Heknew, and he kept us here anyway.
I want to confront him. Storm into his lab and shove the compad in his face. Scream until someone listens. Until someonebelieves me. But the file’s buried. Scrubbed. I barely got it open with Carson’s backdoor keys. If I go in half-cocked, he’ll deny it. Say it’s fake. Tampered. Blame it on me. And with the way things are? They’d believe him.
I have no proof.
I have no backup.
I have no one.
Sleep’s a stranger now.
I don’t even bother pretending anymore—just grab my jacket, slip outside, and sit with my back against the metal frame of the bunkhouse. The night’s wind presses in cold and quiet. Thin wisps of dust swirl across the packed earth, scattering like ghosts when the gusts pick up.
The sky’s that violet hue again—like bruises blooming across a black canvas. It’s beautiful in a way that doesn’t feel real. Too soft. Too still. As if the stars are trying to make up for the nightmare below.
The hum of the perimeter fence fills the silence. Low and constant. Almost comforting if I didn’t know it was one blown node away from collapse. The outer beacons flicker where the sand’s started eating through the power relays—snapping into darkness and stuttering back, like they can’t decide whether to hold on or give up.
Kind of like me.
I pull my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. The cold’s sharp through the fabric, biting down to the bone. My thoughts scatter, try to stretch back to anything familiar—home, campus, even those awful long labs with Darwin griping aboutinventory. But nothing fits anymore. Those memories feel like someone else’s life.
What’s left is this: static in the sky, blood in the soil, and a silence so wide I swear it might swallow me whole.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
I don’t even know who I am anymore.
But I do knowonething.
He didn’t kill Carson.
I whisper it into the night. Not loud. Not defiant. Just… honest.
“I don’t believe it was you.”
My voice breaks a little on the last word. Maybe from the cold. Maybe from the weight of saying it aloud. I wait. Listen. Nothing stirs. Just the wind and the slow throb of the generators humming in the distance.
“I don’t know what you are,” I say softly. “But I don’t think you’re a monster.”
A long pause.
I almost stop there.
But I don’t.
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the wall. My breath fogs the air in front of me, curling like smoke.
“Will you help me?” I ask. “Please.”
No answer comes.
No shadow moves. No warm breath in the darkness. Nothing watching. Nothing near.
But I feel something.
Not presence. Not certainty.
Just… hope. Fragile and foolish, but alive.
