CHAPTER 1: EVELYNE S TAYLOR
May 10th, 2075
The last light was fading on the Three Sisters.
Warm water filled the sink. Evelyne poured soap into it, watching the city from the 42nd floor—apartment 89 of the Skyview complex, on the western edge where the towers start to breathe. The mountains caught the dying sun, their peaks still lit while the streets below had already surrendered to shadow.
Washing dishes. Watching the light go.
Her left arm is Phantom Omen-9, current model. Matte black sheath with silver circuit traces that aren't functional but look like they are. The water against her right hand is warm. Her left rests on the edge of the sink, and through the sensors she can feel the building's hum—a low vibration that travels up through the composite, into the frame, into the arm that isn't flesh but registers anyway.
A phantom pain flickers through her forearm. Gone before it fully registers. Just the ghost of something that isn't there.
Dr. Wolffman had warned her. B-plus wasn't ideal for the Omen-9. The cross-reactivity tests came back close enough, he said. Close enough meant green-lit. Close enough meant she walks, she dances, she forgets most days that part of her isn't hers. Medical jargon never stuck. The phantom pain did.
Behind her, Kiva shifts on the bed.
The German Shepherd is five years old, mostly black, with tan paws and a scar on her flank from something she got into as a puppy. Curled in a tight circle on the old blanket—her mother's blanket, bought years ago, before—one eye open, watching her human do the nightly thing. Waiting for the walk.
Eve forgets her arm isn't biological most days.
The weight is right. The warmth is right. It took a year to learn to walk again after the accident. She was sixteen. Now she dances in this apartment sometimes, alone, just to feel how seamless it's become. Kiva watches, head tilted, not understanding but approving.
The tattoos start at her right wrist and spiral up. A vine of honey-wheat stalks wrapping around her forearm, the heads bursting into flame at her elbow. On her left shoulder, visible through the tank top: THIS TOO SHALL PASS in block lettering. A joke from high school, back when she ran with farm kids from the Type A satellites. They called themselves grain rats. Drank cheap beer. Argued about soil chemistry. Got matching tattoos one drunk night in 2070.
Five of them. She's the only one still in the city.
The others went home after graduation. Back to the satellites. Back to the wheat. She stayed.
On her neck, small and precise: a single stalk of Titan Porcini, its cap open like an umbrella. The artist worked at a parlor in the East End. Charged her fifty credits and a six-pack of actual beer, not synth. Best money she ever spent.
The books on the counter catch her eye.
Helix Biogen: A History of the Agricultural Revolution is on top, spine cracked, a takeout menu marking page 342. Under it, Terapeta and You: A Home Gardener's Guide to the Soil Revolution—grabbed from a free bin at the library, unopened for months. Under that, a spiral-bound course catalog from Bishop U: 2075-2076 Entrance Guide—with a sticky note on the cover that says APPLY BY OCT 15.
Next to the stack, her datapad propped against the spice rack, streaming a live feed from someone called GrainRat4Life. The comments scroll past. She doesn't read them.
On the fridge, a physical calendar. Paper, the old kind—her mother always used paper, and old habits stick. May 2075. Today is the 10th. A shift marked for tomorrow: TRANSIT - PLATFORM 9 - 0600-1400. The 13th circled in blue: CLEANER - BAY 4. And the 14th through the 18th boxed in red marker, the letters VACA printed across them in her own handwriting.
Four days off. First time since January. Cooking, relaxing and spending time with Kiva.
The holotv is on in the corner. Muted but not silent—the smart-glass cycles between channels at low volume, a habit she picked up from her mother, who said silence in a city this big felt like waiting for something to happen.
The reporter's face is serious. The chyron reads: ATTACKS CONTINUE FOR THIRD NIGHT.
She glances at it while she rinses a plate.
Footage flickers across the screen. Night vision. Shaky. Crowds in some district she doesn't recognize. Storefronts with broken glass. A mag-lev station cordoned off. The reporter's voice cuts through: ...what some are calling coordinated riots, while others insist these are spontaneous protests against...
She looks away. Back to the dishes.
...labor disputes escalating after last week's NERDS announcement regarding automation targets...
Kiva's ear twitches.
...counter-protesters clashing with groups claiming foreign workers are displacing citizens, while others argue the violence is being exaggerated to justify...
The image cuts to a NERDS spokesperson at a podium. Gray uniform. Calm face. The usual.
Eve's mouth tightens. Not quite a scoff. Just a small compression around her lips.
She's seen it before. Everyone's seen it before. It's been bubbling for months—something about immigration quotas, something about AI job displacement, something about a strike at the Helix-Arc processing plants that may or may not have happened. The stories change depending who's telling them. The footage looks the same every time.
"People always have something bad to say about Helix," she says. "Bunch of losers."
Kiva's head lifts.
"Nothing." Eve reaches for the voice remote, dials the volume down. "We'll go for a walk when I'm done."
Now it's just background murmur. Indistinguishable from the hum.
The building is quiet.
Not silent. Never silent. The hum is still there, the distant whine of mag-levs, the occasional shudder of the elevator core. But the other sounds—the ones she doesn't consciously hear until they're gone—have stopped. No music from 87. No TV from 92. No argument in 41, the couple who fight every night like it's a sport.
Kiva's head is up. Ears swiveled toward the door.
"Just quiet," Eve tells her. "That's all."
Kiva doesn't lower his ears.
On the counter, the entrance guide waits. Oct 15. She has time.
Kiva stands. Stretches. Pads over to the door. Looks back at Eve. Then at the door. Then back.
"Okay, okay."
She dries her hands. Grabs the leash from its hook. Checks her Spark Cell—green, full, enough for a long walk and then some.
The holotv flickers to another image: the Three Sisters, today's webcam feed from some tourism site, pristine and white and utterly indifferent to whatever's happening in the streets below.
Eve opens the door. Kiva pulls ahead, eager.
The city hums. The lights are on. Her arm feels like her arm.
 The hallway smells like cooking from 87—something with cumin—and the recycled-air crispness that means the building's filters are working overtime. Kiva's nails click on the composite flooring. A rhythm Eve's heard so many times it's become its own kind of silence.
The elevator takes forever. It always does at this hour.
On 38, the doors open. A woman steps in.
Mid-fifties. Gray-streaked hair pulled back. Coveralls with the Helix logo and a name patch that reads LIA. She's holding a lunch bag and looking at her datapad. Looks up when the doors close.
"Eve."
"Lia."
They've done this before. Dozens of times. Same building, same elevator, same late shift timing. Lia works on the drones—maintenance, repair. She's been in 38B for six years. Maybe they can talk about an internship or scholarships more.
Lia looks at her. Really looks.
"You hear about today?"
Eve shakes her head. "Just got off work. Heading out with Kiva now."
"Yeah." Lia's jaw tightens. "Thirty percent of my department called in. Thirty percent. Just didn't show."
Kiva pushes his nose toward Lia's hand. Lia obliges, scratching behind the ears.
"That's..." Eve starts, but doesn't know how to finish.
"That's people being scared," Lia says. "That's what it is. You see the crowd on 42nd?"
"Not yet. We're heading that way."
"It's worse than they're showing on the news. I had to take 33rd and Bishop to get home. You know that stretch? The one that stinks?"
Eve knows it. Old industrial. Mostly abandoned.
"Checkpoints," Lia says. "Police and military both. They're stopping people, checking IDs, asking where you're going and why. Not arresting—not yet—but writing things down. Scanning things."
The elevator hums between floors. 26. 27. 28.
"I didn't see anything on the feed about checkpoints," Eve says.
Lia snorts. "You won't. Not until they're done setting them up."
They ride in silence for a moment.
"Twenty-three from my floor alone," Lia says. "Called in. Just... called in. But that's not the weird part."
Eve waits.
"They took people from 27 last night. Seven of them. Police came up around 4 AM. Marisol in 31 heard it through the walls—banging, shouting, then nothing. This morning, there's a notice in the lobby about 'voluntary health screenings.'"
The elevator hums between floors.
"Screenings for what?"
Lia's jaw tightens. "Blood type, apparently. They're testing everyone. Setting up in the community room on 3. You have to show your card to get through the lobby now."
Eve looks down at her left arm. At the veins visible at the wrist—real veins, real blood, real arm. She knows her blood type. Everyone knows their blood type. It's on every ID, every medical record, every form you've ever filled out.
B positive. Her mother used to say it meant she was special. Her mother used to say a lot of things.
"What happens if you're O positive?" Eve asks.
Lia doesn't answer right away. The elevator dings. 12.
"They're asking people to come in voluntarily," Lia says finally. "The ones who are O positive. For observation. Just to be safe."
"Safe from what?"
Lia meets her eyes. "I don't think they're saying."
For a long moment, neither speaks. The silence sits between them, heavy.
Then Lia's voice changes. Warmer.
"You need to get your ass in college," she says. "So you can work in a program under me instead of doing whatever shift work you're doing now."
Eve laughs. It comes out easier than she expected.
"I'm trying, I promise. I have everything you had me mark down. Promise."
Lia eyes her. "The entrance guide?"
"On my counter. Bishop U. Oct 15th."
"Good." Lia nods once, satisfied. Then softer: "You eat yet?"
"Not since this morning."
"So come have dinner. After the walk." Lia glances at Kiva. "Him too. I have some of that chicken he likes."
Something loosens in Eve's chest. "Yeah, I'd love to. But—"
"No drinking, I know. Work in the morning." Lia holds up her lunch bag. "Early shift. Gotta check the logs from today's no-shows, figure out who's actually sick and who's just... you know."
"Yeah."
The elevator slows. 12.
Before the doors open, Lia touches Eve's arm—the real one, just above the wrist.
"Be careful out there," she says. "It's getting worse. Not just the riots. The way people are looking at each other. The way they're looking at anyone who works for Helix."
Eve looks down at her left arm. At the logo stamped into the wrist.
"Yeah," she says. "Okay."
Lia pets Kiva one more time—firm, familiar strokes along the spine—and then the doors open and she's gone, walking toward 12B with the tired gait of someone who's been on her feet too long.
The doors close. The elevator continues down.
Eve and Kiva ride the rest of the way in silence.
 The elevator doors open. Kiva leads the way out.
The first thing Eve notices is the smell.
Not the chemical sharpness that will come later—this is subtler. The building's cleaning solution, yes, but stronger than usual. And underneath it, something else. Something sour. Like sweat. Like fear. Like people pressed together in a space that's suddenly too small.
The lobby is wrong.
Not empty—there are people—but wrong in how they're arranged. Clusters instead of flow. Families with children, standing near the walls. A group of teens near the windows, watching the street. An old woman on one of the benches, holding a bag to her chest like it might protect her.
The common room stretches beyond them. Eve can see more people there. Sitting. Waiting. Looking at nothing.
Kiva stops. Her ears go flat.
"Easy," Eve murmurs.
A man approaches from the direction of the management office. Mid-forties, maybe, with the tired look of someone who's been here since before dawn. His name tag reads DEVON above the building logo. Eve's seen him before—he handles maintenance scheduling, sometimes gives her updates about elevator outages or water shutoffs.
"Eve, you been okay?" the man ask while fixing his tie.
"Yeah." She keeps Kiva close. "What's going on, Devon?"
He runs a hand over his face. The gesture is exhausted, automatic.
"We're not sure yet. That's the problem."
He glances around the lobby, then gestures toward a quieter corner near the mail slots. Eve follows. Kiva stays pressed against her leg.
"How much do you know?" Devon asks.
"Just what Lia told me in the elevator. People getting taken. Something about blood types."
Devon nods slowly. "That's more than most. They're not telling us much either. Just giving us scripts to read when residents ask questions."
He pulls out his datapad, scrolls, shows her the screen. A message, official-looking, with the city's seal:
RESIDENT NOTICE: VOLUNTARY HEALTH SCREENINGS NOW AVAILABLE. ALL PERSONS WITH O+ BLOOD TYPE ARE ENCOURAGED TO REPORT TO DESIGNATED CENTERS FOR ROUTINE OBSERVATION. THIS IS A PRECAUTIONARY MEASURE. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PRESENT YOUR ID AT ANY CHECKPOINT.
"Encouraged," Eve reads. "That's not the same as required."
"No." Devon puts the datapad away. "But the ones they took last night? From 27? They weren't given a choice. Police came up, knocked on doors, and took them. Seven people. Marisol in 31 heard screaming."
"Screaming?"
"Not like fighting. Like... like they didn't want to go. Like they were scared of something." He hesitates. "And some of them were acting strange, apparently. Before they got taken. Marisol said her neighbor—guy named Chen, lived there five years—he was talking to himself in the hallway the night before. Not loud, just... muttering. Saying someone was calling to him."
The sound in her walls last night. The beat she told herself was pipes. Eve's skin prickles.
"That's not—" She stops. Starts again. "That doesn't sound like a health screening."
"No," Devon agrees. "It doesn't."
A silence stretches between them. In the common room, someone's child starts crying—a sharp, sudden sound that cuts off as quickly as it began.
"When did this start?" Eve asks. "Really start?"
Devon considers this. "The 7th. That's when I first noticed."
"I was doing my morning rounds," he says. "Checking the systems, you know. And I looked out the window on 15—there's a good view of Bishop from there—and I saw them. Military vehicles. Three of them, just parked at an intersection. Not doing anything. Just sitting there."
"They're everywhere now." Devon leans against the wall, folds his arms. "But on the 7th, it was just the vehicles. No checkpoints yet. No screenings. Just... presence. Like they were waiting for something."
"And then people started getting taken." Eve's real hand finds her neck, rubs at the tattoo there. "I've noticed apartments getting emptied too."
"And then people started getting taken." He nods. "But here's the thing—the ones they took first? From 27? The whole family was sick. Now they're working floor by floor. Seems random to me, Eve..."
Eve processes this. "So they're taking sick people. Or they're taking people who—"
"Yes."
"And holding them for observation."
"That's what they're calling it."
Eve looks toward the common room. At the families waiting. At the teens by the window. At the old woman with her bag.
"What about the riots?" she asks. "The protests? They're saying it's about Helix, about immigration, about automation—"
Devon makes a sound. Not quite a laugh. Something bitter.
"You believe that?"
"I don't know what to believe."
He looks at her for a long moment. Really looks. Then he says, quietly:
"My theory? They're connected. The riots, the protests, the people getting taken—it's all the same thing. They're just telling different stories about it depending on who's listening."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, if you watch the news from the east side, it's about Helix and NERDS exploiting workers. If you watch the news from the south, it's about immigrants taking jobs. If you watch the official channels, it's about public health and safety." He shrugs. "But underneath all of it, the same thing keeps happening. People are getting agitated. Acting strange. Hearing things. And then they disappear."
Eve's skin prickles again. "Hearing things?"
"Yeah. That's the part they're not putting in the notices." Devon lowers his voice. "Marisol's neighbor, Chen—he kept saying someone was calling to him. From inside the walls. From the vents. From somewhere. And he wasn't the only one. The people they took from 31? Two of them were saying the same thing before the police came."
Kiva whines softly. Eve's hand finds his head, strokes automatically.
"You think it's real?" Eve asks. "The calling?"
Devon's face is hard to read. "I think something's happening. I think people are changing. And I think the people in charge knew it was coming, because they were ready. Checkpoints. Screenings. Military on the streets since the 7th, before anyone even got sick." He pauses. "That's not a response. That's a plan."
Eve stares at him.
"I'm not saying I know what the plan is," Devon adds. "All I know is that since the 7th they've taken close to 800 people from our apartment alone. My boyfriend works at the bigger complex on Jade Street—says they're missing double that."
"Two-fifths," she says quietly.
"Staff too?"
"Roughly." Devon's voice is tired. "I ran the numbers this morning, just from resident records. About 800 people. Plus staff—we've got twenty-three already who didn't show up today. Called in sick, or just... didn't call at all."
"Maintenance, janitorial, even two from the management office." He shakes his head. "The ones who did show up are scared. No one knows if they're next, or if they're safe, or what 'safe' even means anymore."
"What do I do?" she asks. "What do we do?"
Devon pushes off the wall. For a second, he looks like he might actually have an answer. Then his face softens into something helpless.
"I don't know," he says. "I really don't. They're telling us to maintain normal operations. Keep the building running. Answer questions with the script." He gestures vaguely at the lobby. "But normal's over. Has been since the 7th. We're just... catching up to it."
A buzzer sounds from the management office. Devon glances back, then at Eve.
"I have to go. More questions, more scripts." He pauses. "You have a dog. That's good. Dogs know things before we do. Keep him close. Every Mega Apartment in our chain is going under the same protocol, if you see military or police just avoid them Eve, don't panic.
Eve stands in the corner by the mail slots, Kiva pressed against her leg, and looks at her left arm. At the logo she's stopped seeing. At the thing that's been part of her for years.
Kiva pulls toward the door. Toward outside.
Eve follows.
Outside, the air hits different.
It's not clean—nothing in the city is clean—but it's moving, and after the filtered stillness of the apartment, even the exhaust-faint breeze feels like something. Kiva pulls toward the planter boxes along the building's base, where some enterprising soul has planted actual dirt with actual things that grow. Marigolds, maybe. Eve doesn't know flowers. But they're orange, and they're alive, and Kiva likes to sniff them.
The street is busy. It's always busy.
Mag-levs whine overhead on the elevated lines, their undersides lit with ads that cycle through languages Eve doesn't speak. Ground traffic crawls—delivery drones in their designated lanes, the occasional autonomous taxi, a few human-driven vehicles that stand out for their slight unpredictability. The sidewalk is a river of people coming home, going out, heading to third shifts, heading nowhere.
Kiva ignores most of them. She has a route.
East on 42nd, past the noodle place where the owner sometimes comes out with scraps for her. Past the shuttered storefront that's been shuttered since Eve moved here, its windows papered over with layers of posters that peel at the edges. Past the 24-hour clinic with its blue cross sign and the two people smoking outside it, their faces lit by their datapads.
At the corner of 42nd and Jefferson, Kiva stops.
Not a normal stop. Not a sniffing stop. A full halt, ears forward, body tense.
Eve follows his gaze.
Across the street, a crowd has gathered outside the old Helix storefront—the one that used to sell direct-to-consumer substrate kits before the company pulled back to B2B only. It's been empty for years. But tonight there's light inside, and people on the sidewalk, and a man with a portable amplifier standing on a crate.
She can't hear what he's saying. The traffic noise swallows it. But she can see the signs.
Some are printed, professional-looking, with union logos and clean typography. Others are hand-scrawled on cardboard, marker bleeding into fiber. The words blur together at this distance, but she catches a few: JOBS. HELIX. LIES.
Kiva's tail drops.
"It's fine," Eve says, but she's not sure who she's saying it to.
A patrol drone hums past, low and slow, its cameras swiveling. It doesn't stop. Doesn't hover. Just continues its programmed route, a reminder that someone's watching even when no one's watching. Eve thinks of Lia, up early tomorrow, checking logs. Checking who showed up and who didn't.
The man on the crate gestures toward the Three Sisters, visible between buildings, their peaks catching the last light. The crowd shifts. Someone throws something—a bottle, maybe, or a can. It bounces off the storefront's shuttered window. The drone keeps moving.
Eve tugs gently on the leash.
"Come on."
Kiva hesitates. Then she turns, and they continue east, away from the crowd, toward the river walk where the lights are lower and the air smells less like exhaust and more like the green-brown smell of moving water.
They walk in the noise of the city for a while.
The river walk is mostly empty at this hour—a few runners, a couple on a bench, an old man feeding something to birds. Kiva relaxes here, his pace evening out, ears soft. This is where Eve brings him when the city gets too city. When the hum becomes a drone.
There's a bench she likes, halfway between two light poles, where the view opens up toward the Sisters and the water reflects whatever sky is left. She sits. Kiva lies at her feet, head on paws, watching the river move.
Eve pulls out her datapad. Scrolls without really looking.
The feed from GrainRat4Life is still going—someone's harvest update from one of the Type A satellites, shots of combine drones moving through wheat under artificial light. The comments are the usual mix of nostalgia and inside jokes and people asking when so-and-so is coming home for the solstice.
She types: "Anyone still up?"
The responses come fast.
EYYYYYYY GrainRat4eva in the house you coming home this year?? kiva update??? need dog pics
She laughs. "Deaxon, you're ridiculous, naming yourself GrainRat4Eva."
The group chat fills with emojis, her holophone displaying mega-emojis that project into the air, doing various dances, some laughing, some making sounds.
She smiles. Takes a photo of Kiva by the river, the Sisters in the background, the city lights beginning to outnumber the stars. Posts it.
More responses.
On the bench, the wood is warm from the day's sun. Her real arm rests against it, and she can feel the grain, the slight roughness, the way the surface holds heat. Her other arm rests in her lap, and through its sensors she can feel the datapad's weight, the slight texture of its case, the vibration of an incoming message.
The holophone messages flood again. Alexis types: "Girl I know he's so ridiculous, but we made it to top 10 most viewed this month!"
She types back: "IM SO HAPPY!"
"Me too! Kiva is totally going to be our mascot."
Then the messages stop. The assistant voice says: "Signal lost."
Eve's jaw tightens. "Ugh, no damn way, again? I know I paid my bill. I'll have to run down and get it repaired in the morning."
She plays with Kiva's ears. The dog leans into the touch.
A runner passes, breath visible in the cooling air. The old man is gone, and so are the birds. The couple on the bench is closer together than they were before, heads nearly touching.
Eve leans forward, braces her real hand on her knee, and looks at the water. The water is dark close to shore, but the lights from the other side paint it in streaks. Enough to see herself—shoulder-length, windblown, brown going darker in the low light. Blue eyes looking back at nothing.
She thinks about the crowd outside the Helix storefront. About the man on the crate. About the drone that kept moving, because that's what drones do. About the words on the signs she couldn't quite read. About Lia's hand on her wrist in the elevator. Be careful. The way they're looking at anyone who works for Helix.
She thinks about her arm. About the Helix logo stamped on the inside of the wrist, small and gray, the only branding on an otherwise matte-black surface. Phantom Omen-9. Current model. Manufactured in a facility she's never seen, by people she'll never meet, using designs she doesn't understand. Maintained by people like Lia, probably. People who called in sick today.
She thinks about page 342 in the Helix history book, which she read last night before bed. Something about the early days, before the company went public, when it was still just a research outfit with big ideas and not enough funding until the war of 2030 - 2045. A footnote about a the future, fusion technology, cybernetic, advanced artificial intelligence, that now operates the Helo Carriers the military are so proud of. the . Three people died. Their names weren't included.
"People always have something bad to say about Helix," she'd said, in her kitchen, to her dog.
But that was then. Before the crowd. Before the signs. Before Lia's warning.
Kiva shifts, whines softly.
"Yeah," Eve says. "Almost done."
She doesn't move.
The river moves. The city hums. The Sisters stand white and distant and indifferent, as they have for millions of years, as they will for millions more.
The river walk loops back toward the city around nine. Kiva's pace has slowed—not tired, just satisfied, the kind of walk where he sniffed everything worth sniffing and now he's ready for whatever comes next. Bed, probably. Maybe leftovers from Lia's.
Eve's not ready to go inside yet.
The apartment will be quiet. The holotv will still be on, muted, cycling through footage she doesn't want to watch. The entrance guide will still be on the counter. Oct 15th will still be five months away.
So she takes the long way home.
Up from the river, through the underpass where someone's painted a mural of the Sisters on the concrete, the colors faded but still visible in the sodium-yellow light. Past the all-night market where the owner is sweeping the sidewalk, his broom making the only sound on the block. Through the plaza where the fountain has been dry for years but kids still sit on its edge, smoking something that smells sweet and chemical.
Kiva leads. He always leads.
At the corner of 42nd and Bishop, Eve stops.
There's a checkpoint.
Not a full blockade—not yet—but the bones of one. Military vehicles, three of them, angled across the intersection in a shallow V. Their engines aren't running. They're just... sitting there, low and quiet, their paint flat in the streetlight.
She's seen military vehicles before. Everyone has. Convoys pass through the city sometimes, heading to or from somewhere else. But those move. These are parked.
Kiva's ears go flat.
"It's okay," Eve murmurs. The same words. Still not sure who she's saying them to.
She steps closer. Not toward the checkpoint, but to the side, where a bus stop bench gives her a view without being in the middle of it.
They're like nothing she's seen up close.
Low and angular, boxy but predatory, sitting on eight wheels each. Not tracks—wheels, which means they're built for roads, for speed. Olive drab but not clean, streaked with dust and the ghost of old markings half-painted over. The turrets are unmanned, just squat armored pods with barrels that look too thick for anything peaceful.
A 30mm on each, she thinks. She doesn't know guns. But she knows that one isn't for show.
Below the turrets, set into the armor low near the wheels, are clusters of short muzzles. Four per vehicle. Two facing forward, two aft. Shotgun arrays, maybe, but mounted like they're meant for something closer than rifles can handle. She doesn't know what. She doesn't want to.
The sensor clusters are everywhere. Domes and cameras and spherical arrays, staring from every angle. One of them rotates slowly on the lead vehicle's turret roof, sweeping the intersection in lazy circles, painting everything in light she can't see.
She should feel watched. She does. But it's not the machines that make her stomach tighten.
It's the people.
A soldier stands by the lead vehicle, half-leaning against its hull. Young—mid-twenties—in a dark jumpsuit with no helmet, just comms gear wrapped around his ears. He's holding a datapad, not a weapon, and he's talking to a woman in civilian clothes. She's showing him something on her phone. He nods, types something, nods again. Normal. Bureaucratic almost.
Behind him, another crew member is checking something on the vehicle's rear hull—a panel open, wires exposed, a flashlight held in her teeth while she works. Her sleeves are pushed up, and Eve can see tattoos on her forearms, dark ink against pale skin in the artificial light.
The third vehicle has its roof hatch open. A soldier sits on the edge, legs dangling, eating something from a paper wrapper. He's watching the street the way you watch a river—present, but not actively looking for anything.
The sensor clusters sweep. Kiva presses against her leg.
"There's a good boy."
A bench near a bus stop, slightly set back from the main flow of pedestrians. Eve sits. Kiva lies at her feet, head on paws, but her eyes stay on the vehicles.
From here, Eve can watch without being in the middle of it.
The soldiers are young. All of them. Mid-twenties at most. They move between the vehicles with the practiced ease of people who've done this before, but there's something else underneath it. A tightness in their shoulders. A way of looking at the civilians passing by that's not quite suspicion and not quite fear, but somewhere in between.
Two of them break away from the main group. They walk toward the bus stop—not directly toward Eve, but toward the far end, maybe twenty feet away. One carries a datapad and a cup of something steaming. The other has a cigarette already lit, the smoke curling up into the sodium light.
They don't notice her. The bench is half-hidden by a planter, and Kiva is quiet, and they're focused on their own conversation.
"...three more from the complex on Jefferson," the one with the cigarette says. He's young, fair-haired, with the kind of face that would look boyish if his eyes weren't so tired. "Seven total now. All the same."
The other one—older, graying at the temples, the one with the datapad—takes a long sip from his cup before answering.
"Type?"
"O positive. Every fucking single one."
The older soldier nods slowly. Doesn't look surprised.
The younger one takes a drag, exhales. "They're not telling us shit, you know that? Just 'maintain position, facilitate screening volunteers.' But these people aren't volunteering. I saw the footage from this morning. They're knocking on doors."
"We're not knocking on doors."
"No. But we're parked outside the buildings where they do." He flicks ash onto the sidewalk. "Sarge says it's just precaution. Says there's a pathogen, something airborne, and the O-positives are carriers without symptoms. They need to be isolated for their own protection."
"And?"
"And I asked him how come we're not wearing masks if it's airborne. He didn't have an answer."
The older soldier is quiet for a moment. When he speaks, his voice is lower.
"There's a guy in my unit. Was in my unit. Transferred three days ago to something called 'logistics support.'" He makes air quotes with his free hand. "Turns out logistics support means a warehouse on the south side. He called me last night. Said the place is full of O-positives. Hundreds of them. They're not sick. They're just... there."
The younger soldier stares at him. "A warehouse."
"A screening center, officially. But yeah. A warehouse. Hell, whoever ain't on checkpoint duty or sweepin' the mega aps are working all the "facilities", even that lazy POG Oakley."
"That's—" The younger soldier stops. Shakes his head. "Shit, if Major Oakley is off lazy fucking ass, Pierce must be knees deep in shit."
"No. It's not." The older soldier finishes his drink, sets the cup on the edge of a planter. "But we're not paid to ask questions. We're paid to stand here and look like we know what we're doing."
They're quiet for a moment. The younger soldier's cigarette burns down. He drops it, grinds it out with his boot.
"The ones they took last night," he says. "From that building on Jefferson. You hear what the neighbors said?"
The older soldier shakes his head.
"They said some of them were talking to themselves before they got taken. Saying someone was calling to them. From inside the walls." The younger soldier's voice drops even lower. "Chen, the guy in 27? He kept telling people there were voices in the pipes. In the vents. Like someone was trying to get in."
Eve's skin prickles. Her left arm tingles—phantom sensation, nothing real—but she barely notices.
"That's not in any of the briefings," the older soldier says.
"No. It's not." The younger soldier looks toward the vehicles. Toward the sensors sweeping the intersection. "You know what I think? I think they knew. Before any of this started. I think they were ready because they knew it was coming."
The older soldier doesn't answer.
From the checkpoint, someone calls out. A voice, sharp with authority. "Martinez! Reyes! Break's over."
The younger soldier—Martinez—straightens. The older one—Reyes—picks up his empty cup.
They start walking back.
Eve holds her breath. Doesn't move. Kiva stays perfectly still beside her.
Martinez passes closest to her bench. Close enough that she could reach out and touch his sleeve if she wanted. He doesn't look her way.
But Reyes does.
Half a second, that's all. A glance toward the bench, toward the girl with the dog, toward the shadow where someone might be sitting. Their eyes meet across the distance.
Reyes doesn't stop. Doesn't speak. Just looks at her for that half-second, and then he's walking again, following Martinez back toward the vehicles.
Eve exhales.
Kiva whines softly.
"I know," Eve murmurs. "I know."
They're just... guys. Doing a job. Setting up a checkpoint at an intersection in a city that's had three nights of something that might be riots and might be protests and might be something else entirely.
But the guns are real. The sensors are real. And the way people are walking around the intersection, giving it a wide berth without being told, is real too.
A soldier on the far side of the checkpoint looks up at the sound. Young face, barely older than Eve. He meets her eyes across the distance. Doesn't smile. Doesn't frown. Just looks, for a second, and then looks away.
On the side of the vehicle nearest her, stenciled in clean white letters: LION 1-1.
Below it, a small hand-painted lion's head. Mouth open. Almost cartoonish.
She stares at it longer than she means to.
"Evening."
Eve startles. Turns.
A soldier has approached from somewhere—not from the checkpoint, but from the sidewalk, like he was already there and she just didn't see him. Older than the others. Forties, maybe. Gray at the temples. No weapon in his hands, just a tablet and a cup of something steaming.
"Sorry," he says. "Didn't mean to spook you. Just saw you standing there and wanted to make sure you're okay."
She finds her voice. "I'm fine. Just... walking my dog."
He looks down at Kiva, who has not moved and is watching him with careful eyes.
"Good-looking dog. German Shepherd?"
"Yeah. He's my baby." She says proudly.
"I had one growing up." He takes a sip from his cup. "Smarter than me, that dog. Used to open the fridge."
Eve doesn't know what to say to that.
The soldier nods toward the vehicles. "First time seeing these up close?"
She hesitates. "Yeah."
"They're something, aren't they? LAV-50s. Prowlers." He says it like he's proud of them. "Fastest recon vehicles in the fleet. Hybrid drive—you probably didn't even hear them pull in."
She hadn't.
"We're not here to cause trouble," he says. "Just... setting up. Making sure things stay calm. You know how it's been."
She thinks of the crowd outside the Helix storefront. The man on the crate. The drone that kept moving.
"Yeah," she says.
He looks at her for a moment. Not the way men look at women on the street. The way someone looks at another person they're trying to read.
"You live around here?"
"Skyview. 42nd and Jefferson."
He nods. "That's where our platoon is stationed, well, half of em. Stay safe. Keep your dog close." He gestures with his cup toward the checkpoint. "If you need to get through, just have your ID ready. We're not stopping anyone who lives here. Just... keeping an eye on things."
"Thanks, you have a good night."
He nods again, turns, walks back toward the vehicles.
Eve watches him go. Watches him say something to the soldier eating on the hatch, who laughs at whatever it was. Watches the woman with the flashlight close the panel she was working on and wipe her hands on her thighs.
On the side of Lion 1-1, the painted lion watches nothing in particular. Kiva tugs gently on the leash
She doesn't take 42nd. She takes Jefferson, then 41st, then a cut-through alley she knows that smells like grease and cat spray but gets her home faster.
At the entrance to Skyview, she stops.
Lights are on in most of the windows. Her own, 42nd floor, is dark except for the holotv's glow. Kiva sits, waits.
Eve looks back toward Bishop. Can't see the checkpoint from here. Just the ordinary lights of the city, the ordinary hum, the ordinary night.
She thinks about the soldier's face when he looked at her. Not suspicious. Not hostile. Just... looking.
She thinks about the lion. Hand-painted. Someone's idea of a joke, or a tradition, or a prayer.
She thinks about Lia's hand on her wrist. The way they're looking at anyone who works for Helix.
She thinks about her arm. The logo. The way she forgets it's not real until moments like this, when she remembers that other people might not forget.
Kiva whines.
"Coming," Eve says.
Kiva made it through the automatic doors first, Eve following right behind. The climate-controlled air hit different after the river—colder, processed, but familiar. The common room sprawled ahead, all polished composite and soft light from fixtures designed to look like something they weren't.
Kids. Three of them, maybe four, scattered across the floor like someone had shaken them out of a bag. Soccer and hopscotch overlapping in that way kids make work—the game isn't the point, the movement is. One of them spotted Kiva before the others.
"KIVA!"
The dog's tail went into full rotation. She looked back at Eve—permission? acknowledgment?—and then submitted to the charge.
Eve watched them swarm. Kiva took it like a saint, letting small hands find her ears, her back, the good spots behind her jaw. A girl in purple sneakers tried to get her to chase a ball. Kiva declined with dignity.
Then a smaller one broke away. Blonde hair, brown eyes, moving with the particular intensity of a child who's remembered something important.
"Eve! Eve!"
She crouched without thinking about it. He hit her at full speed, arms around her neck, then pulled back before she could properly hug him.
"Mom said I could watch him anytime you work. She says it teaches me responsibility, as long as it doesn't interfere with my paper routes and school work."
The words came out like they'd been rehearsed. Probably had been.
Eve laughed. "Of course, Peyton. When I go back to work, I'll need someone to watch him for me. Regular times." She glanced at Kiva, who had escaped the pack and was approaching with the careful gait of a dog who knows she's about to get loved on again. "He loves you as much as me."
Kiva reached them. Peyton's hands found her face. Kiva licked him once, deliberately, like a kiss she'd been saving.
Eve smiled. Stayed in the crouch a second longer than she needed to.
Then the drone spoke.
Its voice was calibrated for public spaces—not loud, but designed to carry. Feminine, warm, the kind of tone that made instructions feel like suggestions until you realized they weren't.
"City curfew now in effect. All persons under twenty-one please return to your registered residence. Persons twenty-one and over are required to carry identification at all times. One hundred twenty minutes until full curfew for all non-essential personnel of Bishop."
The kids stopped moving.
Not all at once—they weren't that coordinated—but the sound of them changed. The pitch dropped. The laughter cut. A girl in purple sneakers looked at the nearest adult, a man Eve didn't know, who was already pulling out his ID and checking it like he'd forgotten whether it was there.
Peyton looked up at Eve.
"Is that for real?"
"Yeah." She stood. "It's for real. You should get home."
"My mom—"
"Your mom knows. Go on. I'll see you tomorrow maybe."
He hesitated. Then Kiva nudged his hand, and he smiled small, and then he was running toward the elevators with the other kids, their footsteps too loud in the sudden quiet.
The common room had emptied in under a minute.
Eve stood there with her dog and looked at the space where children had been playing. The hopscotch grid was still there, chalk on composite. A ball had rolled under a bench.
Kiva sat. Waited.
"Come on," Eve said.
They crossed to the elevators. The doors opened immediately, like the building knew she wanted to be done with lobbies. She stepped in, Kiva at her heels, and pressed the button for Lia's floor.
A light blinked beside the panel. A screen lit up: ID required for floor access outside registered residence.
Eve held her wrist to the scanner—the real one, not the prosthetic. The sensor beeped. The screen flashed green.
TAYLOR, EVELYNE S. UNIT 4289. DESTINATION: 3812. AUTHORIZED.
The doors closed.
Up they went.
Kiva leaned against her leg. Eve looked at her reflection in the polished metal—shoulder-length, windblown, brown going dark in bad light. Blue eyes looking back at her.
The soldier at the checkpoint had looked at her like she was someone worth watching.
She didn't know what that meant yet.
The elevator hummed. 12. 15. 19.
She thought about Lia's hand on her wrist in this same car, hours ago. The way they're looking at anyone who works for Helix.
She thought about the Helix logo on her other wrist, hidden under matte black.
She thought about the curfew. Non-essential personnel. Her transit job—was that essential? Would someone tell her, or would she find out when she tried to go to work?
The elevator slowed.
Kiva shifted, ready.
The doors opened onto 38. The hallway smelled like cumin from 87, same as always. Lights at normal brightness. Nothing had changed.
Eve walked to 3812. Knocked.
Footsteps inside. A pause at the door—probably the peephole—and then the lock clicked.
Lia stood there in her robe, gray hair loose around her face, looking like someone who'd been asleep and then wasn't.
"You okay?" Lia asked.
Eve nodded. Didn't speak.
Lia looked at her for a long moment. Then she stepped aside.
"Get in here. I'll heat up that chicken."
The door closes behind her and the sound of the city cuts out like someone hit mute.
Lia's apartment breathes differently than Eve's. Higher ceiling—one of the corner units, which means windows on two walls and light even at night. The kind of place you get after twelve years with the company, assuming you didn't screw up and you showed up on days when thirty percent of your department didn't.
Eve's been here before. Enough times that the layout is familiar. But she always notices the same things.
The kitchen is open to the living room, divided only by a counter with three stools tucked under it. Real wood on the counter—not composite, actual grain. A pepper grinder that looks like it cost more than Eve's datapad. Copper pots hanging from a rack, catching the light, the kind of pots you use because you like cooking, not just because you need to.
But before Eve can take any of it in—before the copper pots or the real-wood counter—the smell hits her.
Bread.
Fresh-baked, still warm somewhere, filling the whole apartment with that smell that nothing else mimics. Not the synthesized stuff from the depot, not the vacuum-sealed loaves that last six months. Real bread, from real flour, made by someone who knew what they were doing.
And underneath it, something else. Something sweet. Like honey, except not exactly—warmer, deeper, with a hint of something almost like toasted grain.
Honey-wheat. Blessed wheat. The kind her grain rat friends' families grew, the kind she ate a thousand times in satellite kitchens, the kind she hasn't had in months.
Kiva pushes past her, headed straight for the worn spot on the rug she already knows is hers.
Lia appears from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. She's changed out of her coveralls—soft pants, an old t-shirt with a faded logo Eve doesn't recognize. Her gray hair is down, loose around her shoulders. She looks like someone who's been cooking for hours and doesn't mind.
"You're here. Good. Sit."
Eve steps inside. The door clicks shut behind her.
"Something smells—" She stops. Swallows. "Is that—"
Lia's face softens. Just slightly. Just enough.
"Satellite 12," she says. "My cousin sends a loaf every few months. Figured you could use some." She gestures toward the kitchen. "It's on the counter. Help yourself while I plate the rest."
Eve doesn't need to be told twice.
The kitchen is warm, lit by the soft glow of the range hood. And there it is—a loaf on a wooden board, crust dark gold, steam still rising faintly from the cut end where someone has already sliced into it. Next to it, a small dish of amber liquid that might be honey or might be something better.
Eve tears off a piece without thinking. It's still warm. The crust gives slightly, then cracks, and the inside is soft and irregular and perfect. She puts it in her mouth.
For a second, she's seventeen again. Sitting in a satellite kitchen at 2 AM, half-drunk, arguing about soil chemistry with people who actually cared about soil chemistry. Someone's mother—Danny's mom, maybe, or the girl with the braids whose name she's forgetting—pulling a loaf from the oven, telling them all to shut up and eat. The honey note, that specific sweetness that isn't added but grown, filling the room while snow piled up outside and the agri-drones slept in their bays.
She closes her eyes.
"Good?"
Lia's voice, quiet, from somewhere behind her.
Eve opens her eyes. Nods. Takes another bite because she can't help it.
"Yeah," she says. "Yeah. It's—" She gestures vaguely, helplessly. "It's home."
Lia nods like that's exactly what she expected. Like she's been saving this loaf for weeks, waiting for the right night.
"There's more," she says. "Eat as much as you want. But sit down first. The chicken's done."
Eve tears off another piece—smaller this time, because she's trying to have manners—and carries it to the couch. Sits. Kiva lifts her head, sniffs the air hopefully, and puts it back down when she realizes it's not for her.
Lia brings plates. Chicken in a brown sauce, rice, something green that glistens. She sets one on the coffee table in front of Eve, keeps one for herself, and settles into the chair across.
Eve takes a bite. It's stupidly good. The kind of good that makes her close her eyes for half a second. But she keeps coming back to the bread, tearing off small pieces between bites, letting it linger.
Lia watches her, amused. Eats her own more slowly.
They talk about nothing. Lia's department. The no-shows. Someone named Derrick who called in sick for the third time this month and everyone knows he's not sick, he's interviewing at a competitor, but no one says it because saying it makes it real. Eve's shift tomorrow. Whether Kiva's been scratching at her ears more than usual. She hasn't.
The clock ticks. Kiva dreams, her legs twitching.
When the plates are clean—scraped clean, the way you eat when you grew up not wasting—Eve stands and carries them to the sink without asking. Lia doesn't tell her not to. That's how it works here.
The kitchen window faces east, toward the river, toward the sprawl of Bishop's lower districts. Eve runs water into the sink, watches it steam against the stainless steel. Lia appears beside her with the rest of the dishes, and they fall into the rhythm of it—Eve washes, Lia dries, the way people do when they've done it before.
"Thanks," Eve says. "For dinner. For the bread. For—"
"Stop." Lia's voice is soft. "You don't have to."
Outside, the city spreads out like a circuit board. Lights in grids, in clusters, in the long bright lines of mag-lev routes. The Sisters loom beyond it all, indifferent.
Eve's hand pauses on a plate.
"What's that?"
She nods toward the window, toward the southeast. Lia follows her gaze.
There's something happening at the edge of visibility. A disturbance in the pattern of lights—not a blackout, but a concentration. Movement. Like watching a time-lapse of traffic except it's not traffic, it's too dense, too slow.
Lia sets down her towel. Leans closer to the glass.
The crowd stretches across what must be four or five blocks. Thousands of them. From this high up, they look like ants swarming—except ants don't move in patterns, and these are moving in patterns. Shifting. Flowing. Converging.
And in front of them, four distinct lines.
Perfectly straight. Perfectly spaced. Dark against the city's glow.
People. Standing in rows. Facing the crowd.
Even from here, Eve can tell they're different. The way they hold formation. The way they don't break, don't scatter, don't do anything except stand there in those four clean lines while the crowd pulses against them like a tide against a seawall.
"What are they doing?" Eve asks.
Lia doesn't answer immediately. She's watching with the expression of someone reading a situation, not just seeing it.
"Containment," she says finally. "Those are riot lines. Trying to channel the crowd, keep them from spreading."
"Channel them where?"
Lia's jaw tightens. "Doesn't matter. The point is control."
They watch. The crowd surges. The lines hold. From this distance, it's silent—just lights moving, patterns shifting, the whole thing abstract and unreal.
Eve's hands are still in the dishwater. She doesn't remember stopping.
"Those people," she says. "The ones in lines. They're—"
"Military. Or security. Same thing tonight." Lia picks up her towel again, but doesn't use it. Just holds it.
Eve squints. The figures in the lines are hard to make out—just shapes, really, but the shapes are wrong. Bulkier than normal people. Wider at the shoulders. Some of them seem to have extra bits. Attachments. Things that catch the light differently.
"Are they wearing—" She stops. Doesn't know the word.
"Armor," Lia says. "Full suits. The kind that move on their own, almost. You see how they don't shift around like normal people? How they hold position without fidgeting? That's the suits. They lock in place when they need to."
Eve tries to imagine what that feels like. Being locked in place. Facing a crowd.
Above the lines, higher up, something moves.
Not a mag-lev—wrong shape, wrong speed. Two somethings. Circling.
"What are those?"
Lia follows her pointing finger. Watches for a long moment.
"Drones. Surveillance. Big ones." She pauses. "GR-7s. You don't see those at normal protests. Those are for when they're expecting trouble."
The drones circle slow and patient, like birds riding thermal currents. Except birds don't circle that perfectly. That evenly. That deliberately.
To the side of the lines, further back, three bigger shapes.
Vehicles. Blocky, armored, sitting dark. Not doing anything. Just present.
"What are those for?"
Lia shakes her head slowly. "Transport. Or worse. Hard to tell from here. The fact that they're just sitting there means they're waiting. Either to move people out or to bring more in."
The crowd surges again. The lines hold. The drones circle.
From 38 floors up, through a kitchen window streaked with drying water spots, here's what they see: a city holding its breath. A crowd that doesn't know it's being watched from above. Soldiers in suits that lock in place, standing exactly where someone told them to stand.
Eve's left arm tingles—phantom sensation, not real, her brain interpreting nothing as something. She ignores it.
"Should we be worried?"
Lia is quiet for a long moment.
"We should be paying attention," she says finally. "Worried is for later. Worried is when they start knocking on doors. Right now, they're still just knocking on each other."
She picks up a plate from the drying rack. Wipes it even though it's dry.
"The ones in front," Eve says. "The ones leading the crowd. What happens to them?"
Lia's hand stops moving.
"They're the ones who get arrested first. Processed first. And some of them..." She trails off, looks toward the window, toward the distant lines. "Some of them are still inside. Twelve years later."
Eve stares at her.
"That's why you need to go to Bishop," Lia says quietly. "That's why you need to get that degree. Because the ones who can't be replaced are the ones who survive."
The clock ticks. Kiva shifts in her sleep. The drones circle on.
Eve looks back at the window. At the swarm. At the lines. At the armor and the vehicles and the patience of a system that's done this before.
She thinks about her arm. The Helix logo. The way people are looking at anyone who works for them.
She thinks about the soldier at the checkpoint earlier, the one who looked at her like she was someone worth watching.
She thinks about Peyton in the lobby, asking if the curfew was real.
"Come on," Lia says gently. "Let's finish these. Then you go home. I'll walk you to the elevator."
Eve nods. Turns back to the dishes.
Outside, the lines hold. The crowd surges. The city hums on.
From 38 floors up, it all looks like nothing at all.
Later, in the hallway, waiting for the elevator, Kiva sitting patiently at her feet, Eve looks at Lia.
"What if they don't stop? The crowd, I mean. What if they keep pushing?"
Lia meets her eyes.
"Then the lines move. Or the drones do something. Or the vehicles roll forward. And tomorrow, there's a news report about a riot that got out of hand, and everyone goes back to work, and nothing changes until next time." She pauses. "That's how it works, Eve. That's how it's always worked."
The elevator dings.
Lia pets Kiva one last time. "Go home. Sleep. We'll talk tomorrow."
Eve steps in. Turns around. Lia's face in the gap as the doors close—tired, watching, already planning something Eve can't see.
Then the doors seal shut, and it's just her and Kiva and the hum of descent.
She looks at her reflection in the polished metal. Brown hair, blue eyes. A girl with a prosthetic arm and a stack of books on her counter and four days off she hasn't planned yet.
Below her, the lobby. Above her, the apartment. Outside, the city.
And somewhere southeast, four lines of soldiers in locking armor, facing down a crowd that doesn't know it's already lost.
The elevator hums.
Kiva leans against her leg.
The elevator dings as it reaches her floor. Kiva already leading the way to their apartment. Eve reaches into her purse, pulls out her ID, scans it. The door slides open.
Kiva doesn't wait. Past Eve's legs, nails clicking on composite, headed straight for his bed in the corner. She turns twice, three times, then collapses with a sigh that means the walk was exactly long enough and now the night can properly end.
Eve stands in the entry for a moment. Just breathing.
The door slides shut behind her. The deadbolt engages with a soft thunk—the sound of being home.
The apartment smells like her. Not in a bad way—just the accumulated scent of a space that's lived in. The dried herbs hanging in the kitchen. The faint trace of the beans she cooked last night. The papery smell of old books. And underneath it all, something green and growing.
She toes off her shoes. Leaves them by the door where she always leaves them.
Kiva's water bowl is empty. Of course it is. Eve fills it at the sink, watches the dog haul him self up long enough to drink deeply, then collapse again.
The plants come next.
They're everywhere—not in a chaotic way, but in a collected way. The windowsill in the kitchen has four pots lined up like soldiers: basil, mint, something with small purple flowers Eve can never remember the name of, and a scraggly rosemary that's somehow survived three years despite her best efforts to neglect it. The basil needs water. The leaves are just starting to droop.
She fills the watering can—a ridiculous thing, ceramic with a hand-painted sunflower, a gift from her mother years ago—and goes to work.
The big one in the corner is her favorite. Basilisk fern, somehow, improbably, thriving in a forty-second-floor apartment in a city of twenty million. It's taller than she is now, its leaves broad and deep green, its trunk woody and real. The woman who sold it to her at the market three years ago said it would never fruit indoors. It hasn't. But every spring it puts out new leaves, and every fall it drops them, and somehow that cycle feels like proof that things keep going.
She waters it slowly, watching the soil darken.
Next to it, on a small table, a cluster of succulents in mismatched pots. Fat leaves in shades of green and purple and gray-blue. One of them is blooming—a thin stalk with tiny pink flowers that look almost artificial. She touches one, gently. The petal holds.
The smell rises as the water hits the soil. That particular green smell—damp earth, growing things, the quiet respiration of plants doing what plants do. It's the opposite of the city outside. The opposite of recycled air and filtered everything. It smells like somewhere else. Somewhere slower.
On the shelf by the window, three smaller pots. Rosemary. Sunflowers. Hens and chicks.
Not for eating. Just... because. She planted them months ago, a handful of seeds from a care package one of the grain rats sent. They're just grass, really—thin stalks that sway when she opens the window. But every time she looks at them, she thinks of Satellite 12. Of Danny's mom pulling loaves from the oven. Of fields that stretch to the horizon.
She waters them last. Just a little. Just enough.
The apartment feels different now. Fuller. The plants have had their drink, and the air is thick with that green smell, and Kiva is snoring softly in the corner.
Eve crosses to the desk.
It's small, pushed against the wall, cluttered in the way of things that get used. A stack of papers—shift schedules, a flyer for the transit union meeting she keeps meaning to attend. A half-empty mug from this morning, cold coffee filmed over. A photo of her mother, the same one that's always there, looking right at the camera like she knew.
The bottom drawer sticks. It always sticks. She yanks it hard enough that the whole desk protests, and reaches into the back.
The bag is small. Plain. No label, because it doesn't need one. Medical-grade, from a clinic on 33rd where the doctor doesn't ask too many questions as long as you have the right paperwork. For phantom pain. For the nights when her left arm remembers it's not real by pretending it's on fire.
She doesn't need it tonight. Not really. The tingling earlier was just that—tingling. But she wants it. Wants the soft haze, the way the edges of things go blurry, the way the phantom arm stops phantom-ing for a few hours.
She takes the bag to the couch. Sits. Pulls out a pre-rolled something and lights it with the cheap lighter she keeps in the cup next to the plant shelf.
The first hit is always the worst. Harsh, chemical, her lungs complaining. The second is better. By the third, she's leaning back into the couch cushions, watching the ceiling, letting the world go soft.
Her datapad is on the counter. She could play something. A feed. Music. Anything.
Instead, she just listens.
The apartment makes sounds. They always do. The hum of the building's systems. The whisper of air through the vents. The occasional creak of settling materials. Kiva's soft snoring. The faint, distant whine of a mag-lev somewhere outside, muffled by the glass.
From inside the walls, sometimes, there are other sounds. Pipes. Electrical. The building breathing.
She turns from them. Focuses on Kiva's breathing. On the plants. On the ceiling. On anything but the sounds.
The cannabis works its way through her. The phantom tingling in her left arm fades to something distant, manageable. Her thoughts slow. The image of those four lines of soldiers, those circling drones, those armored shapes—it all recedes, becomes abstract, becomes something that happened to someone else in a different city.
She's still holding the joint. Barely. It's balanced on the arm of the couch, smoke curling up toward the ceiling.
Kiva shifts in his sleep. Whines once, softly. Chasing something.
Eve's eyes close.
Open.
The ceiling is the same. The plants are still there, dark shapes against the window. The city hums on.
Close.
Open later—minutes? hours?—to find the joint gone, ground out in the ashtray she doesn't remember moving. Kiva is at her feet now, head on paws, watching her with that patient dog expression.
"Hey," Eve says. Or thinks she says. Her mouth is dry.
Kiva's tail thumps once.
The music. She never put music on. But there's something—a feed left playing on her datapad, maybe, or a neighbor's system bleeding through the walls. Something with a beat. Something she doesn't recognize.
She turns from it. Focuses on Kiva's breathing. On the rhythm of it. On the warmth of the dog at her feet.
Her eyes close again.
The city hums. The plants breathe. Kiva watches.
And somewhere southeast, the lines still hold, the drones still circle, the crowd still surges.
But not here. Not now.
Here, now, there's just the couch and the dark and the soft nothing of not-quite-sleep.
She drifts.