The door mechanism groaned as Wesley pressed his palm to the scanner.
Nothing happened.
He smacked the panel at the usual angle. Upper-left, two knuckles, the specific violence the solenoid had come to expect. A reluctant clunk. The door shuddered open, catching halfway.
Why is everything so tough to get through. Just open up. Just work. Why is everything so broken and in my way.
His aunt sat in his mother’s chair, mending pants. Different pants. The collection was growing. His father hunched at the far wall, eyes locked on the same oxygen readout he’d watched for thirty-four years. The number had moved twice in that span. Both times it had moved back. The tablet’s glow reflected in his watering eyes. He didn’t look up.
“You’re late,” his aunt said without looking up.
“The drones were out.” Wesley set his pack down carefully, keeping it close. “Level 15 security. Something stirred them up. Or it was a cat. Last month they evacuated two corridors for a plastic bag.” He almost smiled. “I told Riven they were confiscating hope. Harvesting it from us in little transparent pouches.”
“Something always stirs them up.” Her needle moved in precise strokes—but she paused to hold up the pants. Wesley’s pants. She’d reinforced every seam, doubled the stitching at the knees, added a third row where a second would have done. Pants built to survive whatever came next. Pants built, frankly, to outlive him. “The Beta Test is in two days. You should be resting.”
Resting. Right. Because the Cell was so restful. Because dreamless chemical sleep really recharged the soul. His aunt was a living brochure for the Partisant system and the brochure had been printed in color, laminated, and permanently on display for Wesley every day.
“I’ll rest soon.”
He sat across from her, watching the Edisun sphere overhead. The light was constant, relentless, the same temperature everywhere in the room. He held his hand up, palm toward the ceiling. Moved it closer. Farther.
The brightness didn’t change.
“You’re doing it again,” his aunt said.
“Doing what?”
“Looking for something the lights won’t show you.”
Wesley lowered his hand. His mother used to say the same thing. The lights won’t show you, Wesley. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
“Did she ever tell you—” He stopped. Tried again. “M-Mom. My Mom, did she ever talk about what was outside? Not just the sun. The other stuff. The things the Edisun replaced.”
His aunt’s needle stilled. She pushed her glasses up with her knuckle—Helena’s gesture, Wesley realized—and when she looked up, her eyes held something complicated. Fear and longing, tangled together like wire.
“She talked,” his aunt said carefully. “She shouldn’t have. But she talked.”
“About what?”
“Darkness.” The word came out like a confession. “The kind that falls on its own. Not a malfunction. Not a failure. Just... time passing. The world is turning away from light, then turning back.”
Wesley leaned forward. “What else?”
“Wesley—”
“Please. I need to know.”
His aunt set down her mending. For a long moment, she just looked at him. Searching his face for something. He didn’t know what.
“She said the darkness wasn’t empty,” his aunt finally whispered. “She said there were patterns in it. Points of light that weren’t Edisun. A whole map overhead, older than the Stacks, older than the Cradle. She said...” Her voice caught. “She said we used to navigate by them. Before we forgot how to look up.”
A map. Points of light. Navigation.
Wesley thought of the bar in his pack. The crystals inside. The patterns that almost looked like orbital trajectories.
“Twenty-six days,” he said. “You mentioned it last night. Twenty-six days until what?”
His aunt’s face went blank. The openness vanished, replaced by the careful neutrality she wore like armor.
“Time for bed, Wesley.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I can give.” She picked up her mending again. “The Beta Test decides everything. Focus on that. Focus on surviving. The rest will become clear when it needs to.”
When it needs to. His mother used to say that too. Right before she disappeared.
Wesley retrieved his pack and started toward his room. At the doorway, he paused.
“Dad.”
His father’s eyes stayed on the tablet. The oxygen levels hadn’t changed in a decade. They never would.
“Dad, do you ever th-think about—”
“Dinner’s in the processor.” Flat. Minimal. The same response to every question that mattered.
The processor made three things: grey paste, grey paste with texture, and grey paste that had aspirations of being soup. Tonight smelled like aspirations.
Wesley waited. For comfort, or advice, or even anger. But his father’s eyes stayed on the numbers, and the silence stretched until Wesley turned away.
Behind him, his aunt whispered something too quiet to hear. It might have been a prayer. It might have been a warning.
[ENCRYPTED:She said Helena’s name three times.]
He didn’t ask which.