I carved another line with deliberate pressure:
What am I going back to?
The question sat there, stark and unavoidable.
My mother was dead. Had been dead for four months before I even stepped through the portal. The debt I'd thought I was escaping was cleared, but what else? No family. No home worth the name. Just underground sectors and container stacks and a job that would kill me as slowly as it had killed her.
The Consortium had cleared the debt. Had fulfilled their contract. But they didn't offer me anything beyond that. No placement assistance. No guaranteed housing. No job waiting. Just "debt cleared, good luck."
I'd be alone on Earth. Starting from nothing. In sectors where being gone thirty days meant someone else had your housing slot. Where jobs didn't wait. Where you either climbed or you died.
And I'd be changed. Visibly changed. The copper patterns wouldn't fade. The teeth wouldn't revert. The enhanced hearing would stay. I'd be other on a world that didn't tolerate other well.
I carved more lines:
On Earth: Alone, changed, starting over, suspect
On Varyn: Partnered, changing, established, home
Drav found me at the southern entrance that afternoon. I'd been sitting there for three hours, staring at nothing in particular.
"You should eat," he said, not coming too close. Giving me space the way he'd been doing since the drone arrived.
"I'm not hungry."
"The eggs need nutrients."
"I know." I didn't move.
He sat beside me finally, maintaining careful distance. Silent. Just present. Through the bond I felt his fear crushed me. He was terrified I'd leave. Terrified I'd choose Earth. Terrified he'd die watching me walk through that portal.
But he wasn't saying anything. Wasn't trying to influence my decision. Just sitting with me while I decided whether to kill him or stay forever.
"What am I going back to?" I asked quietly.
Silence stretched between us, heavy with things he was afraid to ask. Then: "What do you mean?"
"On Earth. What am I actually going back to?" I looked at him directly. "My mother's dead. Debt's cleared. But what else? What life am I choosing if I go through that portal?"
"I don't know," he said honestly. "I've never been to Earth. Don't know what your world offers."
"Nothing." The word came out flat. Final. "It offers nothing. Underground housing if I can get placement. Manual labor if I can find work. Suspicion because I've been gone thirty days and come back changed." My palm found the curve of my stomach instinctively. "And constant questions about what happened here that I can't answer honestly without being detained for medical study."
His hope began to build.
"Here," I continued, "I have a partner. A home. A purpose. Eggs growing inside me that will be my children." I looked at the vertical world spread before us. "I'm good at this life. Better than I ever was at that one."
"You're choosing to stay?" The absolute conviction in his tone that I wasn't going anywhere scared me.
"I don't know yet." Honest. "But I'm trying to figure out what I'm actually choosing between. And the more I think about Earth, the less there is to go back to."
We sat in silence as the sun set slowly over our territory.
Day twenty-nine arrived. One day until the portal opened.
I barely slept. When I did manage to drift off, I dreamed of Sector 23 endlessly. Underground housing. Factory floors. The constant weight of recycled air that never quite satisfied your lungs.
I woke to Drav watching me. He hadn't slept at all—I could feel it through the bond, could see it in his eyes.
