William didn't sleep, rather he couldn't.
He lied on his bed, for hours on end - staring onto the endless darkness that consumed his walls. The pipes inside the wall hissed as pressure shifted throughout the station, in accordance with a sharp rattle of loose metal shrieking across the vents. Normally these sounds would blend into everyday life, but tonight each sound raged in his ears.
Maria slept beside him, her breaths slow and shallow. William had never noticed how much noise a sleeping person made until now. He had spent years sleeping beside this woman without ever hearing any of it. Now every beat seemed to press directly against his ears.
He turned his head toward her.
William couldn't help but wonder how it is he never heard this, normally it would've ended with just this thought - instead, another followed.
It is only because I am listening now.
To him, that explanation seemed reasonable. The Azo had heightened his senses. That didn't necessarily mean anything was wrong. There were stories of people becoming more perceptive after exposure, particularly those who possessed strain-responsive flesh. Perhaps the substance had simply accelerated something in his body that was already there.
His eyes remained fixed on the dark hallway while his mind wandered through the strange conclusion he had reached. Everything is rhythm. He didn't know where the thought had come from, or why it felt so convincing. The heartbeat beneath Crowe's ribs, the pressure moving through the station, the Spine travelling beneath the world, the air entering his lungs; they were all separate things, obviously, and yet William's mind kept finding similarities between them.
His brain had been through too much. The Azo had heightened his senses, made him more aware of patterns that had always existed around him, and now he was naturally searching for relationships between them. There was nothing supernatural about that. People made connections all the time.
"That's all it is," he whispered.
William looked down at Crowe.
He reached down and gently placed a hand on Crowe's shoulder. His son didn't wake.
William watched him for a while. Crowe had grown thinner over the last year, though he tried not to show it. His cheeks had lost some of their roundness, and the collar of his shirt sat too loosely around his neck. William remembered when he used to carry him everywhere, when Crowe was small enough to fall asleep against his chest after the Spine passed and the apartment became temporarily warm. That memory felt strangely vivid now, almost as though it had happened yesterday. William could remember the exact weight of him, the smell of his hair, even the way his tiny fingers used to curl around one of William's.
William slowly withdrew his hand and looked toward the dark hallway. The apartment was silent except for the breathing of his family and the endless machinery beyond the walls. He found himself listening to each rhythm separately now, almost without intending to. Maria's breathing was slower than Crowe's, while Archie's had an irregularity to it that became more obvious whenever he shifted in his sleep. William noticed the small differences between them and, for some reason, found himself wondering what caused them. Why did Crowe breathe that way? Why was Archie's rhythm less consistent? Why did Maria's breathing change when she slept more deeply? The questions were harmless, and William knew that. He had always been someone who wanted to understand how things worked, whether it was a damaged valve, a broken vent, or the machinery used during extraction. His mind naturally looked for causes whenever something behaved differently.
He told himself that was all this was.
Curiosity.
William stood and quietly made his way into the kitchen, careful not to wake anyone. His regenerated leg still felt foreign beneath him. He had spent so long compensating for the missing limb that his body seemed almost uncertain what to do with the weight it now possessed. Yet every movement corrected itself before he could consciously think about it. His ankle adjusted to the uneven floor, his knee shifted when he turned, and his balance returned almost instinctively. There was something unnerving about how natural it felt. Eleven years without the limb, and his body already knew exactly how to use it.
He stopped beside the old refrigeration unit where they kept their remaining FleshFood. The machine hummed faintly beneath the table, vibrating through the metal casing. William rested his palm against it and felt the sensation travel into his hand. The vibration was steady, almost rhythmic, and he immediately remembered the sensation of the Spine moving beneath the station. They weren't the same, of course. The refrigeration unit was simply a machine, while the Spine was some enormous structure that travelled through the planet. Still, the similarity caught his attention.
The thought formed before he could stop it.
Everything is rhythm.
William frowned.
It was an odd thing to think.
He removed his hand from the machine, but the idea remained. His heartbeat had a rhythm. The station had rhythms. The Spine moved according to a rhythm so precise that an entire civilization had learned to measure time by it. His breathing followed one pattern while Maria's followed another. Even the movement of pressure through the walls seemed to have its own cadence.
William shook his head.
He was doing it again.
Finding connections where there didn't need to be any.
The Azo had heightened his senses, nothing more. His mind was simply attempting to process information it had previously ignored. That explanation made sense, and because it made sene, William allowed himself to believe it.
He turned toward the bathroom.
The mirror was cracked down the center, dividing his reflection into two slightly distorted halves. William lifted his shirt and examined himself beneath the pale light. The dark veins were still there, spreading upward from his regenerated leg and branching across his abdomen before disappearing beneath his ribs. They weren't glowing now, but they were more noticeable than they had been the previous night. William placed two fingers against one of them.
For a few seconds, nothing happened.
Then it pulsed beneath his touch.
William froze.
He watched the vein carefully and waited for another movement. His heart was beating normally; he could feel it clearly beneath his chest. This was different. The pulse came again several seconds later, slower and deeper than his heartbeat.
William pulled his fingers away.
He stared at himself.
The first explanation that entered his mind was simple enough. The dealer had said the Azo would accelerate regeneration. New tissue meant new blood vessels, new nerves, new muscle. Of course the process might be irregular. His body had been rebuilt in an impossibly short amount of time. There was no reason to expect everything to behave normally immediately afterward.
William repeated that reasoning in his head.
Then again.
The second time, it sounded more convincing.
He lowered his shirt and left the bathroom.