The flight simulator at Travis Air Force Base sat like a technological shrine in the center of a hangar that had once housed fighter jets, its presence both incongruous and somehow inevitable in the place where Noah Mercer had first learned that his dreams of flying were incompatible with his neurological reality.
Noah hadn't returned to Travis in three years, not since the day he'd been quietly removed from the pilot training program with a medical discharge that cited "minor neurological irregularities incompatible with flight safety requirements." But sitting in his car in the visitor's parking lot, staring at the hangar where his aviation career had ended, he found himself remembering not the disappointment but the pure joy of those first months when flying had seemed as natural as breathing.
He'd come here because Eli was dealing with the cybersecurity investigation, because moving day stress was triggering more frequent episodes, and because sometimes the only way to move forward was to understand exactly what you were leaving behind. The base commander had granted him a brief visit as a courtesy to a former trainee, though Noah suspected that Jonas's government connections had smoothed the approval process.
"Mr. Mercer?" The voice belonged to Captain Sarah Kim, his former flight instructor, who approached his car with the kind of professional friendliness that suggested she remembered him but wasn't sure why he'd requested this meeting. "Good to see you again. You're looking well."
It was a polite lie. Noah knew he looked tired, stressed, and probably older than his thirty-one years would suggest. But Captain Kim's kindness felt genuine, and he appreciated the effort.
"Thanks for agreeing to see me," Noah said, getting out of his car and following her toward the hangar. "I know this is unusual."
"Not that unusual. Former trainees come back sometimes, especially the ones who left for medical reasons rather than performance issues." Captain Kim's tone was carefully neutral, but Noah caught the implication. "You were one of our most promising students before the medical review."
They entered the hangar, and Noah felt his chest tighten with a mixture of nostalgia and grief. The simulator looked exactly as he remembered—a complex array of screens, controls, and motion systems designed to replicate every aspect of high-performance flight without the inconvenience of actually leaving the ground.
"I heard you're working in California now," Captain Kim continued. "Food service industry?"
"Bakery," Noah confirmed, though the explanation felt inadequate given the complexity of what had brought him back to this place. "I'm good with my hands, and it turns out precision matters as much in pastry as it does in aviation."
Captain Kim smiled at that, and for a moment, the professional distance between them softened into something more personal. "Do you miss it? Flying?"
Noah looked at the simulator, remembering the hours he'd spent in its digital cockpit, learning to navigate by instruments alone, to trust his training over his instincts, to make life-or-death decisions with the calm precision that separates professional pilots from everyone else who dreams of touching the sky.
"Every day," he said honestly. "But I've come to understand that there are different ways of flying."
"What do you mean?"
Noah hesitated, trying to figure out how to explain his relationship with Eli without revealing details that weren't his to share. "I'm involved with someone who designs spacecraft. Watching him work, seeing how he thinks about orbital mechanics and navigation systems... it's made me realize that the part of flying I loved most wasn't the physical sensation. It was the problem-solving, the precision, the feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself."
Captain Kim nodded slowly. "And you find that in pastry?"
"I find it in supporting someone who's trying to touch Saturn's rings," Noah replied. "Which is a longer flight than anything we trained for here."
They stood in comfortable silence for a moment, both of them looking at the simulator that had once been the center of Noah's universe. Captain Kim seemed to be weighing whether to ask the question that Noah knew was on her mind.
"The medical discharge," she said finally. "Are you managing okay? The condition that ended your training—has it progressed?"
The question hit Noah like a challenge. He could lie, could give her the same vague explanations about "minor irregularities" that he'd been using for three years. Or he could practice honesty with someone who had no stake in his current life, someone who might offer perspective on the impossible choice between transparency and protection.
"It's gotten worse," he said quietly. "Progressive neurological disorder that affects coordination, vision, cognitive function. I have episodes where I lose consciousness or become disoriented. The kind of thing that would kill me and everyone else on board if it happened during flight."
Captain Kim's expression shifted to the kind of professional concern that Noah remembered from his final medical evaluation. "Are you receiving treatment?"
"I was. For a while. But the treatments are experimental, expensive, and mostly ineffective." Noah managed a bitter smile. "Turns out there's not a lot of research funding for rare neurological conditions that primarily affect young adults who aren't wealthy enough to fund their own treatment programs."
"I'm sorry. That's... that has to be incredibly difficult."
"The difficult part isn't managing the condition," Noah said, surprising himself with his honesty. "The difficult part is deciding whether to tell the person I love about it, knowing that the information could destroy his career."
Captain Kim frowned. "How could your medical condition affect someone else's career?"
Noah realized he'd said more than he'd intended, venturing into territory that involved security clearances and federal oversight that he couldn't fully explain without violating confidentialities he'd promised to maintain.
"It's complicated," he said. "Government contracts, security reviews, the kind of scrutiny that makes personal relationships into potential liabilities."
"Ah." Captain Kim's understanding was immediate and complete. "Defense contractor?"
"Space exploration. Private company with federal funding and oversight." Noah looked around the hangar, taking in the military precision that had once defined his daily life. "You understand the dynamics involved."
"I understand that sometimes loving someone means accepting that your personal happiness is secondary to larger obligations," Captain Kim said carefully. "But I also understand that decisions made out of fear usually turn out worse than decisions made out of trust."
The words hit Noah with unexpected force. He'd been framing his choice as one between honesty and protection, but Captain Kim was suggesting that the real choice was between fear and trust—fear that Eli couldn't handle the truth, or trust that their relationship was strong enough to survive difficult realities.
"What would you do?" Noah asked.
Captain Kim was quiet for a long moment, clearly weighing her words carefully. "I'd remember that the people we love are usually stronger than we give them credit for. And I'd remember that relationships built on incomplete information are like aircraft built with faulty components—they might fly for a while, but they're going to crash eventually."
As Noah left Travis Air Force Base an hour later, driving back toward the life he was building with Eli, he carried Captain Kim's words like a navigation beacon through the confusion of his own fears and motivations. Thirty-one days until the Saturn probe launched. Thirty-one days to decide whether to trust Eli with the truth or continue building a relationship on the foundation of carefully maintained deceptions.
Either way, the choice would determine not just his own future, but the shape of the love that had become the most important orbit in his increasingly unstable universe.