The sirens always begin at midnight.
They hum through the city like a pulse — low, mechanical, and steady enough to almost sound human. Kai doesn't flinch anymore. He just sits on the edge of his bed, hands clasped, waiting for the flash.
The walls shudder. The light floods white.
Then it's Sunday again.
The same morning, the same sunrise filtered through red-gray smog. The same voice from the public address system saying, "Good morning, citizens of New Carthage. It's the start of a new week of prosperity. Renewal is peace."
Kai stares out the cracked window of his housing block. Below, people shuffle into the street in practiced unison — smiling, greeting, pretending they've never done it before. They haven't. Not really.
But he has.
He's lived this week sixty-three times.
He goes through the motions anyway: breakfast ration, mechanical work uniform, a quick scan at the checkpoint. The drones hover like silver insects above the gates, scanning faces, confirming "compliance." Every loop, Kai wonders if this is the one where they'll catch him — where the system will finally notice that he remembers.
It never does.
At noon, he walks past the medical outpost near the eastern wall. That's where he always sees her.
Lyra.
She stands under the same flickering neon cross each week, her white medic's jacket too clean for the dust-filled streets. She's laughing at something a patient says, brushing a strand of dark hair behind her ear. It's an ordinary moment, repeated endlessly — and it's the only part of the loop Kai can't bring himself to skip.
He crosses the street, pretending it's by chance.
"Need a patch-up?" she asks, looking up with a grin that feels too new, too bright for this world.
"Not today," he says, though he could recite her words before she says them. "Just passing through."
Her eyes narrow a little — curious, almost recognizing. Every week, she does that. Like her mind wants to reach for something she's not supposed to remember.
"What's your name?" she asks, just like always.
"Kai."
She repeats it softly. "Kai."
And for a heartbeat, the world seems to hesitate — a glitch, a flicker in the light above them.
Then it smooths out. The sirens in the distance resume their rhythm.
Lyra blinks, as if waking from a dream. "Well, Kai, try to stay out of trouble this week."
He smiles, though it hurts.
This week, she said — as if there would ever be another.
That night, Kai marks a line on the wall behind his bed — the sixty-third tally. The plaster is full of them, like a quiet rebellion no one else can see.
He whispers to the empty room,
"See you next Sunday, Lyra."
And as the sirens begin again, he closes his eyes — not in hope, but in desperate, exhausted love.