Emily stood by the doorway of their shared room, holding a torn cardboard box filled with the last twelve years of her life — a few second-hand books, two cracked beakers, a soldering iron she wasn't supposed to keep, and a faded photo of her and Noah when they were nine, grinning with gap-toothed rebellion.
Across the room, Noah kicked the leg of the creaky bed frame. It didn't squeak — like it knew this was the last time.
"Eighteen. That's the magic number, huh?"
His voice tried to sound nonchalant. It missed.
Emily didn't answer right away. Her eyes were on the dusty window. Outside, the clouds looked like old gauze bandages — grey, sagging, like they'd seen too much.
"We're not kids anymore," she said.
"We haven't been kids in a long time," Noah replied.
The orphanage wasn't cruel. It was just indifferent — polite smiles, donated meals, overworked staff who couldn't afford to dream anymore. The kind of place that raised survivors, not believers.
Their time was up.
The head caretaker, Ms. Lovelace, had said it gently — "You'll do just fine out there. You two always had something... different."
She meant smart. She meant weird. She meant someone else's problem now.
They stood outside the gates a little after noon, the boxes resting by their feet. Emily's suitcase had a missing wheel, and Noah carried his tech junk in a backpack that had one strap held by duct tape.
They had ₿83.75 between them — Noah kept a spreadsheet.
"This city charges rent for air," he muttered, scanning his cracked phone.
"We'll breathe less, then."
"Bold plan, Einstein."
Their laughter came out thinner than it used to. But it was still laughter.
By evening, they found it — a narrow room above a convenience store that smelled like onions and wet mop. One window, no curtains. The ceiling fan ticked like a countdown bomb.
Noah threw his stuff in a pile by the corner. Emily found a nail in the wall and hung the photo — the one of them at nine, grinning like they had a future carved out already.
"This is home," she said.
"For now," he replied.
They sat cross-legged on the cold floor, a shared can of peaches between them. Neither of them said it, but both were waiting — waiting for the email, the call, the something that would tell them they were more than just two orphans trying to outsmart reality.
Outside, the city buzzed on — neon signs flickering like dying stars. And in the quiet, Emily whispered:
"Promise me we won't break."
"I'll promise," Noah said. "But we might bend a little."
....
The third day in the apartment, Emily woke to the smell of burnt toast and existential dread.
Noah had found a cheap toaster on the sidewalk. "Only shocks you a little," he said proudly, as if that made it a good investment.
She shuffled to the kitchenette — if it could be called that — and found him trying to salvage a slice of charcoal with a butter knife.
"Breakfast, chef-style," he said.
"What's the flavor?"
"Poverty. With a hint of irony."
They ate in silence, legs brushing under the cramped table. Outside, the city coughed its morning fog into the sky.
Emily checked her email out of habit. Mostly spam. But then — a subject line caught her.
"INTERVIEW INVITATION — ASTRA RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP"
She blinked.
Noah noticed her freeze, toast halfway to her mouth.
"What?"
"I… I got one."
Her voice was tight. Disbelieving.
He leaned over. Scanned. Whistled.
"That's the one with the satellite lab, right? The one you kept redrafting your personal statement for."
"I thought they ghosted me."
She stared at the email. Words floated. "Preliminary Interview. Virtual. Thursday, 3PM."
Noah grinned. "You're in, Em. This is it."
Then his phone vibrated. He fished it out of his hoodie pocket.
"INTERVIEW CONFIRMATION — ATLAS MECHWORKS"
He stared at it like it might vanish.
"Dude," Emily said, eyes wide.
"No. Way."
"You got one too?"
"I forgot I even applied to them. Wait — I think I sent them my robot arm schematic with the soda can launcher."
"Your 'Practical Beverage Delivery System'?"
"Trademark pending."
They laughed again, real this time. The kind that fills the walls of cheap rooms and makes them feel bigger.
The rest of the day moved differently. Like they were walking on the edge of something sharp and beautiful.
Emily dusted off her old blazer — two sizes too big, but still better than nothing. Noah shaved for the first time in weeks and nicked his chin.
They rehearsed answers, recited old science fair explanations, rewatched videos of engineers and researchers giving talks, just to remember how people like them are supposed to sound.
But beneath it all, the fear sat like a splinter.
What if we mess this up?
What if we're not enough?
They didn't say it aloud.
That night, the lights flickered. A brownout. The city reminding them it could still cut corners.
They sat by the window with a single flashlight between them.
Emily rested her head on his shoulder. Noah clicked the light on and off absentmindedly, a nervous tic.
"Whatever happens," she whispered, "we keep going. Deal?"
"Deal," he said. "But let's try winning for once."
They watched the stars appear — late, faint, but real.
Tomorrow, the real world would ask them who they were.
They would answer.
....
The Interview
Emily
The virtual interview room was sterile — white walls, a long digital table, and a middle-aged woman with owl-like glasses who looked like she hadn't blinked since 2017.
Dr. Lennox, Head of Research at Astra Labs.
Emily's fingers were laced tightly in her lap, but her voice — miraculously — stayed steady.
"So, Ms. Cross, in your personal essay, you theorized about plasma-based propulsion using ionised solar wind. Isn't that a bit… speculative?"
"Yes," Emily said. "But only until someone builds it."
Silence.
Then Dr. Lennox smiled — the kind that meant interesting, not cute.
"And you're volunteering to be the one who does?"
"Not volunteering," Emily replied. "Applying."
A pause.
Then a nod.
"Your simulation results were promising. Rough around the edges — but promising."
There was more — questions about ethics, data integrity, failure rates. Emily answered them all. Not perfectly, but honestly. She didn't pretend to know what she didn't.
That seemed to matter.
...
Noah
The conference room at Atlas Mechworks had a floor made of steel panels. Noah couldn't stop bouncing his knee.
Three interviewers sat across from him. Engineers. Serious ones. One had grease under his nails. That comforted him.
"So you built this... beverage launcher?" one of them asked.
"Yeah. For lazy engineers who can't stop mid-code for caffeine."
They chuckled.
"What was the power source?"
"Repurposed drone motor, modified to push a spring-loaded base. Shock absorbent catch. Safe... mostly."
They laughed again. Good sign.
Then the big guy at the end leaned forward.
"We've seen a lot of kids with fancy ideas and zero grit. Why should we bet on you?"
Noah looked him straight in the eye.
"Because I've never had anything handed to me. And I made it here anyway."
Silence.
Then the big guy grinned.
Later that Day
Emily sat on the curb outside a pharmacy, phone pressed to her ear. Noah was on the other end, pacing the sidewalk near a busted vending machine.
"They said yes."
"Me too."
"Wait, really?"
"Yep. I start in fifteen days."
"Same."
They both went quiet for a second.
Not the silence of awkwardness — the silence of we actually did it.
"We're not dreaming, right?" Emily asked.
"If we are, don't wake me up."
"Fifteen days."
"Let's make them count."
...
Fifteen Days of Almost
The first three days felt like floating.
The emails had been real. The offers, real. The "You're hired" messages were starred, screenshot, printed, and stuck to the inside of their shared wardrobe.
But dreams don't feed you.
By Day 4, the euphoria had faded into burnt toast again. The last ₿30 was split — groceries and train cards. Their part-time jobs still held the leash around their necks.
Emily's Shift – Pharmacy Hell
Emily worked the register at VitaDrop Pharmacy, tucked between a liquor store and a psychic who read palms for ₿5 and told everyone the same thing: "Something is coming."
She stood behind the counter, a name tag that said E-M-L-I taped onto her shirt, watching customers throw vitamins, soap, and attitude across the belt.
She tried to study in the lulls — printed pages from Astra's public research portal folded into her apron — but there were too many interruptions.
"Can you tell me which cough syrup doesn't taste like chemical death?"
"Ma'am, I'm not a doctor."
"You look like one."
"Thank you?"
By hour six, her spine ached. But she smiled anyway, scanning, bagging, nodding.
She'd be in a real lab soon.
She just had to survive this checkout counter long enough to get there.
Noah's Gig –
Noah worked at Mason's Fix-It, a dusty little repair shop that smelled like hot metal and old regrets. He mostly fixed phones, toasters, headphones, and on occasion, heartbreak devices — things people swore weren't broken until they were.
The owner, Mason, was a chain-smoking ex-inventor who never asked questions and always paid in cash.
"You got good hands, kid," he muttered as Noah reassembled an ancient speaker system with nothing but a paperclip and divine will.
"I'm saving those hands for bigger things."
"Just don't fry 'em before you get there."
Noah grinned.
He worked fast, fingers moving by instinct. Sometimes he caught himself dreaming — that maybe he could fix more than gadgets. Maybe he could fix... the system. The world. Or at least, someone's messed-up coffee machine.
One miracle at a time.
Evenings at Home
Nights were sacred.
They came home sore, sticky with city heat and effort, but the moment the door shut behind them, the air changed.
They'd sit on the floor — no couch yet — and talk while eating instant noodles or weird leftover combos.
"If I have to scan one more barcode, I might reprogram myself."
"Today someone brought me a phone that 'smelled wrong.'"
"Did it?"
"We'll never know."
They practiced interviews they'd already passed. They researched their new companies obsessively. They argued about whether coffee counted as a meal.
Some nights were loud with laughter. Others were quiet, spent staring at the ceiling, wondering if this fragile hope they held was enough to carry them all the way.
Day 12
Noah came home late — oil on his jeans, black smudges on his forehead. Emily was asleep at the table, a pen still in her hand.
He looked at her.
She used to build tiny rockets out of soda cans in the orphanage yard. Now she was about to join a lab that designed propulsion systems for orbiters.
He placed a blanket over her shoulders and whispered,
"Almost there, Em."
Day 15 – The Night Before
Their uniforms were laid out — freshly washed, a little wrinkled, but real.
They made tea. No ramen, no jokes — just quiet sips and a storm of thoughts.
"You ready?"
"No."
"Same."
They laughed. Then sat in the silence again.
The kind of silence that came before big things.
The kind that only people who survived too much could sit comfortably in.