I smile. “Kicked the door down and rewired the circuits.”
Tran whistles low. “Well, damn. Good for you.”
She doesn’t press. That’s always been her thing. She offers. You take it or you don’t. No guilt. No drama. Just keeps moving. Like the yards.
“Take care, Roja.”
“You too.”
She walks off, boots heavy against the ferrocrete. I stand there a moment longer, staring at the freighter. My weld lines catch the light just right. Subtle. Strong. Meant to be forgotten.
But this time, I won’t be.
The day startswith a hiss of old plumbing and the bitter smell of recycled coffee. The kind that tastes like it’s been boiled twice and filtered through regret. Kelsea’s still asleep when I slip out of bed—curled under the sheets like she’s guarding a dream she doesn’t want to lose. I don’t wake her. This isn’t something I need to explain.
I pull on my boots, grab my tools from the crate by the door, and start with the front panel by the entryway. The old security system’s got a blinking red light like a dying heart, and the wiring’s spaghetti—someone’s amateur hour patch job. The wall groans when I peel it open. Dust spills out, thick and dry like it remembers the days when this place was just concrete and ghosts.
I reroute power through a microfilter, install a directional receiver—something military surplus I picked up ages ago and never had a use for. It’s overkill, but that’s the point. I want her to feel safe. Hell, I want to feel safe. But I don’t know how to say that, so I wire it into the walls instead.
Halfway through rewiring the motion sensors, I slice my thumb open on a jagged bracket. The pain’s sharp, real. Blood wells up, warm and bright. I suck it clean, grit my teeth, and keep going. A little pain feels honest. It reminds me I’m doing something that matters.
By mid-morning, the apartment smells like solder smoke and electrical burn. I’ve got sweat in my eyes and a knot in my shoulder from crouching too long under the kitchen sink. The water line’s older than I thought—copper flaking like old leaves. I swap in a new connector, reinforce the bracket with a carbon-bonded sleeve. When I test it, the faucet hisses, spits, and finally lets out a stream clean and strong enough to make me grin.
“You're bleeding,” Kelsea says behind me, voice still scratchy from sleep.
I jump a little. Didn’t hear her come in. She’s leaning in the doorway, wrapped in the blanket from our bed, hair a mess, eyes half-lidded. She glances at the stove where the remnants of my earlier attempt at breakfast sit cold in the pan.
“Caught a bracket,” I say, showing her the bandaged thumb. “Nothing big.”
She pads over, barefoot, and takes my hand like it’s a thing made of glass. “This doesn’t count as a normal morning, you know.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I pull my hand back gently, turn toward the comm panel. “The relay was noisy. I fixed it.”
“You’ve been tearing this place apart since dawn.”
I glance at her. “I’m making it better.”
“Better, or safer?”
I don’t answer. She doesn’t push.
Instead, she watches as I pull the old buffer chip from the comm hub and replace it with a new one—one I etched myself. Signal encrypted six ways, dead drops laced into the outbound pings. She doesn’t need to know the specifics. She just needs to know it’s harder for anyone to listen in now.
“Roja,” she says after a while, “you don’t have to keep proving something to me.”
“I’m not.”
“Then who?”
My jaw tightens. I don’t say a word. Just tighten the bracket on the new comm node and close the panel.
Kelsea crosses her arms, but her voice softens. “Is this what love looks like to you? Wires and sensors and silent mornings?”
I shrug. “It’s how I know how to care.”
