The Weightless
Lydia Vaile

© Lydia Vaile, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0068-2797-4

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

The Arithmetic of Survival

The hum stopped.

Cristian lay in darkness, eyes open, listening to silence that shouldn’t exist. The 60Hz frequency that lived in walls and floor and teeth – gone. Just gone. Like the city’s heart had stopped.

His chest tightened. Wrong. This was wrong.

He counted heartbeats. Twelve. Fifteen. Twenty.

Somewhere down the hall, a door opened. Footsteps. Multiple pairs – measured, official.

A knock. Muffled voices. Another door.

Gabriel shifted in the other bed, springs creaking. “Cris?”

“It’s nothing.” The words came automatic. “Mm. Go back to sleep, Gabe.”

“The sound stopped.”

“I know.”

“Feels wrong.”

It felt like drowning. Cristian stared at the ceiling he couldn’t see, tracking footsteps through thin walls. Third door down. Fourth. They were working toward this end of the hall.

Fifth door. His door was sixth.

The footsteps passed. Kept going. Faded.

Springs creaked. A rustle of fabric. Then silence again, punctuated only by Gabriel’s breathing, already slowing back toward sleep.

Cristian remained awake, staring at nothing, waiting. Gabriel had never liked loud noises. Even now, silence frightened him more.

At some point – minutes or hours, impossible to tell – the hum returned. It started deep, subsonic, a tremor through the floor that reached his bones before his ears registered sound. Then it built, climbing toward that familiar 60Hz frequency: the city’s electrical grid, the Dome’s power distribution, the network of transformers and substations that kept this place breathing. It vibrated through his teeth like a drill bit working enamel. Pressure built behind his eyes, in his sinuses, as if his skull were a resonance chamber designed specifically for this frequency. The building hummed with it – pipes in walls, rebar in concrete, metal window frames all conducting the same electrical heartbeat. The lights didn’t come back on, but the sound was there, invasive and constant, burrowing into the spaces between thought. And with it, a strange sense of relief. The world hadn’t ended. The machinery was still running. They were still trapped, but at least the trap was familiar.

Sleep never came back though. He watched the ceiling fade from black to gray as dawn seeped through the single window.

* * *

Morning meant arithmetic.

Bread, two credits. Beans, three if the corner vendor still had yesterday’s batch. Permit renewal next week, eighteen credits non-negotiable. Electricity this month had jumped to forty-two.

Cristian sat at the small table, writing numbers on the back of an old form. The pencil stub was worn to nothing. He pressed hard to make marks show.

He did the math by habit. The numbers never changed – too many digits for survival, not enough for living.

The pencil point broke.

Gabriel emerged from the bathroom, hair sticking up at odd angles, eyes half-closed. He’d shower exactly seven minutes – Cristian had timed it once. Then the bathroom ritual: toothbrush positioned parallel to the sink edge, towel folded in thirds, comb returned to its exact spot on the shelf. Order imposed on the small space he could control. After breakfast, Gabriel would spend an hour organizing his collection on the windowsill – buttons by color, broken watch parts by size, the cracked compass always centered. Then he’d read the same three books they owned, lips moving silently, fingers tracing words he’d memorized years ago. By afternoon he’d be at the window, watching the street, humming fragments of songs their mother used to sing. The same patterns, every day, predictable as the hum.

“Morning,” Gabriel mumbled.

“Morning.”

Cristian pulled two heels of bread from the cabinet – yesterday’s, hard as wood now – and set them on the counter. He poured water into the pot, struck a match, and set it to boil. The gas flame was pale blue, barely hot enough. Another thing that needed fixing, another expense he couldn’t afford.

Gabriel sat at the small table they’d salvaged from the street three years ago. One of the legs was shorter than the others, so it wobbled whenever you touched it. He propped his elbows on the surface carefully, watching Cristian with that quiet attentiveness he’d had since childhood.

“Did you sleep?” Gabriel asked.

“Enough.”

“The people in the hallway – ”

“Don’t worry about it.”

The water took forever to boil.

Gabriel ate steady, humming between bites. Cristian chewed the crust slow, making it last, and drank metallic water from a chipped cup. Not coffee. Coffee was twelve credits for the smallest bag and lasted three days if he stretched it.

“You’re not eating much,” Gabriel said.

“I ate already.”

“No, you didn’t. I would’ve heard.”

“Earlier. Before you woke up.”

Gabriel’s chewing slowed. “You always say that.”

Gabriel frowned but didn’t push. He never pushed. That was the problem – he believed everything, trusted completely. Cristian collected the plates, rinsed them in cold water, set them in the rack.

“I’ll be back by twenty hundred,” he said. “Don’t open the door for anyone.”

“I know.”

“Even if they say they’re from – ”

“The pattern is always the same. Don’t answer unless it’s you.” Gabriel’s hands tapped the table edge. Three taps, pause, three taps. The pattern was precise, mathematical. It had been the same sequence since childhood – when he felt cornered, when words weren’t enough.

“I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You think it though.”

Cristian pulled on his uniform jacket – gray, threadbare at elbows. “I don’t think that.”

“Then why do you always – ”

“Gabriel.” He forced his voice soft. “I just want you safe. That’s all.”

The tapping stopped. Gabriel looked down. “Okay.”

Cristian picked up his permit card, checked the corner. He slipped it into his breast pocket, felt its weight there like accusation.

“Be good,” he said.

Gabriel didn’t answer. Just went back to his humming, fingers starting the tapping rhythm again.

Cristian paused at the narrow shelf by the door – barely wide enough for keys and permits. Gabriel’s documents sat in a plastic sleeve; edges worn from handling. He pulled them out by reflex, checked the stamps even though nothing had changed since yesterday. Medical exemption, valid through next month. Housing permit, renewable in six weeks. The numbers were already in his head, part of the arithmetic that governed their lives.

He slid the papers back. Gabriel didn’t need to know how often he checked them, how many scenarios he ran through in the dark hours before dawn. What would happen if the medical exemption expires. What would happen if they raise the renewal fee. What would happen if someone looks too closely at Gabriel’s condition and decides he needs “evaluation.”

The hum had been back for hours now. He’d stopped noticing it again. Easier that way.

Cristian closed the door behind him. The hallway smelled of rust and sleep. Forty doors on this level. Gray paint. Number plates. All the same. He passed the door where the checks had stopped last night. The frame looked the same as always. No signs of struggle. No blood on the floor. Whatever compliance meant, it had been quiet.

He took stairs.

* * *

Outside, the city waited in its perpetual twilight.

The streets were half-buried in industrial smog, a thick gray haze that clung to everything and made breathing feel like work. Overhead, the Dome. He’d stopped looking at it years ago – just another ceiling, armadillo plates blotting out whatever sky used to mean. Each segment the size of a city block. Someone had calculated that once. Someone had cared about measurements. The SYSTEM called it protection. A shield against external threats.

The depot squatted like something trying not to be noticed. Fog filled the space between platforms, thick enough to wade through. Cristian showed his permit at the gate – the guard scanned it, waved him through without eye contact. Inside, the mechanical smell hit: diesel, metal shavings, electrical burn. His uniform absorbed it until he couldn’t tell where the depot ended and he began.

Three other drivers clustered near the scheduler’s window, smoking. Martinez, Chen, somebody new. Cristian kept his eyes on the gate, nodded without looking, kept walking. Martinez called something about the hydraulics, or last night, or nothing – Cristian didn’t slow down to parse it.

The train waited on Track 4. Industrial series, sixteen cars, passenger and freight mixed. He’d driven this route too often to remember, the repetition worn smooth like the throttle grip.

He climbed into the cab, pulled the door shut. The space was narrow, just wide enough for the driver’s seat and control panel. Everything worn smooth from hands and bodies: throttle grip polished, seat cushion compressed to nothing, floor scuffed to raw metal. The familiarity should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like slowly disappearing – each day wearing away another piece of himself until only the routine remained. He sat. Checked the panel – fuel gauge, brake pressure, electrical systems all green. Started the pre-departure sequence automatic, hands moving through switches and levers like prayer.

The radio crackled. “Track Four, you’re clear for 0700 departure. Route Sigma-9, standard loop.”

Cristian keyed the mic. “Acknowledged.”

He pulled the throttle. The train shuddered, coupled cars clanging down the line, and slid forward into the tunnel mouth.

* * *

Sigma-9: the same four stops, the same ninety-four minutes, three times per shift with automated announcements echoing through cars.

“Next stop: Millstone Station. Exit right. Mind the gap.”

The tunnel walls slid past – concrete streaked with water stains, occasional maintenance lights throwing yellow pools into darkness. Pipes ran overhead, wrapped in corroded insulation, intersected with trailing wires sprouted like tumors.

The propaganda screens were new. They’d started appearing six months ago, bolted to tunnel walls at regular intervals. He’d stopped reading them after the first week. Now they were just light, cycling colors, something to mark distance by.

Cristian watched the screens blur past and thought about nothing.

The train emerged into Millstone Station – platform lit by buzzing fluorescents that turned skin gray. Passengers boarded. He didn’t look at them. Just waited for the chime, checked the board, pulled the throttle again.

Crossbridge. Industrial Annex. Back to Central.

Repeat.

The days bled into each other. Nothing grew here. Nothing changed.

On the second circuit, Chen’s voice came over the radio. “Track Four, you seeing the inspection reports? Three drivers transferred this month. Makes you wonder.”

Cristian glanced at the radio. Didn’t answer.

“You still alive up there, Four?”

He keyed the mic. “Busy.”

“Yeah. Busy driving in a straight line.” Chen laughed, but it sounded wrong. Tired. “See you at Central.”

The radio went quiet.

* * *

On the third circuit, at Millstone, the train developed a hydraulic issue. Brake pressure dropping slow. Not dangerous yet, but procedure said stop and log it. Cristian radioed the depot, got clearance for a fifteen-minute hold.

He stepped onto the platform.

Millstone was the oldest station, carved back when they’d thought the Dome was temporary. The walls still showed tool marks – pick and drill scars from manual labour. Most stations had been smoothed, refinished, covered with propaganda posters. Millstone just had rock and rust and the steady drip of condensation from somewhere high up.

Cristian lit a cigarette. Cheap brand, harsh. Five credits for a pack of twenty. He’d been rationing them – one per day, sometimes two if the shift ran bad.

At the platform’s far end, maintenance equipment sat abandoned. Old track sections, a broken crane arm, piles of cable spools rotting in the damp. Cristian walked toward it without deciding to. His boots echoed on concrete.

Something moved in the crane arm.

He stopped. Looked up.

A bird. Small, brown, ordinary. It hopped along the crane’s horizontal beam, had something in its beak. Cloth. Stained, frayed – from someone’s discarded shirt probably. It reached a junction where the crane arm met the support pillar, ducked into a gap between metal plates, emerged without the cloth.

Cristian took another drag, watching.

The bird hopped back along the beam, launched itself into the dark, disappeared. It came back again, another scrap of fabric in its beak – steady, tireless, as if repetition itself were defiance.

Building a nest. Here. In this rusted piece of machinery.

He checked his watch. Ten minutes left.

The bird returned with more cloth. It didn’t acknowledge him. Didn’t care about the trains or the passengers or the weight of the Dome pressing down. Just worked, piece by piece, building something small and fragile in the gap between metal and stone.

The train horn blared behind him – automated warning, five minutes to departure. Passengers shuffled toward cars.

He stayed another thirty seconds, watching. The bird made two more trips. Each time it disappeared into the gap between metal plates, emerged empty-beaked, launched itself back into darkness without hesitation.

At the cab door he paused. Looked back.

The nest was barely visible in the gap. Just a shadow, really. A small dark shape that could’ve been anything.

Small and dark and still there.

He climbed into the cab. Pulled the door shut. The throttle was cold under his palm, metal leeching warmth from skin. He checked the board – hydraulic pressure holding steady enough for now. Good enough.

He pulled.

Ghosts Of The Past

The train moved. Millstone station shrank behind, the nest disappearing into machinery darkness. The image stayed. Twig by twig. Scrap by scrap.

The train swallowed distance. Tunnel walls blurred past in their endless repetition – same graffiti, same rust stains, same flickering lights at intervals measured in his bones now.

The nest wouldn’t leave him. Something about the methodical work. The repetition that looked like purpose, building something small against machinery that didn’t want it there. He’d seen that before. Felt it in his own body – hands moving through crop rows, day after day, muscles learning the rhythm until thinking became optional. Survival as ritual.

A ventilation grate passed overhead. Dust spiralled in the beam. Golden for a moment. Then gone.

Dust catches light. Dust—

* * *

Heat. Dust hanging golden in late afternoon air, each particle visible against the sun. His shirt stuck to his back, fabric dark with sweat, shoulders burning where the straps bit in. Sixteen. Maybe seventeen. The crops stretched forever – row after row disappearing into heat shimmer, and his thighs screamed from squatting all day, fingers cramping around stems he’d cut until they bled through the cheap gloves.

The diesel engine coughed in the distance, some foreman shouting in Spanish that blurred into cicada scream. Everyone was standing now, work day done, bodies unfolding slowly, joints cracking, spines announcing themselves.

Kamilio stood two rows over, massive even then, shoulders blocking out the sun, casting shadow across the furrows. His shirt was the same sun-bleached blue they all wore, but on him it pulled tight across shoulders that could’ve held up a roof. He was watching the younger ones, making sure everyone made it up. Big Brother Bear. Someone had called him that months ago and it stuck – that patient protective bulk, positioning himself between smaller things and whatever came next.

“Christ,” Rafael said, appearing at Cristian’s elbow, wiry and grinning despite the exhaustion pulling at all their faces. “I’m so tired I could marry this dirt. Have little dirt babies with it.”

Someone laughed. Esteban laughed, pulling his flask from somewhere, metal catching light. His eyes already had that edge. Restless. Waiting for something to push against.

Adrian didn’t laugh. Never did. He stood apart, scanning the camp perimeter. Watching. Always watching.

“How many more days?” someone asked. Cristian didn’t remember who. One of the others who didn’t make it, whose names dissolved into the static of survival.

“Same as yesterday,” Kamilio said, his voice low and steady, meant to settle rather than answer. “Same as tomorrow.”

“To hell with tomorrow,” Rafael said. He was already moving, bouncing on his toes despite the bone-deep tiredness. “Race you to the fence.”

It was stupid. They were exhausted, muscles shredded, lungs thick with dust. But Rafael was already running, his laugh trailing behind him like a flag, and Esteban cursed and went after him, flask still in hand, and then they were all running—

Cristian’s legs pumped before his mind decided, feet pounding hard-packed dirt between crop rows, exhaustion gone for thirty seconds, maybe forty. The wind hit his face, brief and cooling. They were just bodies in motion, air rushing past, the fence getting closer, Rafael’s whoop cutting through everything.

Kamilio ran beside him, each footfall making the earth shudder slightly, his breathing steady like an engine. Five of them.

They hit the fence and collapsed against it, breath ragged, laughing because they could still breathe, because the work was done, because they were young enough not to know better.

Esteban took a pull from his flask, offered it around. Rafael took the flask, drank, passed it to Cristian. The alcohol burned going down, cheap and harsh, but warming.

Kamilio didn’t drink. He was watching the horizon where the sun was starting its descent, turning everything amber and gold, the kind of light that made you forget how brutal the day had been. His hand came down on Cristian’s shoulder, heavy and grounding.

“You good?” Kamilio asked.

Cristian nodded. He was counting the fence posts visible from where they stood. Thirty-two. Thirty-three.

“You’re always counting,” Kamilio said. Not a question. Not a judgment. Just noticing.

Cristian shrugged under the hand’s weight. Just that numbers stayed still when everything else moved.

Adrian appeared beside them, barely breathing hard despite the run. His eyes were still scanning, tracking movement at the camp’s far edge – guards changing shift, probably. Always cataloguing threats, even then. It just looked like Adrian being careful. Being the one who’d pull you from under a collapsed irrigation tower, who’d know which way to run before the foreman started shouting.

“They’re cutting rations again next week,” Adrian said. Not loud. Just stating fact.

The laughter didn’t stop but it changed. Esteban drank longer. Rafael’s next joke landed different.

The sun kept descending. The cicadas kept screaming. The dust settled slowly, catching the golden light. Everything looked softer than it was. Easier. Almost good.

They walked back together as darkness came. Kamilio walked slightly ahead, creating path. Rafael kept talking. Adrian watched their backs. Esteban finished his flask. Cristian counted their footsteps – five sets of boots on hard dirt, each step slightly out of sync but close enough.

For that moment, walking through dust and dying light, they were everything.

* * *

The train lurched. Cristian’s hands gripped the throttle, knuckles white, and he was back. Gray tunnel walls. Flickering lights. The 60Hz hum drilling into his skull. The mechanical rhythm that replaced heartbeat.

The platform lights illuminated faces pressed against windows behind him. Passengers waiting to board. Tired faces. Hungry faces. More corroded. The Dome had done its work – turned skin gray, eyes hollow, shoulders permanently hunched against weight that never lifted.

The rest of the shift passed in that same fog. Stations came and went. His hands moved the throttle without consulting him.

The shift ended at 1900 hours. He logged the train at depot, mechanically perfect, gave the nod to the next driver who wouldn’t meet his eyes. No one looked at each other. Hadn’t for years. Seeing creates connection. Connection creates leverage. Better to stay invisible.

The walk home took thirty minutes. His building: gray concrete, seven floors, water-stained walls. The elevator was broken. Always was.

He climbed. His boots echoed in the stairwell.

Third floor: door cracked open, someone watching through the gap. The door closed when he passed. Chain lock rattling. Everyone watches. Everyone reports. The SYSTEM doesn’t need cameras everywhere when neighbours do it for free, for safety, for the illusion of control.

Cristian stood at his door and didn’t move.

Ghosts Of The Present

The message had come three days ago – a slip of paper under his door, Kamilio’s handwriting barely legible: “Come for dinner. Saturday. Please.” The ‘please’ had been underlined twice. Kamilio never begged. That alone had been enough to make Cristian agree, though he’d spent three days regretting it, calculating the cost of bringing Gabriel, of being absent from their apartment for hours, of entering someone else’s space with all its unpredictable demands.

He’d avoided them for months. Easier that way. Seeing Kamilio meant remembering who they’d been – five kids running through dust, believing in tomorrow. It meant confronting who they’d become: exhausted, diminished, counting credits instead of dreams. But the ‘please’ had worked. Or maybe he was just tired of saying no to the few people who still asked.

The apartment smelled of beans and steam. Kamilio had cooked. That was unusual. The warmth of the room felt artificial, a performance of domesticity that itched under his skin. He stood in the doorway a moment too long, an intruder in this museum of normal life, before forcing himself to step inside. The walk from Cristian’s building had been tense and silent, Gabriel trailing a half-step behind. Now, inside, Cristian counted the portions as they were served. Small. Stretched thin. Four people, barely enough food for three. Gabriel sat silently at the corner of the table, arranging his fork perpendicular to his knife, adjusting until the angle was exactly right.

Kamilio’s shoulder pat landed heavy, familiar. “Been too long, hermano.”

Three months since his last visit. Cristian didn’t say it. Nodded instead, accepted the plate. The beans were overcooked, the bread yesterday’s – maybe the day before. He calculated the cost anyway. Habit. Eight credits, maybe nine.

The apartment was bigger than his. Three rooms instead of two. Cleaner walls. Organized corners. Files stacked on every surface – kitchen counter, windowsill, couch arm. SYSTEM forms. Permits. Processing documents. Kamilio’s work followed him home. Between the stacks, on a shelf near the window – baby clothes. Folded. Never worn. Still perfect.

Maria caught him looking. Turned away. Poured tea from a pot that rattled against the cups.

“You’re working too much,” Kamilio said, not looking at his own files. “I see the schedule postings. Six days now?”

“Seven sometimes.”

“Mierda, Cristian.”

They ate quietly. Forks scraping plates.

The propaganda screen flickered in the corner, muted. SYSTEM policy was that every administrative worker received one, maintenance included in the housing tax. Maria had kept it on but silent – easier than explaining why she’d turned it off if someone checked. Cristian watched her face reflected between broadcasts. Tired. She was thirty-something. Looked fifty in this light.

The screen brightened. Rafael’s face filled it.

Cristian’s hand stopped halfway to his mouth.

The colors were too bright, oversaturated like they’d been designed by someone who’d forgotten what real colors looked like. Rafael wore face paint – red nose, exaggerated smile that stretched too wide, white makeup around his eyes making them look enormous and desperate. He was juggling in front of children who clapped at exactly the same moment, their hands meeting in perfect unison like synchronized automatons. The real Rafael – the one who’d run through dust clouds laughing, who’d made jokes to fill silence – was gone. This was a shell. A puppet moving through rehearsed motions while text crawled beneath: Rafael Mendoza Live – Educational Entertainment – Sector 7 Youth Development Center – Unity for Security.

“He’s doing well,” Kamilio said quietly, but his voice was wrong. Hollow. The same tone he used when filing paperwork, he knew would go nowhere.

The juggling balls rose and fell in perfect arcs. Rafael’s mouth moved in silence, the muted screen swallowing whatever joke he was telling. His eyes were the worst part – looking directly at the camera but not seeing anything. Not the children, not the studio, not whatever life he’d lived before they’d turned him into content.

“Children’s programming now,” Kamilio continued. “Comedy shows on weekends. He sends letters sometimes. Always cheerful. Always funny. Always…” He trailed off.

“Always performing,” Cristian finished.

Maria’s teacup rattled in her hands. She set it down too hard, liquid sloshing over the rim. “He used to be real.”

The past tense hung in the air. Rafael was still alive, still visible, still broadcasting three times a week to every district under the Dome. But the person who’d existed before – the one who’d told jokes to mask despair, who’d written letters mixing humor and bleakness, who’d said “If I stop making noise, I start thinking about tomorrow” – that Rafael was gone. The SYSTEM had taken him and given back this: painted smile, rehearsed movements, perfect emptiness.

Gabriel finished first, asked for seconds. Maria served him the rest of her portion. Cristian said nothing.

Kamilio caught his look. Changed the subject. “How many in your building now?” Kamilio asked, not looking at Cristian. The question sounded casual but wasn’t.

“How many what?”

“Children. Babies.”

Cristian thought about it. Their floor: none. The floor below: one, maybe two. The whole building? “Six. Maybe seven.”

“Used to be more.”

“People leave.”

“No,” Kamilio said, still not looking. “People don’t leave. They just stop… arriving.” His hand moved unconsciously to his stomach, then stopped. “I had a medical screening eight years ago. Routine, they said. Everyone in the administrative sector got one. Free. Mandatory.” His voice was flat, reciting facts.

Maria stood, began clearing plates that weren’t empty yet. Her hands shook.

“So many couples without children now,” Kamilio continued. “Strange, isn’t it? Ten years ago, this building was loud. Crying, playing. Now it’s just… quiet.”

The hum filled the silence. Always there. Always watching.

“You’ll stay for tea?”

“Gabriel has classes tomorrow.”

“It’s Saturday.”

Cristian had lost track. Days blurred. Train shifts, sleep, Gabriel’s routines, repeat. “Sorry. I thought – ”

“Stay,” Maria said. Not quite a question.

So, they stayed. Kamilio talked about work – processing delays, new permit requirements, quotas that made no sense. He didn’t explain what he processed, what the files stacked around them actually contained. His hands moved when he talked, the old animation surfacing briefly before exhaustion drowned it. He’d been broad-shouldered as a teenager, the one who’d lift them over fences, carry water buckets when the younger kids tired. Now the shoulders curved inward, bureaucracy bowing him slowly.

“You should come for dinner next week,” Maria said. “A real dinner. I’ll make – » She stopped. Recalculated. “Something good.”

Cristian counted the cost of something good. Whatever it was, they couldn’t afford it. And if they came to his place – Gabriel would need warning, preparation. He’d need to buy actual food. Enough for four. He couldn’t.

“I’ll try,” he said.

Maria nodded. Turned back to the dishes. She knew what I’ll try meant. If they came to his place instead – he’d need to buy real food. Enough for four. He had nine credits left this week.

Gabriel had found a drawer of trinkets – old buttons, broken watch parts, a compass without its glass. He arranged them in rows on the floor, humming. Kamilio watched him with an expression Cristian recognized but couldn’t name. Something between tenderness and grief.

“He’s good,” Kamilio said. “You take good care of him.”

“He takes care of himself mostly.”

“Still.” The shoulder pat again, heavier this time. “You’re doing it right. Being there. That’s what matters.”

Cristian looked at the baby clothes, thought of the credits he counted, the meals he skipped, the nights Gabriel asked questions he couldn’t answer. Being there wasn’t enough. Being there was barely anything. But Kamilio’s face held something that looked like envy, like watching through glass at a life he couldn’t access.

“We should go,” Cristian said.

Maria walked them to the door. Didn’t argue. Kamilio’s hand landed on Cristian’s shoulder one more time.

They left before the tea was finished.

* * *

The streets were darker now. Patrols had increased. More checkpoints. Earlier curfews. The border wasn’t just at the city’s edge anymore – it was metastasizing inward, checkpoint by checkpoint, restriction by restriction, until every street would require a permit, every door a password.

Two officers stood at the corner checking IDs. Bored. Efficient. Radio crackled in the distance. Cristian caught fragments: "…new quotas from central administration…” "…clan activity sector seven…” Cristian heard only static and steered Gabriel in the other direction. Longer route, but less scrutiny.

Propaganda screens lit their path. Factory workers. Children.

Gabriel stopped.

The poster – printed on actual paper, pasted to a transit shelter wall. Rafael mid-performance, microphone in hand, face caught in exaggerated surprise. The text read: Rafael Mendoza – Comedy For All Ages – Fridays 8Pm – Sector 7 Community Center – Free Admission (Ration Card Required).

“He’s funny looking,” Gabriel said.

“It’s makeup.”

“Why?”

“For the show.”

Gabriel stared longer. Cristian waited. Cold seeped through his coat – the patched one, third winter now, threads holding but barely.

“Do you know him?” Gabriel asked.

The question was simple. The answer wasn’t.

“We worked together,” Cristian said. “Long time ago.”

Gabriel nodded, satisfied, turned away from the poster. They walked. Cristian looked back once. Rafael’s face beamed at nothing. Permanent. Bright. Too bright for real smiling. The paint around his mouth was too thick. It cracked at the edges – small fractures in the smile.

A patrol vehicle passed. They pressed against the wall, waited for it to turn the corner. The sirens were distant but constant now, a nightly texture. The city’s soundtrack: hum and sirens and propaganda and the grinding of trains beneath everything.

Gabriel walked closer to Cristian. Didn’t take his hand – too old for that now – but stayed within arm’s reach.

They kept walking. Six more blocks. Gabriel’s breath was visible in the cold. The sirens never stopped.

Old Loyalty

The screens were everywhere now. They multiplied like mold.

Smiling children filled the display – too many teeth, too clean. They were walking home from Kamilio’s. Six blocks. Gabriel had already asked twice if they could stop. A woman in white held a baby like it was made of glass, like it mattered.

“Why are they so happy?” Gabriel asked.

Cristian didn’t answer. The hum underneath the broadcast made his jaw ache.

Gabriel stopped at the corner screen, the largest one. His reflection ghosted across the surface, superimposed over the propaganda. The real Gabriel – patched jacket, unwashed hair, face thinner than it should be – overlaying the false children with their round cheeks and bright eyes.

“It’s just noise, Gabe.”

“But they look – ”

“It’s just noise.”

He tugged his brother’s sleeve. Gabriel followed but kept glancing back, drawn to the colors the way he was drawn to anything bright in this gray place.

“Kamilio and Maria are sad.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Gabriel knew sadness when he saw it. Couldn’t understand why.

“They want something they can’t have,” Cristian said.

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Gabriel accepted this. Turned toward the apartment entrance. Stopped again. “Are we sad too?”

The propaganda screen across the street shifted to new content. Factory production statistics. Smiling workers. Cristian felt the weight of Kamilio’s shoulder pat still, the shape of Rafael’s fractured smile burned into his vision, the baby clothes folded on their shelf like origami birds that would never fly.

“Yes,” he said.

The building’s entrance smelled like rust and old cigarettes. Someone’s door was open on the second floor – voices drifted out, urgent and low. Cristian kept Gabriel moving, didn’t look. Knowing things was dangerous. The less you saw, the safer you were.

Their floor was quiet. Too quiet. Cristian’s hand found the key in his pocket before he realized something was wrong. The silence felt deliberate. Wrong.

Adrian leaned against their door.

For a moment Cristian thought he was hallucinating. Stress did that sometimes – produced figures that weren’t there. But Adrian shifted, the motion too real, too specific. He was thinner than Cristian remembered. Harder.

“Inside,” Adrian said. Not a greeting. A command.

Cristian’s hand was already turning the key. Old reflexes. When Adrian says move, you move. It had been true since they were fourteen and Adrian pulled him from under a collapsed irrigation tower, his voice sharp and certain: Don’t stop. If you stop, you’re done.

The apartment’s darkness felt safer than the hallway. Gabriel went immediately to his corner, to his collection of trinkets arranged on the windowsill. He’d always known when to disappear.

Adrian didn’t sit. He paced the small room in three steps, turned, paced back. His breathing wasn’t right – too controlled, like he was manually regulating something that should be automatic. And his hands: the right one stayed near his jacket pocket, but the left kept flexing, opening and closing around nothing. Cristian had seen it before, years ago, right after Adrian came back from deployment. The phantom weapon grip. Reaching for a gun that wasn’t there, muscle memory searching for steel and finding only air. It had stopped eventually – or Cristian had thought it stopped. Now it was back, worse than before, the hand opening and closing in rhythms that matched nothing except whatever combat scenario was playing behind his eyes.

Adrian’s operating mode hadn’t changed – just intensified. Concentrated. Cristian could feel it from across the room – that readiness, like static before lightning.

“You still working the same route?” Adrian asked.

“Yes.”

“Same shift times?”

“Yes.”

Adrian nodded. His boots were good – too good for this district. Military issue or close to it. Cristian didn’t ask where he got them.

“I need you to come somewhere tonight.”

The dread hit immediately, familiar as hunger. Social interaction felt like lifting weight he didn’t have strength for. The thought of leaving the apartment, of navigating noise and people and unpredictability—

“Can’t,” Cristian said.

“Yes, you can.”

“I have a shift – ”

“Not until tomorrow. I checked.”

Of course he checked. Adrian always knew more than he should, always planned ahead. It was how he survived when others didn’t. Cristian felt the old dynamic reasserting itself – Adrian pushing, Cristian yielding, the worn groove of their friendship still there under years of absence.

“Where?” Cristian asked, and knew he’d already agreed.

“A club. Downtown. Won’t take long.”

“What club?”

“You’ll see when we get there.” Adrian stopped pacing, looked at him directly for the first time. His eyes were wrong. Too alert. Too fast. Like he’s seeing threats that aren’t there or seeing ones Cristian can’t. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

Important to who, Cristian wanted to ask, but didn’t. Important to Adrian was reason enough, apparently. Had always been reason enough, even now, even after years of nothing, no contact, no letters like Rafael sent. Adrian just appeared, made demands, and Cristian followed because something in him still remembered being fifteen and helpless and protected.

“When?” he asked instead.

“Two hours. I’ll come back.”

Adrian was already at the door. He paused there, hand on the knob, scanning the hallway through the crack. Checking. Always checking. Whatever happened to him in the war – it didn’t end when the fighting stopped.

“Adrian.”

He turned back.

“What is this about?”

Adrian’s mouth moved. Not quite a smile.

“Old times.”

Then he was gone, boots quick on the stairs. Cristian stood in the doorway listening to him descend, the sound fading into the building’s permanent background noise – pipes groaning, someone’s television through thin walls, the hum.

Gabriel appeared beside him. “He’s different.”

“Everyone’s different.”

“Not like that.” Gabriel rocked slightly, a motion that meant he was processing, trying to fit new information into patterns he understood. “He feels like before the loud noises.”

Before the war, he meant. Gabriel didn’t say war. Called it loud noises, like it was just sound, just temporary volume. Cristian never corrected him.

“He’ll be fine,” Cristian said, and didn’t believe it.

Cristian watched the clock. Didn’t register the minutes passing, but suddenly it had been an hour. Then another. Cristian tried to rest but his mind wouldn’t settle. How did Adrian know he’d be home? How did he even know where Cristian lived now? Calculations ran automatically: if he was out late, he’d need extra sleep tomorrow. He needed to be at the office for permit renewal on time.

He should refuse. Should stay here where it was safe and predictable and small.

But Adrian asked.

Gabriel made tea without being asked, set the cup beside Cristian’s chair. The liquid was too hot, bitter from reused leaves, but Cristian drank it anyway. Counted the credits it cost. Added them to the running total that lived behind his eyes. Never enough. Never would be.

The propaganda screen on the corner was still visible through their window, its glow painting the fog-thick street in sickly blue. A man in worker’s coveralls, clean and proud, operating machinery. Text scrolled beneath: Unity For Security. For The Children’s Future.

Gabriel watched it, face pressed to the glass.

“They’re lying,” Cristian said.

“How do you know?”

“Because no one’s that happy here.”

Gabriel considered this. His breath fogged the window. “Maybe somewhere they are.”

“Not anywhere we can go.”

“How do you know?”

Cristian didn’t answer. Because the borders were closed. Permits cost more than he’d earn in five years. The world beyond the Dome was contaminated – the SYSTEM said so. Diseases. Clans. Collapsed infrastructure. And the SYSTEM controlled everything. Trains. Wages. Propaganda. Permits. The air itself.

He’d counted every possible path. They all ended here. In this gray place, in this small room, until Gabriel or he died and the other one followed soon after.

The knock came exactly two hours later. Cristian rose, pulled on his better jacket – still patched, still worn, but cleaner. Gabriel was already at the door, holding it open.

Adrian stood in the hallway, that same restless energy. He nodded to Gabriel. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Gabriel rocked on his heels. “Are you taking Cristian somewhere dangerous?”

“No.”

“He’s lying,” Gabriel said to Cristian. Not upset. Just factual.

Adrian’s face did something complicated. Almost a smile. Almost regret. “Yeah. Sorry, kid.”

“Be safe,” Gabriel said. To both of them but looking at Cristian. Gabriel’s eyes were doing that thing – focusing intently on Cristian’s face, reading micro-expressions the way he couldn’t read social cues.

“You’re scared,” he said. Not a question. An observation.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re scared of him.” Gabriel glanced at Adrian, then back. “But you’re going anyway. Because he’s old friend. Like Kamilio.”

“Something like that.”

“Old friends make you do things you don’t want to do.”

Cristian couldn’t argue with that. Gabriel had a way of cutting through complexity, reducing everything to its simplest truth. Old friends were obligations. Obligations were debts. Debts got paid even when you couldn’t afford them.

“I’ll be back before morning,” Cristian said.

Gabriel nodded, already turning back toward his trinkets, arranging them in patterns only he understood. He’d learned not to ask when Cristian would return. Learned that promises about time were unreliable, that adults disappeared and sometimes came back changed. He wouldn’t stop Cristian from leaving, but he’d remember. Store this absence with all the others, adding it to the arithmetic of abandonment that governed his world.

Then Cristian was in the hallway and the door was closing and Gabriel was a silhouette against the apartment’s dim light, small and vulnerable and alone.

“Be safe!” The call followed them down the stairs, echoing in the concrete shaft.

Adrian didn’t acknowledge it. Already moving, already three steps ahead, his boots hitting the stairs in a rhythm that felt military, practiced. Cristian matched the pace automatically, his own steps falling into sync.

The building’s entrance opened onto night streets. The fog was thicker now, streetlights glowed like drowned moons. Somewhere distant, a siren rose and fell. The propaganda screens cast their blue light into the murk, creating halos that revealed nothing.

Adrian moved fast, purposeful. He knew where he was going. Had walked this route before, probably multiple times, memorizing it the way he memorized everything – exits, angles, threat vectors. Cristian followed, already regretting this, already unable to turn back.

Old loyalty is stronger than reason. Stronger than self-preservation. It’s a bond forged when they were children, when protection mattered more than survival, when Adrian’s certainty was the only solid thing in a collapsing world.

Adrian glanced back once, checking that Cristian was still there. Their eyes met. Something passed between them. Recognition maybe. Or warning. Then Adrian turned forward again, and they were moving deeper into the city’s dark heart, toward whatever Adrian wouldn’t name, toward noise and people and danger that Cristian could feel approaching like weather, inevitable and vast.

Insurance

Adrian talked while walking. The fog swallowed his words before they reached far.

“Getting married,” he said. Casual. Like stating a train schedule. “Two weeks. You’re Best Man.”

Cristian’s stomach dropped. Not a question. Never was with Adrian.

“I – ”

“Don’t.” Adrian’s pace didn’t slow. “You’ll say you’re not good at that shit. You’ll say Kamilio’s better. You’ll say something about Gabriel needing you.” He glanced sideways, face half-shadow. “But you’re doing it. Lilia wants the five of us there. What’s left, anyway.”

Five. Rafael. Kamilio. Esteban. Them. Scattered across the city, across years. The wedding would gather them into one space, all that history compressed. The thought made Cristian’s chest tight.

“When did you – ”

“Two years dating. You’d know if we’d stayed in touch.” Adrian pulled a flask from his jacket, drank without breaking stride. The smell cut through the fog – something cheap, burning. “Lilia works archives. SYSTEM records. Keeps her head down. Good at that.”

Cristian’s boots scraped concrete. Counting steps. Anything to ground himself. Forty-three. Forty-four. Adrian was asking him to stand witness to hope, to futures, to vows about permanence. Him. Wrong person. He was barely keeping himself standing.

“Okay,” he said instead.

Adrian stopped. Turned. Eyes narrowed, searching Cristian’s face for the lie. Finding something worse – resignation.

“Okay,” Adrian repeated. Flat. Then something shifted. He gripped Cristian’s shoulder, too tight. “Don’t stop. If you stop, you’re done. You remember?”

Cristian nodded. Old phrase. Adrian used it in the camps when the heat made you want to collapse mid-row. Don’t stop. Simple arithmetic. Motion equals survival.

“I remember.”

Adrian released him. Drank again. They walked.

The streets narrowed. Fewer lights. Propaganda screens here flickered, half-broken, the smiling children’s faces distorted by static. The hum deepened – they were descending. Cristian recognized nothing. Not his route to the depot. Not Kamilio’s neighbourhood. Somewhere else entirely. Adrian navigated by instinct, turning at unmarked corners, past buildings that looked abandoned but weren’t – Cristian saw movement behind broken windows, the orange glow of barrel fires.

“Here,” Adrian said.

The door was metal, rust-streaked, no sign. Could be storage. Could be nothing. Adrian knocked – pattern, not random. Three fast, pause, two slow. Waited.

A slot opened at eye level. Someone looked through. Said nothing.

“Tributary,” Adrian said.

The slot closed. Locks tumbled. The door opened inward, and a man blocked the threshold – broad, scarred, holding the door like it was part of him. He looked Adrian up and down. Looked at Cristian longer.

“Five minutes,” the man said. “Clock starts when you sit. Anyone stays longer, we clear the room. Understand?”

Adrian nodded. Cristian followed him inside.

The air changed. Warmth first – bodies, burning candles, something cooking somewhere deep. Then smoke. Cigarettes, something sweeter underneath. The corridor was narrow, low-ceilinged. Bulbs strung overhead, mismatched, casting everything in amber. Voices ahead, music bleeding through walls.

They emerged into the main room.

It was larger than the entrance suggested. Tables scattered, most occupied. People leaned close, talking in hushed urgency. No one looked up when they entered. Everyone here knew not to. The bar ran along one wall, bottles backlit by red neon. A small stage occupied the far corner, barely raised, draped in fabric that might’ve been elegant once. On it, a woman sang.

She wore red. Only color in the room that didn’t look faded. The dress clung, moved with her like water. Her face stayed shadowed despite the spotlight – angle, or intent. She held the microphone like she was steadying herself against a wind only she felt. The song was slow, mournful. Trumpet somewhere, muted, following her voice’s curves. Her eyes were closed.

Adrian stopped moving. Stared.

Cristian watched him watch her. Adrian’s jaw worked, tension coiling through his shoulders. His hand drifted to his jacket – not the flask. Something else. Then dropped.

“Here,” Adrian muttered. They wove between tables. Found one near the wall, good view of the stage and both exits. Adrian sat facing the door. Old habit. Cristian took the other chair, back exposed, trusting Adrian’s sight lines more than his own.

A server appeared – thin woman, tired eyes, apron stained. “Drinking?”

“Whiskey,” Adrian said. “Two.”

She vanished. Cristian didn’t correct him. The song continued. The woman’s voice caught on a note, held it, released. Something in Cristian’s chest responded, unwanted. He looked away. Counted tables. Fourteen occupied. Maybe forty people total. Everyone tense. Conversations stopped and started. Hands gripped glasses too tight.

The server returned. Two glasses, amber liquid, no ice. Adrian paid in credits, exact amount. She took them and moved on.

Adrian drank half in one swallow. Didn’t react. His eyes tracked the woman in red, who’d opened hers now, scanning the crowd while singing. She didn’t meet his gaze. Deliberate avoidance, or hadn’t seen him yet.

“You lied,” Cristian said. Quiet.

Adrian’s attention snapped back. “What?”

“We’re not here for the wedding talk.”

Adrian’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. “Observant.” Like it was a compliment. Like noticing things ever helped anyone. He drank the rest. Set the glass down with care. “Needed you here. Insurance.”

“Against what?”

“In case I’m wrong about her.”

Cristian followed Adrian’s gaze back to the stage. The woman in red finished the song. Scant applause – people didn’t want to draw attention. She nodded, stepped back into shadow. The trumpet player took over, instrumental now, filling the silence she left.

“Who is she?” Cristian asked.

“Singer,” Adrian said. Useless answer. Then, after a pause: “Contact. Maybe. If she knows what I think she knows.”

Cristian waited. Adrian didn’t elaborate. Instead, he pulled out the flask again, refilled his glass. The server pretended not to notice. Around them, conversations continued in tight clusters. Cristian heard fragments – permits, checkpoints, someone’s brother transferred. No one said where. Everyone knew.

The five-minute rule made sense now. Raids couldn’t process forty people in five minutes. By the time SYSTEM broke the door, the room was empty, scattered through whatever exits Cristian hadn’t spotted yet. The whole place was engineered for dissolution.

The woman in red moved through the crowd. Not toward the bar – toward tables. She stopped at one, leaned close, listened to something a man said. Nodded. Moved on. Working the room. Her perfume reached Cristian before she did – sharp, floral, cutting through the smoke. She was three tables away now. Two.

Adrian sat straighter. His hand went to his jacket again, stayed there.

She stopped at their table. Up close, her face was angular, striking. Makeup darker than necessary, or lighting was playing tricks. Her eyes were gray, flat, measuring. She looked at Adrian. Then Cristian. Back to Adrian.

“You’re the one who sent the message,” she said. Not a question. Her voice carried the song’s smoke even speaking.

“You read it?” Adrian asked.

“I’m here.” She didn’t sit. “You have thirty seconds.”

Adrian leaned forward. Kept his voice low. “The package. You know where they’re holding it?”

Her expression didn’t change. “Packages move. Locations change.”

“This one doesn’t move. Factory Medical Processing. Intake log, three days ago.”

Something flickered across her face. Fast. Gone. “You’re asking about someone specific.”

“Woman,” Adrian said. “Early thirties. Dark hair. Picked up near the market.”

Cristian’s pulse quickened. He didn’t know this part. Hadn’t known Adrian was looking for anyone.

The woman in red tilted her head. “Why?”

“She has information. About the – » Adrian stopped. Glanced around. Lowered his voice further. “About the routes. Southern border. I need to talk to her.”

The woman in red studied him. Long moment. Music filled the space between them, trumpet winding through something that might be grief.

“Even if I knew,” she said finally, “Medical Processing doesn’t allow visitors. You know that.”

“I know people who know people.”

“Not anymore, you don’t.” She straightened, didn’t look at Adrian, eyes fixed on her drink. “Your network’s quiet because the Red Clan has new friends in gray uniforms. Business is booming – for them. Border guards taking snatches, patrol routes mysteriously clear. SYSTEM doesn’t crack down on chaos it can control.” She finally looked at him, her gaze sharp and clear. “You understand? They’re not enemies anymore.”

Adrian’s jaw clenched. “Can you help or not?”

She looked at Cristian again. “Who’s he?”

“Insurance,” Adrian said. Using Cristian’s word. “Case something happens.”

“Something like what?”

Adrian didn’t answer. The woman in red’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. She reached into her dress, pulled out a small card – plain, white. Set it on the table between them. “Memorize the number,” she said. “Then burn it. Call tomorrow, dawn. Someone will answer or they won’t.” She turned to leave.

“Wait,” Adrian said. “Your name – ”

“Mar – Doesn’t matter.” She was already moving, red dress slicing through the smoke. Disappeared behind the bar, through a door Cristian hadn’t noticed.

Adrian grabbed the card. Flipped it. There was a number, handwritten, faint. He stared at it, lips moving, committing it to memory. Then he pulled out a lighter, touched flame to the corner.

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