The corridor lights stabilized an hour later.
Kael remained in the corner, mop bucket untouched, eyes half-lidded. He had no visible wounds. No scorch marks or burns. And yet he felt like his skin had been peeled and stitched back together inside out. The kind of ache that hummed in the bones, like memory.
He didn't move. Didn't speak. Just listened.
Because somewhere in the walls, something still whispered. Not with words. Not yet. Just a presence behind the air, curling in and out of recognition. Like the edge of a dream you knew was watching you.
He forced himself up. His legs protested.
The palm of his right hand still bore the faint, shimmering outline of the mark—now dormant. A sigil of woven lines and broken circles. It reminded him of a map seen from above, but only after it had cracked in a fire.
He wrapped the hand in a rag.
The security officer hadn't returned. No lockdown crew had come to sweep the corridor. No alarms had rippled across public channels. Whatever had breached the station either didn't exist in official records—or was never meant to.
Kael already knew which.
The transit lift from Maintenance Block B-07 to the civilian ring groaned as it rose. Kael stood alone inside it, arms folded, back pressed against the sidewall. A flickering ad in the corner displayed rotating images of nutrient paste varieties. He ignored it.
Halfway up, he felt a shift—not in gravity, not in sound. In sense. As if someone had moved their gaze to him from a great distance. It faded the second he noticed.
When the lift doors opened, everything looked normal.
People strolled the concourse. Vending stalls flashed synthetic smiles. Children laughed too easily for a world like this.
Kael stepped into it, and none of them looked twice.
He passed under one of the station's memory towers—a tall, antenna-riddled spire said to record psychic impressions of Cradle Helion's citizens. At least, that's what the tour brochures claimed.
What Kael knew was that when he walked too close to them, the back of his neck itched. Today it burned.
He made his way to Sector C-3, where a modest habitation pod waited: one door, two meters wide, no surveillance inside. A flaw in registry placement, one he'd found three years ago and quietly claimed.
He keyed the door.
It opened before he touched it.
Someone stood inside. Waiting.
Kael froze.
She was tall. Long dark coat. Eyes like frost above a surgical mask. A badge glinted at her hip—not station security, not civilian governance.
Red Chain.
She stared at him for a long time. Like she was comparing him to a sketch that didn't match.
Then she said, flatly, "You weren't meant to live."
Kael didn't answer. He couldn't.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Something followed you back."
That, he could believe.
Behind her, on the far wall of his pod, was a faint indentation. As if something had pressed through from the other side. It shimmered faintly, like oil under water, then vanished.
The woman stepped aside.
"Whatever happened down there, it started moving again. We need to know why."
"I don't know anything," Kael said.
"That would make you the first."
She stepped out.
But not before saying, without turning, "You have three days. Then we come back. And if you're still lying, we won't send another officer."
The door slid shut.
Kael didn't breathe until the silence returned. Not true silence. Just enough to pretend.
Then the whisper came back.
Step beneath.
He sat on the edge of his cot, stared at the wall, and thought of teeth spiraling in impossible shapes.
Three days.
That was a very short time to remember who he really was.