s gravity field was kept low to conserve power, so he drifted a few inches before his boots caught the grated floor.
“Filament,” he said, voice rough. “Cradle on.”
A soft chime answered him from somewhere deeper in the hull. The medical cradle rose from the floor, its padded surface unfolding like a flower of metal petals. Small lights pulsed along its edges. He could feel the promise of relief the way a starving man recognizes the smell of bread.
He lowered himself into the cradle. Thin straps tightened across his chest and legs, not restraining him—just steadying him against microgravity. A hiss followed, and warm vapor curled around his face. The pain dampener diffused through his bloodstream almost immediately.
The burn began to fade.
First at the edges of his awareness, then deeper, sinking into numbness. His metal arm stopped twitching. His chest loosened. His jaw unclenched. For a few fleeting seconds, he felt almost human.
The cradle dimmed its lights. Filament’s voice—soft, androgynous, always slightly too calm—filled the air.
“Pain levels decreasing. Dosage completed. Good morning.”
He didn’t answer. He rarely did.
Instead, he sat up slowly, feeling the artificial serenity settle over him. It made everything quieter—not happy, not peaceful, just tolerable.
He stepped out of the cradle. The ship’s interior hummed around him: coolant cycling through conduits, thrusters idling in the distance, the electromagnetic shielding ticking as debris tapped against it like faint rain on a metal roof. Outside, the asteroid belt drifted in vast silence. Chunks of rock older than Earth’s oceans spun past his viewport, each one marked in the company database as potential profit or waste.
“Filament,” he said again, rubbing the back of his neck where the implants met soft flesh. “Show me the day’s route.”
A holographic map blossomed above the central console. A dense patch of the belt lit up—Sector 71-K. The readings were strong. High-density ore. Rare alloys embedded deep inside ancient stone. Enough material to keep his implants stable for another week. Enough to keep him alive.
“Contract quota remains unmet,” Filament reminded him. “Three more extractions required before supply replenishment.”
He almost laughed. Three was never three. Quotas stretched like shadows—they followed you, lengthened with every step. He reached for the console and keyed in an acknowledgment.
As Filament plotted the approach vector, he caught his reflection faintly in the dark glass of the viewport. The biological half of his face looked older than he remembered. More sunken. The synthetic half was expressionless, rigid, unforgiving. The two sides didn’t belong together. They never had.
“You’re up early,” he murmured at the reflection.
It didn’t answer.
He strapped himself into the pilot chair. The harness tightened automatically. The engines rumbled. The ship turned gracefully toward the marked asteroid, gliding through a scatterfield of dust and drifting stone.
As they accelerated, a stray message notification appeared on the corner of the display:
Unread — 91 days old.
Sender: Mara Hale.
He blinked once. Then he dismissed it with a single tap.
Not now.
Maybe not ever.
The ship entered the mining drift. The asteroid loomed ahead—massive, spinning slowly, glimmering with the hidden metals that kept him alive.
Pain relief fading at the edges of his nerves, he felt a tremor run through his arm. He ignored it.
“This one,” he whispered, “will get us through the week.”
Filament’s lights pulsed in acknowledgment.
The drills deployed.
The engines steadied.
The cradle behind him sat empty, waiting for the next cycle of hurt.
He took a slow breath and guided the ship toward the rock.
Outside the hull, the void swallowed everything—sound, warmth, hope—except the single man descending into his day’s work, carrying both metal and flesh like twin burdens he could not set down.
