Simon turned around, ready to slip away, when he felt a hand grip his wrist.

  "Where are you going?" Jonsy asked.

  He turned, surprised. "Back to my room."

  Jonsy tilted her head slightly. "You’re not going to stay with us?"

  Simon hesitated. His mind was already spinning through tasks—threats to anticipate, systems to upgrade. He had reasons, plenty of them. But then Kovsky added quietly:

  "You should stay. Just for a bit."

  Simon’s first instinct was to decline. He had work to do. But something in Jonsy and Kovsky’s voices made him pause.

  Maybe he did need this.

  Maybe they all did.

  He slowly nodded. "You know what? I think I will stay."

  They gathered in a circle, seated on the floor beneath the soft blue glow of the hive’s ambient light. Jerry curled up near Simon’s foot, a quiet, twitching presence. The silence was awkward at first, as if none of them knew how to begin.

  But then Simon spoke.

  He told them everything. From waking up in Upsilon to his long journey to Site Phi. Of finding the truth about the ARK, about Catherine, and about himself. Of loss, of survival, and of the aching stretch between what he had been and what he had become.

  The others listened in silence. They didn’t interrupt, didn’t flinch. They couldn't show their emotions with their new faces, but their voices—quiet murmurs of agreement or disbelief—betrayed the depth of their understanding.

  When he finished, the silence that followed was soft. Grieving. Human.

  Then Renata broke it.

  "At Tau we had a joke board in the mess hall. Every Friday, we’d post a new one. Even during the worst weeks, we kept laughing. It felt... necessary."

  "I remember," Vic said, a quiet chuckle in his voice. "You once wrote, 'Why did the squid hack the reactor?'"

  "Don’t," Renata groaned. "Vic, please."

  Vic grinned. "Because it wanted to kraken the code."

  A few scattered laughs broke out, awkward but sincere.

  Antjie added, "I kept a box of rooibos tea in my locker. Every shift, no matter how bad it got, I’d brew a cup. That smell—earthy, warm—it reminded me of home."

  Sarah groaned. "I tried that once. Tasted like someone boiled a tree branch and dared me to enjoy it."

  Antjie laughed. "It’s an acquired taste."

  Simon said nothing, just listened.

  They were copies of the originals, all of them, but that didn’t make them less. They were continuity. They were the echoes of lives still burning, still stubbornly trying to mean something.

  In that moment, the darkness pressing in from outside the hive seemed farther away than ever.

  "You remind me of a villain from an old comic book," Elias said, tilting his helmeted head. "He had this thing... what was it called?" He rubbed the bottom of his helmet, trying to mimic the gesture of rubbing his chin in thought. "A symbiote."

  "You're talking about Venom," Simon replied.

  "Yeah, Venom! If you drew a spider symbol on your chest, you'd look just like him," Elias commented, half-laughing.

  Simon let out a short chuckle, but there was something heavier beneath it. He looked down at his dark like ink, ever-shifting limbs, the way his body shimmered like living liquid under the dim light. The silence stretched for a moment.

  "You know... I used to work at this comic book shop back in Toronto," Simon said quietly. "It was called The Grimoire. Tiny place, tucked between a laundromat and a bakery. I used to spend hours there, even when I wasn't working. Just... reading. Living in those stories. I always imagined myself as the hero—someone who could fly, bend steel, save the world with a smile and a cape. "

  He paused, his gaze distant.

  "Those stories got me through a lot. Bad days. Loneliness. All of it. I used to think that if I had powers, I could fix things. I could make life better—for me, for others. Superpowers were like hope in color and ink. But now..."

  He trailed off, lifting a hand and watching as it morphed—metal folding over metal, forming blades, claws, armor, then returning to a vaguely human shape.

  "Now I have something like that. These... changes. Powers, I guess. But they don't feel heroic. They feel like survival. Like desperation given form. I don’t wear a cape. I wear the weight of everything I couldn’t save. Does that count as a superpower?" he asked, looking back at Elias.

  Elias didn’t answer right away.

  "Yeah," Elias said eventually, voice quieter. "I think it does."

  Simon noticed something subtle but striking. Off to the side, Kovsky and Jonsy were sitting together, close in a way that felt quietly intimate. Her hand rested gently on his forearm, fingers brushing just enough to say, "I’m here," without the need for words. In this cold and forgotten place, that simple gesture radiated warmth. It was rare, precious—a flicker of humanity in the ruins.

  Some gazes shifted toward them. Elias looked. Then Sarah.

  They didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe they didn’t care. Their heads were close together, speaking quietly, as if the world around them had fallen away for a moment.

  "Kovsky?" Sarah finally asked, her voice breaking the hush.

  Kovsky cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter. "Sorry. We were just..."

  He trailed off, struggling for words.

  Jonsy continued, her voice soft but steady. "We were just talking about the past. We had been dating... a long time ago. Before everything fell apart."

  She glanced at Kovsky, then back at the others.

  "And it seems the spark hadn’t died out completely."

  Kovsky nodded.

  He hesitated, then added with a quiet smile, "I read once that love is like an old lantern buried under snow. The world can freeze around it, bury it, forget it. But if you dig it out and shield it from the wind, the flame’s still there. Still warm. Still waiting. That's what it felt like."

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  After the meeting ended, Simon returned to his room. The corridor hummed with a low, mechanical rhythm, but his mind was far from the metal walls surrounding him. He leaned back against the cold surface, gaze unfocused, thoughts spinning.

  Kovsky's words echoed in his head—the image of an old lantern buried in snow, still burning. Still waiting.

  Something about it stirred him.

  He didn’t stay long.

  Drawn by impulse more than intent, Simon stepped back into the hive. The deeper he moved, the darker the corridors became. Warm and pulsating, the air around him thrummed with a deep, organic resonance—like being inside a living thing. He followed that sound, that slow, insistent beat, to the heart of the Solipsist hive.

  It was a vast chamber, dimly lit by the pulsing glow of veins embedded in the walls. At its center hung a grotesque mechanical heart, suspended by fibrous tendrils. It beat slowly, deliberately, pumping structure gel through channels that spread like arteries across the hive.

  And there she stood.

  Imogen Reed.

  Motionless, rooted to the floor.

  Her dark grey skin shimmered with a strange inner luminescence beneath the pale synthetic lights.

  Simon’s sensors picked up electromagnetic pulses transferring between her and the floor—silent communication, a steady exchange of energy and thought.

  Her eyes were closed.

  He stepped closer, quietly, reverently.

  Her dark eyes opened.

  He didn't stop. He approached until they were nearly touching. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he raised his hand and cupped her cheek. Her skin was cool and smooth—porcelain infused with something impossibly alive.

  Their eyes locked. Alien black met blue glow.

  And then, she changed.

  Not physically, not in any measurable way, but perceptually. A veil seemed to lift.

  Her alien form shimmered—and then faded.

  And Simon saw her.

  The woman she used to be.

  Green eyes, brilliant and aware, stared back at him. They brimmed with intelligence, calm, and a quiet pain. Her long lashes and delicately arched brows framed those eyes with subtle grace.

  Her face was sharply beautiful, all high cheekbones and the soft flush of life in her skin, as though she had just come in from the cold. A thin scar curved near the bridge of her nose.

  Her deep brown hair, neatly parted, had come slightly loose. A few strands fell across her forehead, softening her disciplined appearance. It made her seem real—vulnerable, human.

  She wore a fitted dark uniform, high-collared and strictly functional. Nothing about it was made for beauty, yet she wore it with understated elegance, as though grace had become second nature.

  There was something quietly powerful about her. Not hardened by life—but shaped by it. Someone who had endured and kept her soul intact.

  Simon leaned in, lips hovering near hers. The blue glow in his lenses pulsed gently.

  But then—he stopped.

  Something within him wavered.

  Emotion surged. Not just his. Not entirely. There were other echoes there—other feelings. Were these remnants of the WAU? Its love? Its memory?

  Was this love his ?

  He didn’t know. He only knew he felt something deep and undeniable.

  A pull. An ache.

  Her voice echoed softly in his mind. Or maybe in the room. Maybe not her voice at all.

  "Simon..."

  Was it her? Was it a stored memory from WAU’s archives, mimicking the past? A perfect impression left behind like a fingerprint on glass?

  He searched himself. Felt it again.

  That strange, aching pull in his core. The spark of something raw. Personal.

  The walls around them throbbed gently, as if the hive itself were holding its breath.

  He looked at her, and it intensified. Not mechanical. Not artificial.

  Real.

  Just as he moved closer, reality fractured.

  Light bent like heat through glass. The human form flickered, faded.

  The illusion dissolved.

  Imogen’s alien shell returned—gleaming and inhuman. Beautiful, but unreachable. Distant once more.

  Simon remained still, hand resting on her cheek.

  Caught in the space between memory and machine, where love flickered—and vanished like breath on glass.

  His gaze fell as he slowly stepped back, his hand lifting gently from her cheek. The coolness of her skin lingered on his fingers like a fading memory. He stared at her alien frame—glossy, fused, and still—as her eyes slowly closed once more.

  He turned without a word and walked out of the chamber.

  The corridor opened into the hive’s core—a vast, cathedral-like chamber where the Queen rested.

  Simon stepped forward. His gaze fixed on her.

  The Queen.

  As he approached, two tendrils slid out from his back.

  The Queen lowered her head.

  Simon’s tendrils extended, pressing against her glistening crown. They sank into the soft ridges of her grotesque skull, merging.

  And he connected.

  Driven by an impulse that defied logic, Simon let himself fall into the abyss of memory—Pathos-II’s buried echoes, entangled deep within the Queen’s neural web.

  A flood of voices, images, and fractured moments engulfed him.

  Then—clarity.

  Imogen Reed.

  He found her.

  He watched her life unfold as if walking through a dream. Childhood flashes. Laughter in sterile labs. Coffee shared in tight corridors. Arguments. Long nights over data consoles. He felt her hopes, her doubts, her pride.

  And then came the Vivarium.

  A strange shift took over her memories. Something fractured.

  She was standing in a small, well-lit room. A chair and a metal table occupied the center. Resting on the table was a device—like a television fused with thick, writhing cables sprouting from its back like tentacles. The Vivarium.

  It powered on.

  Then she collapsed.

  Her body convulsed—but something felt wrong. In the memory, Imogen was still standing. Still watching.

  Simon saw her—Imogen—staring at the massive screen of the Vivarium, watching herself from the outside, seeing her own body seizing violently.

  "Shit," she muttered, breathless. She turned quickly to a control panel on the wall and slammed her hand against a button.

  Then—nothing.

  The memory looped.

  Again, the machine turned on. Again, the seizure. Again, the outside observer watching her body from the inside. A split.

  A duality.

  Reed had been fractured.

  In the aftermath of the scan, something had gone wrong. The copy was corrupted. Her brain, traumatized by the seizure, had suffered damage—Chun suspected it, but no one truly understood the depth.

  Imogen began to lose time. She would awaken in places she didn’t remember walking to. She kept journals—dozens of them—trying to track which version of herself was writing which page.

  And the fever dreams.

  Endless, haunted dreams of drowning in data. Of her own face staring back at her, accusing, blurred and screaming. She would wake with her heart pounding, unsure which self had dreamed and which had awoken.

  Reed had refused to provide a second scan, and she believed that was the real reason she was reassigned to Site Lambda. Her official duty: join the Lambda Salvage Crew.

  But it was exile.

  She wandered Site Lambda’s decaying halls, salvaging machinery and fragments of a collapsing world. With her was Adam Golaski—pragmatic, tired, but oddly light-hearted. She had no illusions left; she was jaded, unsurprised by anything WAU or the sea had to offer. In one salvage sweep, they uncovered a UH-2 hidden under a tarp. It spoke—intelligent, calm, familiar.

  It was Harry Halperin.

  Golaski recognized him immediately. They had worked together at Omicron.

  Reed, without hesitation, began disabling the unit. Golaski, trying to reason, tried to speak with it. The Mockingbird turned, asked Reed what she was doing. Its hand lashed out, gripping hers. Pain. Blood.

  Golaski reacted, smashing its head with a wrench. The grip loosened. Reed fell back, clutching her wounded hand, then scolded Golaski for being needlessly crude—even while continuing to pull the Mockingbird apart.

  At the command center, Reed wrapped her hand and sat near the console, listening to fading voices across broken comms. Her eyelids drooped. She dreamed.

  She dreamed of the ARK.

  She was inside a Haimatsu Ductile Suit, surrounded by glowing praise, phantom voices calling ARK salvation. But she refused it. She tore off her helmet. Water flooded in. Cold, endless.

  She drowned.

  She awoke in tears.

  Outside the window, two whales glided through the gloom, twisting in a mating ritual. For a brief, silent moment, she found comfort—proof that life still endured in beauty.

  Golaski called over the radio. He was standing on a stool, trying to patch a structure gel leak with his coffee mug. Reed, amused, took a sip from her own mug and watched before moving closer, leaning on a table with a sarcastic jab at his posture.

  When she finally helped him, they spoke little. Supplies were running low. She stood to leave but was stopped by Golaski’s blunt request for gauze. She handed it over, explained the fix wouldn’t last. He glared. She left.

  Reed later met Vanessa Hart. At first, they spoke only of duties. But the topic turned, as it always did, to Catherine Chun and the ARK. Hart shared that Chun had been worried about Reed after her seizure. Reed brushed it off, insisting Chun only cared about the scan.

  Still, her eyes dimmed when Hart said Chun had left.

  That night, Reed seized again in her sleep. Hart was there, holding her, as alarms sounded—structure gel bursting from the pipes.

  Reed immediately blamed WAU. Hart insisted WAU lacked the intelligence to plan. Reed argued. She knew better. Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.

  Later, at the tram station, after salvaging another section, Reed and Golaski waited. Golaski, casually, asked if she had ever gone through with the scan. Reed dodged the question, deflecting to the Mockingbird. Why would WAU convert a UH-2? Golaski asked if she still dreamed. She didn’t answer.