April, 1096

Three months. I've been counting them in steamed eggs and fairytales and the weight of the black band on my throat.

I sit cross-legged on the mattress with a blank sheet of paper on my lap. Lisa leans over my shoulder close enough that her auburn hair brushes my arm. We've just finished a dense illustrated history of Victoria, and I'm trying to sketch one of the towering Steam Knights out of it.

The pen moves cleanly across the paper. The lines come out deliberate, nothing like the jerky scribbles I was producing in January. My fingers have finally learned how to hold the barrel.

I finish and sign LETHE at the bottom of the page. It's neat. It looks exactly like the handwriting of a diligent twelve-year-old girl.

I stare at the five letters and reach back for the other signature — the fast, practiced one I used on corporate documents and grocery lists in the Lower North Shore. I expect the image to be there.

It isn't. The memory isn't hazy or distant; it's gone. A blank spot on the canvas.

A shiver goes down my spine. I don't panic. Tonight, once Lisa has gone back to the dormitories, I'll open the fairytale book to the back, where four blank pages sit behind the last story, write the date at the top of the first one, and start again from January, from the ruins, while I still have any of it.

If they find it, they find a child copying out her days. If they read it properly, I'm finished. I'd rather be finished than empty.

The sobbing terror of January has long since numbed into something quieter. Every time I press my palm to the biometric lock on my feeding staff and take a supervised sip of Lisa's joy or Erika's warmth, the crystals take their fuel.

"Wow, Lethe! That looks just like the book!" Lisa says, ears twitching. "You're getting so good at drawing!"

I smile up at her bright, innocent face. "Thank you, Lisa. The armor was hard to get right."

Before she can point out her favorite detail on the Steam Knight, the ward stops being quiet.

The sound doesn't build. A klaxon tears through the hum of the landship, a dual-toned shriek I feel in my teeth.

The crisp white daylight simulation dies. For a fraction of a second the ward is dark, and then the emergency lighting comes up, strobing red across the metal walls.

Lisa flinches hard. Her nine auburn tails puff into bristling brushes and her vulpine ears flatten against her head. She grabs the sleeve of my medical gown, and her small hands are shaking.

"Attention all personnel." A synthesized voice cuts under the klaxon from the wall communicator. "Catastrophe trajectory updated. Imminent interception path detected. All non-combat personnel evacuate to designated safe zones. Brace for evasive maneuvers."

My heart sinks. Catastrophe.

Erika half collides with the doorframe coming in. Her breath is short, her light purple eyes are blown wide, and the feathers near her temples are pinned flat against her skin.

"You're okay. We're okay," she gets out over the wail of the klaxon, hands up in a placating gesture. She hurries to the bed, looking between Lisa and me. "Rhodes Island isn't in the direct path. The landship is maneuvering around the impact zone."

Lisa's grip on my sleeve loosens a fraction, and she lets out a small shaky breath.

"But I can't stay here with you, Lethe," Erika continues, her voice trembling as she makes herself stand straight. Her hands close into fists at her sides. "I have to report to the hangar immediately. I need to get suited up and deploy with the disaster relief Field Ops."

"Deploy?" My voice comes out small. "If we aren't in the path… where are you going?"

Erika swallows hard. "It's a localized Catastrophe. An Originium-laced sandstorm, and it's tracking straight toward a nomadic mining platform belonging to Rim Billiton. They aren't going to be able to move the city out of the way in time."

My hand goes out toward her before I decide to do it. Everything in me wants to beg, to cry, to hold onto my caretaker and make her stay in this sterile bubble where it's safe. I make myself stop.

Her face is frightened and set. If she doesn't go, people on that platform die in the ruins. If she stays here to hold my hand, she breaks her oath as a Medic.

I curl my trembling fingers into a fist and pull my hand back, resting it on the illustrated cover of the Victorian fairytale book.

"Be careful, Miss Erika," Lisa says, her voice wavering and her bravery pushing up through it anyway. She gives a small determined nod, her nine tails curled tight around herself. "We'll be good here."

"Please be safe, Erika," I echo, keeping my voice as steady as this body will allow. I give her a weak, brave smile. "We'll be right here when you get back."

Erika's eyes shine with unshed tears. She gives us both one last fond look, then turns on her heel and runs back out into the corridor to face the storm.

We're alone again. The book is open on my lap and the drawing of the Steam Knight lies beside it. I reach over and take Lisa's trembling hand in mine.

"Do you… do you want to read the next story?" I ask quietly.

Lisa nods and scoots closer until her shoulder is pressed against mine. While the landship works its way through the weather, we put our heads down and retreat back into the Victorian fairytales, using the gilded pages as a shield against the end of the world outside.

The door opens with a snap that makes us both jump, and I scramble upright, dropping the pen and the sketch onto the mattress.

"Please, no blood draw!" I yelp, hands flying up to shield my arms. My heart hammers against my ribs, convinced she's brought her syringes into the middle of a ship-wide emergency.

Warfarin saunters in, unbothered by the strobing red light or the subsonic rumble of the landship evading the storm. Her white hair shifts as she stops at the foot of the bed, and she's watching me with that familiar predatory amusement.

"Relax, little anomaly," she drawls, waving a hand. "I am merely here to observe my favorite blood bags…" She pauses, catches herself, and coughs theatrically. "Excuse me. Patients. I'm here to observe my patients under the localized effects of a Catastrophe."

She leans against the brushed steel of the wall and crosses her arms. "Originium is highly resonant. Consider this a clinical wellness check."

I lower my hands and let out a long, shaky breath. With her attention burning into the side of my head, I make my pulse settle and turn back to the fairytale book. Lisa scoots a little closer, and we go on with the next story in low voices.

Hours pass, and the silence in the ward gets heavier.

Warfarin swept out a long time ago, taking her metallic intensity back to the laboratory. Lisa had to return to the dormitories not long after, with a last reassuring wave and a synchronized wag of her nine tails before the heavy pneumatic door sealed me back into my windowless box.

When the door hisses open again my head snaps up, and I lean forward expecting pale feathers and light purple eyes.

It's Lena. No Erika.

She steps into the dim strobing light carrying my meal, and the sight of it does nothing for me. I stare at the silver pouch with the rook catching the amber light, and my stomach goes cold and tight.

"Lethe," Lena says, her voice steady over the subsonic rumble of the landship. She sets the pouch gently on the nightstand. "Erika asked me to make sure you're taken care of."

"Is she…" My voice fractures into a squeak. I clutch the blanket. "Is she going to come back?"

Lena reaches out and rests a warm hand over my fingers, and something green and patient comes off her, the smell of a greenhouse in the middle of a fire drill, pushing back at the thing climbing up my throat.

"Erika is brave, and she's very well trained," she says, her eyes holding mine. "She knows how to move in a storm, Lethe. You have to have faith in her. She promised you she'd be careful, and she meant it. And you need to be brave for her too."

I want to believe her. I want to sink into that warmth and pretend the world outside my metal box isn't dying. Before she can say anything else, the blip of her communicator cuts through the ward.

Lena closes her eyes for a moment, and a long breath goes out of her.

"I'm so sorry, but I have to go," she says, her face lined with a quiet sorrow. "The triage centers are beginning to overflow, and I'm needed on the incoming casualties. Please, Lethe. Eat your food, and try to rest."

She squeezes my hand once and hurries back out into the metallic corridors.

Alone in the amber light, I stare at the silver pouch on the table and don't touch it. Whatever Lena meant to leave behind her doesn't hold.

Is Erika safe? The question goes around and around inside my skull. Is she… still alive?

I draw my knees up and bury my face in my arms. My hands won't stop shaking.

Please, Terra, I say into the silence of the room. Not her. You've already taken my past. You're working on my mind right now. Don't you dare take her too. I can't lose her.

I sit on the edge of the mattress with my fingers tracing the monitor at my neck. Maybe if I took it off I could find her, somehow.

The door creeps open with a soft, hesitant sigh. My hand drops away from my throat and I go still as a silhouette steps into the artificial dusk of the ward.

It's Erika.

She's wrecked. The medical uniform is fresh and clean, and the white of it only shows how much of her isn't. Her pale hair is damp and stringy, the feathers near her temples plastered flat against her head. She smells of a high-grade decontamination shower instead of herself.

She stops just inside the threshold with her hand still on the door frame, holding herself upright. Her light purple eyes are red-rimmed and swollen. She's been crying, and not briefly. She's come here straight from the triage bays to look at something that is still intact.

She blinks, not expecting me to be sitting awake in the dark. "Lethe…?" Her voice cracks, stripped of the warm authority it usually carries.

I don't think. The relief of seeing her breathing takes the facade apart. My padded slippers hit the metal floor and I run to her, crash into her legs, get my arms around her waist as tight as this frame can manage. My face goes against the damp uniform, my long horns angled carefully away so I don't hurt her.

Erika hesitates. She stands rigidly still, hands hovering above my shoulders, and I can feel the tension going through her — the residue of the disaster zone, the caution of a Medic afraid to contaminate a quarantined patient, or just the shock of a broken child offering her comfort.

Then she takes a shuddering breath and gives way. She drops to her knees on the cold steel floor, bringing us to eye level, and throws her arms around me. She doesn't say anything. Her face goes into my grey hair and her shoulders shake, and fresh tears soak into the collar of my medical gown.

I hold her back and keep my face in her shoulder.

And there in the dark, with her arms locked around me, something goes clear in my head.

I think of Nymph — the only Djall Operator I knew, off a roster that's still years away from existing. Modern Djall don't survive as parasites. They integrate. They perform therapies, using their Originium Arts to siphon psychological trauma out of people. They take the pain away.

I'm a Djall. I can do that.

I pull back, my hands sliding off her shoulders to take her wrists. "Erika. Sit with me and tell me what happened, okay?"

She blinks, her tear-streaked face in the dim amber light, disoriented by whatever is in my voice. "Lethe…?"

"Please."

I don't wait for her to argue. I tug her up off the cold floor and onto the edge of my mattress and sit beside her. My left hand closes around the metal chassis of the modified Raythean staff leaning against the nightstand. My right squeezes her trembling fingers.

Erika looks down at our hands. A breath shudders out of her, and the mission comes out of her in a hollow whisper.

She tells me about the Rim Billiton mining platform, the structures flattened by the kinetic force of the Catastrophe. She tells me about digging into the wreckage of a crushed house and finding a Cautus girl.

"She was so small, Lethe… eight or ten, maybe," Erika chokes out, fresh tears welling. "She was in agony. The localized Originium density from the storm caused a violent infection spike. Black crystals were sprouting out of her skin."

Her voice fractures on the parents. One crushed under the collapsed debris of the roof. The other taken by a terminal Oripathy flare-up that the Catastrophe's resonance set off, dying in front of the child.

"I'm so sorry," Erika sobs, bowing her head. "I was so focused on stabilizing her, on keeping her breathing… I forgot to come by. I left you alone."

I don't say anything. I shift my left hand and press my palm flat to the biometric lock of the staff.

The device hums and the restricted channel clicks open. I don't crack it a millimeter to graze this time. I throw the limiters as wide as Closure's engineering will allow, and I pull.

It comes in like a blow. Concentrated trauma tastes like ash and spoiled meat and cold copper, and my stomach heaves at the weight of what I'm dragging into myself.

I keep my jaw shut. I grip her hand tighter and take all of it — the despair, the guilt, the horror that has her pinned.

Her posture changes almost at once.

Erika's hunched shoulders straighten. Her ragged breathing smooths out. The thing that had her anchored to the floor a minute ago is gone, and what comes into the space is a lightness that arrived too fast to be real.

Her medical instincts catch up a second later. The trauma didn't fade. It was cut out.

Her eyes snap open wide. She looks at her hand in mine, then at the glowing biometric lock of the Arts Unit I'm holding.

"What… no…" Erika gasps, trying to pull her hand back. "Lethe? What did you do? Stop!" Her voice climbs into panic. "Your memories!"

Before she can close the distance and pry the staff out of my fingers, the door opens with a sharp snap.

Kal'tsit steps into the amber-lit ward, her crisp white coat rustling against the silence. Fully dressed, green eyes sharp and awake. Of course she is. The PRTS cameras in the corners of my ceiling aren't decorative, and she's been reading the telemetry off my collar the whole time.

"Lethe." Her voice cuts through the room. "You are redlining the hardcoded limiters on your Arts Unit. Your throughput is well beyond your established baseline."

I go still. My stomach is still turning over on what I swallowed, and the adrenaline goes through me on top of it. I brace for the shadows behind her to twist, for Mon3tr to come out of them and pin me to the wall for breaching the terms of my survival, for the staff to be taken out of my hands and the dark to close over me for good.

The shadows stay exactly where they are. Mon3tr doesn't manifest. She doesn't even take a step toward the bed to disarm me.

She stands with her hands clasped loosely behind her back and watches. She isn't stopping me.

Kal'tsit shifts her attention from me to Erika. "Erika. Report your current psychological baseline. What exactly are you feeling?"

Erika is breathing hard, her hands hovering helplessly over the staff I'm still clutching. She looks up at Kal'tsit, and her eyes hold awe and devastation at the same time.

"I feel…" she stammers, struggling with the absence where the thing used to be. "The panic is gone. The weight… the horror of the ruins… it's just gone."

Then her focus snaps back to me and her expression crumbles. "But Dr. Kal'tsit, she's burning!" Her voice rises into a wail. "She's burning her own mind to take it away from me! She's destroying her own memories!"

Kal'tsit's face doesn't move. She offers Erika nothing.

"Did she attempt to alter your perception?" she asks. "Did she implant behavioral suggestions, force a state of artificial euphoria, or do anything else besides siphon the localized trauma?"

Erika shakes her head hard. "No! No, nothing else! Just… just the pain. She just took the pain. I don't feel anything else, Director! She didn't do anything else."

I swallow. The rot of it still coats the back of my throat, and I make myself ignore it, look away from Erika's devastated face, and meet Kal'tsit's glacial green eyes.

"Dr. Kal'tsit…" I put everything I have into it. "I can help that Cautus girl too. I can—"

"No!" Erika's voice tears across the quiet of the ward. She lunges forward and grips my shoulders, her eyes blown wide. "No, Lethe, absolutely not! You can't!"

"I don't want to stay in here forever!" I cry, and it comes out as a high wail off the brushed steel walls.

I clutch the heavy chassis of the staff against my chest, my eyes blurring, and look back at Erika, letting the real gratitude of my human soul bleed into the mask of the terrified amnesiac.

"You have taken care of me for three months, Erika," I sob, my breath hitching. The tears spill over and drop onto the blankets. "You brought me fairytales. You brought me food. You hold my hand."

I reach out and grab the damp fabric of her uniform and hold on as hard as I can, pouring every bit of the guilt and helplessness of a caged existence into it.

"I don't… I don't want to just be someone who sits in a locked room while you go out and sacrifice yourself to save more people like me." I look up at her and my voice drops to almost nothing. "You pulled me out of a Catastrophe, too… please. Please let me help."

The room goes heavy and silent. Kal'tsit doesn't answer. She stands there, her green eyes going over my wet face and the white-knuckled grip I have on Erika's uniform.

Then she exhales, slow and measured.

"You signed a contract, Lethe," she says, flat. "A binding agreement of absolute compliance that you clearly did not trouble yourself to comprehend before you put pen to paper."

She takes one deliberate step forward, and the weight of her comes down over the room.

"By bypassing your monitor's baseline and forcing an unauthorized manipulation of my medical personnel's psychological state, you have breached the terms of your probation. You are a biological hazard operating outside containment parameters. By every metric of Rhodes Island protocol, what you have done in this room is grounds for immediate neutralization."

She lets that sit in the amber-lit air. The shadows behind her still do not move.

"However." The word lands, and the whole thing turns under it. "Rhodes Island evaluates utility against risk. If you are capable of replicating this stabilization. If you can siphon the terminal distress of the Catastrophe victim and stabilize the Cautus child's psychological collapse without triggering a localized psychic cascade…"

Her eyes narrow by a fraction. "Then I will reconsider your utility to this company. You will not be a ward. You will be an asset."

"Dr. Kal'tsit, no!" Erika's head whips around, her light purple eyes blazing with an outrage that steps clean over the chain of command. "She's a child! The Originium density in that triage bay is lethal! You can't ask her to walk into that and burn her own mind away! It's suicide!"

She turns back to me and reaches for my shoulders again. "Lethe, you don't have to do this to prove anything. I won't let you—"

I reach up and put my trembling hands over hers.

Her face is exhausted and wet, and I make myself smile at her. A real one, out of the part of me that's choosing this.

"Erika." My voice comes out steady and clear. "I promise you. Whatever happens out there… no matter how much the crystals take from me… I will never, ever forget you."

Erika stops. The outrage goes out of her face and leaves something shattered and awed behind it. She searches my eyes for any sign of hesitation.

"Are you… are you serious, Lethe?" It's barely a breath.

I nod.

A fresh sob tears out of her throat. She collapses forward and pulls me into a crushing hug, and I put my face in the crook of her shoulder, my long grey hair spilling over her uniform, and hold her just as tightly while we get ready to leave the sterile safety of the cage.

The blast doors to the triage center slide open.

Three months of a sterile ward kept this off me. The hall is enormous and full of suffering. The air is antiseptic and fresh copper blood and the ozone static of active Originium. Medics move between crowded cots in white coats stained rust and crimson.

Erika walks me down the central aisle with her hand resting on my shoulder, and I can feel the eyes tracking us. The patients who are doing better — sitting up with bandaged lacerations, out of shock — turn their heads to stare.

We reach a cot set off in the far corner, half hidden behind a thin blood-spattered privacy curtain. The Cautus girl is there.

She's so small. Her long ears are pinned flat against the mattress. She isn't screaming anymore — her throat is too raw for it, or her body has run out of what screaming costs — and she twists blindly against the sheets, letting out high shallow whimpers like a trapped animal.

Black crystals have come up through her pale skin and torn through the fabric of her ruined clothes. They pulse with a sick amber light.

I grip the chassis of my staff until my knuckles go white, and looking at those crystals I understand the arithmetic of them. She's dying.

My trembling hand hovers over her before it comes down against her fever-damp forehead, careful of the crystals. My left palm presses flat to the biometric lock of the Arts Unit.

It clicks. I throw the limiters open.

What comes through isn't a taste at all. Erika was bitter sludge. This is terminal agony, and it goes down like swallowing broken glass and rusted blades that keep cutting on the way. A Catastrophe-grade Oripathy flare tears through my nervous system and my vision strobes white with it.

I hold on.

Erika gasps. She lunges forward to sever the connection, to drag me off the dying child.

I clench my jaw hard enough to taste my own blood. "I'm… fine," I force out through my teeth, and the sound comes out wrong. "Don't stop it."

My knees go. The staff slips out of my numb fingers and clatters against the steel floor, and I go down after it, my horns scraping the grating, my tail falling limp, the world smearing into white coats and red emergency lights.

The cot above me goes dead silent. The whimpering stops. The thrashing against the blood-stained sheets stops.

From the floor, dragging air into lungs that won't take it, I listen to the Cautus girl's breathing even out into something slow and calm. She opens her eyes. What's left in her small face isn't pain. It's the confused exhaustion of a child waking up somewhere strange after a terrible nightmare.

She looks around the privacy curtain, her long ears twitching weakly.

"Mom? Dad?"

Two words, barely a whisper, hopeful, in the middle of all this.

Around the cot the clinical motion of the Medics stops for a single second. Erika covers her mouth with both hands and her shoulders shake.

The last thing I get is the red light strobing on the underside of the cot.

I think I passed out.

The world comes back as a slow throb rather than all at once. My vision swims and then settles, and there are three figures leaning over the mattress.

A Liberi. A Vulpo. A Cautus.

Erika is closest, her pale feathers disheveled and her light purple eyes wide. Lisa hovers behind her with her nine tails tucked tight together and her ears drooping almost to her shoulders.

The third face takes a second longer. For the first time since I woke up in those bruised orange ruins, I'm looking at her in the flesh. Amiya.

Brown hair, the black jacket with its blue lining, the rings heavy on her fingers. I don't need Djall senses for the worry in this room; it's plain across all three exhausted faces.

"Lethe?" Erika's voice is a fractured whisper. She reaches out and cups my cheek with trembling fingers. "Lethe, look at me. Do you… do you remember who you are? Do you remember us?"

The fear in her voice is earned. I close my eyes and go looking through the burning canvas of my mind. They're all still there.

"I…" My throat is raw, lined with the phantom of broken glass and cold copper. "Yes. Erika…"

A shuddering sob of relief goes out of her and her shoulders drop.

Amiya steps forward and puts a hand on Erika's shoulder to steady her. There's an authority in her that doesn't match her age.

"Hello, Lethe," she says. Her voice is soft and it carries an aching sincerity. "I'm Amiya. I'm so sorry I wasn't there."

She looks down at the sleek black band locked around my neck, and regret crosses her face. "If I'd known Dr. Kal'tsit had placed you under isolation this strict, I would have intervened much earlier. You shouldn't have been treated like a hazard."

Amiya rests her fingers lightly over my hand on the blankets. "What you did in the triage bay… you took her pain away. You saved her from dying in terror. Dr. Kal'tsit may see you through the lens of utility. I don't."

Her long ears twitch and her expression sets into something unyielding. "You aren't just a ward anymore, Lethe. You aren't an asset. You're one of us now. You're an Operator."

Operator.

For months that word was the whole plan, the only way out of the metal cage and the only guarantee I'd go on existing. My mind isn't on it. It's on the whimpering, the crystals coming up through pale skin, and a hopeful voice asking for two people already dead under the rubble.

I look up at Amiya, and the tears that come have nothing to do with my own survival.

"What…" I swallow, and it scrapes. "What was her name?"

Whatever Amiya's promise had built in the room goes out of it.

Erika looks away. Amiya's smile falters and a deep sadness comes into her eyes. Lisa just looks confused, her small hands gripping the edge of the mattress.

"We do not know."

I flinch. I hadn't known they were there at all. Kal'tsit and Warfarin are standing in the amber-lit shadows by the far wall of the ward.

"The patient survived the extraction. She is currently alive," Kal'tsit says. "She is also entirely uncooperative. The localized Originium density from the Catastrophe, combined with the trauma of her parents' deaths, has already caused severe cognitive damage."

Her eyes lock onto mine. "She is hysterical, Lethe. Her mind is fractured. She has been placed in a high-security quarantine ward identical to this one. In time our psychological and medical staff may extract a name from her, or piece together her history. For now she is another casualty of the storm."

The words land like a building coming down. I stare at the brushed steel of the wall.

I didn't save her. In my heroic delusion I thought taking the pain would be enough. I stopped the screaming, and the Originium had already shredded the rest.

A different kind of cage. That is all I did.

A sob gets out before I can stop it.

Amiya's hands close tighter around mine, her thumb going in slow circles on my skin. "You gave her peace when she needed it most, Lethe," she says, and there's conviction under it. "You gave us a chance to try and help her."

Erika leans in and gets an arm around my shoulders, pulling me against her white uniform. "You did an incredibly brave thing," she says into my grey hair, and her own voice breaks.

On my other side Lisa scrambles closer across the mattress. She wraps her small arms around my waist, her nine tails draping over my legs like a warm auburn blanket. "We'll visit her when she's better," she promises, and her optimism holds the dark off. "Just like we visit you."

I sit there between the three of them and let the tears come, my face buried in the warmth of Rhodes Island, crying for a girl whose name nobody has.

"That is enough sentimentality for one evening."

Kal'tsit's voice takes the remaining heat out of the room. She steps fully out of the amber-lit shadows.

"The CEO herself has seen fit to grant you sanctuary," she says, her green eyes on my tear-streaked face. "You are now recognized as an Operator of Rhodes Island, on probationary terms. Given the volatile nature of your Originium Arts and your biological requirements, you fall under my jurisdiction. You are assigned to the Medical Department."

A shudder goes down my spine and rattles the horns on my skull. The Medical Department.

To Lisa and Erika it sounds like a sensible, safe placement for a sick child. The adult in my head knows better. Medical Director is a title Kal'tsit wears the way a building wears a doorplate; she is the ancient calculating architect of this entire organization. I haven't been assigned to a department. I've been tethered to the most ruthless, pragmatic mind on the landship.

A delighted chuckle comes from the far wall.

"Oh, this is going to be spectacularly entertaining."

Warfarin pushes off the brushed steel, her crimson eyes bright. I'm not a locked-up asset she has to requisition access for anymore. I'm a coworker she can dissect at her leisure.

I shrink back against the pillows, and Amiya reads it. She steps between Kal'tsit's glacial stare and where I'm sitting.

"It also means you don't have to wear a hospital gown anymore, Lethe," she says, back in that soft sincere register, and she smiles at me. "Tomorrow you get to choose your own uniform. Whatever you feel comfortable in."

I blink and look down at the sterile white fabric that's been draped over me for three months.

It's a small thing. An administrative detail. It's also the first choice anyone has offered me since I woke up in Kazdel.

"My… own clothes?" I let the timid amnesiac's voice carry a relief that isn't hers.

"Yes," Amiya nods, her long ears twitching. "Welcome to Rhodes Island, Operator Lethe."

Then the relief runs into a practical wall. To everyone in this room, Lethe is an amnesiac who woke up in a tattered, ash-stained dress and has worn nothing but a medical gown since. And I don't know how people dress in Terra.

My eyes go between Erika, Lisa and Amiya, and my hands find the edge of the medical blanket.

"I… I don't know what I can even wear," I murmur, gesturing weakly at the nightstand where the fairytale book sits. "The people in the storybooks wear big, heavy dresses… and the knights wear armor. But everyone on Rhodes Island wears… different things. I'm confused."

I lean into the naive version of myself and raise a small trembling finger, pointing past the three of them at the far wall.

"Dr. Warfarin is the only other Sarkaz I know," I say, blinking. "Am I… am I supposed to wear a dress and a really big coat like her?"

The effect is immediate.

Warfarin chokes on her own breath, and something aristocratic and offended cuts through the amusement. "Excuse me?" She crosses her arms defensively over her lab coat. "My attire is a perfectly curated blend of medical professionalism and Kazdelian elegance, you little anomaly!"

Her protest goes nowhere. Lisa gasps, and her nine auburn tails puff up and start wagging in a frantic synchrony. "Oh! Oh, we can help!" Everything tragic about the ward is behind her now. "We can pick out the prettiest clothes! Not just a lab coat!"

Amiya's ears come up. The weight of the CEO goes off her, and what's underneath is a girl handed the best possible project: dressing up a new friend close to her own age. "Lisa's right," she says, her eyes sparkling. "The Logistics Department has hundreds of fabric options and standard issue templates. We can customize everything. We can design something that fits you perfectly, Lethe!"

Erika gives up on clinical detachment entirely and puts her hands on her hips. "Not a lab coat," she declares, with a pointed look at Warfarin. "She needs something soft. Something comfortable. And a proper pair of boots so she doesn't freeze her toes on the metal grates."

The room fills up with it.

Kal'tsit closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose.

"If the medical crisis has been averted and we have devolved into a textile consultation," she says, "then my presence is no longer required. I have a Catastrophe relief operation to oversee."

She turns on her heel. "Warfarin. With me. Unless you intend to stay and defend your fashion choices against a twelve-year-old."

Warfarin glares at my innocent blinking face for one last annoyed second, then huffs. "I have blood to centrifuge anyway," she mutters, and follows her out into the corridor.

The tension goes with them. I'm left sitting on the bed while three girls lean over my mattress debating the merits of tactical skirts against comfortable trousers.

The glowing screen of Amiya's data slate lights the dim amber ward.

After nearly an hour of tapping and overlapping suggestions and argument, the final design renders. I stare at the digital mannequin, at a loss. It's… quite a lot.

"Okay, here is the finalized version!" Amiya announces, ears straight up with satisfaction, turning the slate around for me.

The base is a dark pleated tech-skirt over heavily insulated black stockings. A tactical band straps around the right thigh carrying the black and white Rhodes Island Medic symbol, which marks me, officially and undeniably, as one of them.

"And look at the back!" Lisa taps the glass to rotate the model. "We made sure there's a generous cutout in the skirt and the stockings, so your tail won't get pinched when you sit down!"

I nod weakly. Accommodating the spade-tipped pendulum hanging off my tailbone is a biological fact I'm still getting used to.

Up top they settled on a crisp white clinical turtleneck, soft and warm, with the neckline cut to sit just below my throat. It doesn't hide the sleek black monitor locked around my neck. It frames it, which keeps the leash visible — a quiet, mandatory concession to Kal'tsit's security protocols.

Layered over it is a weather-resistant Rhodes Island jacket in dark grey with a light blue inner lining, deliberately a size too big, the sleeves hanging a little long over the fingerless gloves they picked out. It's styled to fall off one shoulder, RHODES ISLAND printed vertically in bold white near the front zipper. The bottom is split down the middle into a parted tailcoat so my tail can swing free.

A translucent clinical-grade PVC utility belt goes around the waist, ready to carry a dark crossbody bag sized for my own data slate and basic medical supplies. Thick-soled white sneakers finish it.

"It's perfect," Erika says, clasping her hands together, her eyes shining. "It's practical for the medical wards, insulated for the corridors, and… well, it's very cute."

"Do you like it, Lethe?" Amiya asks softly, watching my face for any sign of distress.

I stare at the slate. It's real clothing.

"I love it."

Lisa cheers, her nine tails swishing in a blur. "I'll submit the fabrication request to Ms. Closure right now," Amiya says, tapping the confirmation.

The next day Erika walks me down a corridor into somewhere that isn't a sterile white box. We step into the chaotic general store run by Closure.

The room is a sprawling industrial space packed to the brim with life. Shelves heavily lined with neatly stacked boxes, apparel, supplies. The overhead lighting glints off the metallic checkout counter and the digital register, and a lone shopping cart sits near a small set of stairs. It's wonderfully, jarringly mundane.

Amiya is already waiting near the registers beside a Sarkaz woman who vibrates with caffeinated energy.

"The most important kiddo of 1096 so far!" Closure announces, leaning over the counter with a wide fanged grin. "You gave me quite the engineering challenge on that black collar!"

The volume of her makes me flinch, and I shrink behind Erika with my hands gripping the fabric of her white coat.

Amiya steps in smoothly, ears twitching, with a polite but firm smile. "Ms. Closure. Please. We're here to formalize her outfit and IDs."

Closure waves it off, chuckling, and ushers us toward the back to finally get me dressed.

Getting out of the oversized medical gown I've drowned in for three months and into actual clothing is monumental. The pleated skirt and the insulated stockings fit. I strap the tactical leg band around my right thigh myself, the Medic symbol on it marking me as one of them. The turtleneck is soft and sits exactly where they designed it to sit, just under the leash.

Erika helps me into the dark grey jacket with the blue lining. It falls off one shoulder the way it was drawn, and the split tailcoat back lets my tail swing without getting pinched. Once my feet are in the thick-soled white sneakers, I look down at myself. I look like a real Operator.

"Alright, picture time!" Closure claps her hands and aims a terminal camera at me, snapping a portrait and a full-body shot for my ID and the PRTS database.

She hands me the freshly printed card and I stare at the photo. Eyes blown wide, shoulders slightly hunched, visibly startled. I couldn't get my face to relax for a photograph, which at least fits the act of an amnesiac stray meeting a camera flash for the first time.

"This little card is your lifeblood now," Closure says, tapping the plastic. "You get paid your salary in there. It accesses your assigned dorm, the cafeteria, the vending machines, all that good stuff. Kal'tsit has authorized you for internal credits only, but," she smirks, leaning back against the counter, "it's not like you have the clearance to leave Rhodes Island anyway."

The prospect of having my own money goes through me like a current. A little retail therapy. I can finally buy something for myself.

Erika steps forward, and the warmth goes out of her and is replaced by medical authority. Her light purple eyes narrow.

"And you'll use those credits responsibly, Lethe," she says, in a voice that brooks nothing. "If I find out you're misusing your salary to survive on sweets instead of eating properly at the cafeteria, I'll confiscate that card, and you'll be living back in the quarantine ward."

I freeze, clutching the ID to my chest.

I had just been costing out every sour gummy in Ms. Closure's vending machines. Fresh bakery things. Three different plushies to stack on a dorm bed I haven't seen yet, to set against the terror of the last three months.

I look up at Erika and give her a weak, defeated nod.

Before we can head for the exit, Closure clears her throat and taps a dark fingernail against the counter.

"Hold on, we aren't quite done. Hand over the old stick, kiddo."

I look down at the heavy modified Raythean staff I've been clutching like a lifeline and pass it across. Closure pops open a side panel near the grip with a multi-tool, and a wisp of acrid smoke curls up.

"Yeah, just as I thought," she mutters, shaking her head. "You almost blew the entire internal circuitry pulling whatever stunt you pulled on Erika and that patient. The limiters were melted to slag. You redlined this thing so hard it's a miracle it didn't detonate in your hands. Columbian mass-produced weapons are never designed for a pureblood Sarkaz's Arts output."

She tosses the ruined staff into a scrap bin with an unceremonious clatter, reaches under the counter, and slides a new Arts Unit toward me.

It's different. Not a militaristic cylinder of brushed metal but something organic: a long black shaft tapering up into a top that twists and curves like a cluster of petrified tree branches. It feels Sarkaz, built less for industrial output than for whatever it is my bloodline actually does.

"I completely rebuilt the limiter matrix," Closure says, watching me wrap my fingers around the biometric grip. "It can handle higher throughput now without frying, but don't take that as a challenge, Lethe."

Next she slides a thin rectangular device across the counter.

"And here's your personal PRTS slate," she says, the fanged grin coming back. "With this you can send messages, search the internal Rhodes Island database, log your medical tasks, and… whatever else it is kids nowadays do with screens."

I pick it up. Cold glass, aluminum chassis, and my hands know it. A small metallic piece of a world that's gone.

"Alright, that's everything! Off you go!" Closure shoos us out so she can get back to whatever mechanical monstrosity is sitting on her workbench.

Erika and Amiya guide me out of the store and back into the metallic corridors of the landship.

"So, Lethe," Amiya asks softly. "Where would you like to go first? I can show you your new dorm room, so you can see where you'll be sleeping. Or if you're hungry, we can head straight to the cafeteria?"

Erika nods encouragingly beside her. "They serve actual meals there, Lethe. No more nutrient paste from a silver pouch."

My hand tightens on the grip of my new Arts Unit. I look down at the pristine white sneakers the two of them dressed me in. A proper Operator, with a salary, an ID card, and a future on this landship.

And I only have them because a Catastrophe tore a family apart.

"I don't want to go to the dorms yet." I lift my head and make myself meet Amiya's eyes. "And I'm not hungry."

Erika's feathers droop slightly. "Then where do you want to go, Lethe?"

"I want to see her," I say. My voice trembles and doesn't waver. "The Cautus girl from the triage bay."

The corridor goes very quiet. Amiya's smile fades into an aching sorrow and Erika looks away at the steel floor grates. They know exactly who I mean. The nameless girl whose shattered mind was my audition for Kal'tsit.

"Are you sure?" Amiya asks gently, stepping closer. "It might be… very difficult to see her right now."

"I have to," I say. I owe her that much.

I shift the new Arts Unit in my hands as we walk, my fingers closing around the smooth black shaft.

The doors of the high-security quarantine ward open onto a mirror of the room I just spent three months in. The same white walls, the same brushed steel flooring, the same isolation.

The Cautus girl is awake. She's sitting up on the mattress with her knees pulled tight against her chest, and she doesn't turn her head when the door clicks shut. Her ears stay pinned flat against her bandages. She's staring straight ahead at the dark reflective surface of the wall monitors.

"Hello," I say softly, taking a hesitant step toward the bed. "My name is Lethe. I'm… I'm a new Operator here."

Nothing. She doesn't blink. She doesn't seem to register that there are three people standing in her room. Amiya and Erika stay near the threshold, giving me the space I asked for.

I step closer and lower the Arts Unit until its heavy base rests on the floor. My hand shakes as I put my fingers over hers.

My senses go out looking for a spark, a ripple of fear, even the rot I swallowed in the triage bay. There's nothing there. Not suppression, not hiding. The shock and the infection scoured her clean of anything with warmth in it, and what's left is the numbness of a well with no bottom.

I know that void.

I don't pull my hand back. I squeeze her cold, rigid fingers and sink to my knees beside the bed to get down to her eye level, the steel cold through my new stockings.

"I know," I whisper. "I know how loud the quiet is."

She doesn't move, but I keep hold of her hand and let my thumb brush slowly across her knuckles.

"Three months ago I woke up in the ruins of a Catastrophe, just like the one that hit your home," I tell her, and the constructed lie of my amnesia lies down flush against the real terror of my first day in Terra. "The sky was bruised and orange. Everything was rotting. And I had no memories at all. I didn't know my name. I didn't know where I was from. There was just… nothing to hold onto."

I swallow, and the phantom of Catastrophe dust scratches on the way down.

"I was so terrified. I sat in the dirt and I cried until my chest felt like it was going to break, until I was dry and I couldn't make another sound," I murmur, my eyes welling. "And then Erika found me. Rhodes Island found me."

I look up at her blank, unblinking eyes.

"They gave me a chance to live when the whole world wanted me to die in the ruins. They can give you that chance too," I promise her, my voice breaking a little. "We can help you. But you have to let us help. You have to come back."

For a long minute nothing in the room moves. The only sound is the subsonic thrum of the landship's engines beneath us.

Then her small fingers twitch under mine. It's a microscopic movement and it takes the whole dam with it. She gasps, her chest heaving like someone coming up out of water. She blinks, and one heavy tear cuts a clean track down her ash-stained, bandaged cheek.

The void collapses, and what comes up through it nearly puts me on the floor. Saltwater and crushed stone. Grief for two parents she knows she is never going to see again, and under that the loss of a bedroom, a dining table, the warmth of a house that isn't on the map anymore.

I reach up with my free hand and brush a stray lock of hair off her wet cheek.

"What is your name?" I ask softly.

She sniffs, her long ears trembling as she looks down at our joined hands. "Opal," she whispers. Her voice is ragged, like thin glass.

"Opal," I repeat, making sure the name rings clearly in the sterile air. "You're safe with us now, Opal. The Medics are going to come in soon. They'll bring you some warm food, and they might ask you a few questions to make sure you're healing properly."

I give her cold fingers one last squeeze. "You should try to eat. It helps."

Opal stares at me for a long moment. The tide of her grief doesn't go anywhere — it can't — but the drowning panic in it settles into something quieter and very tired. She closes her eyes and gives a small nod.

We leave her in the quiet of the ward.

The walk toward the cafeteria is nothing like the heavy shuffle that brought us here. I settle the twisted petrified branch of my new Arts Unit against my shoulder and match my stride to Amiya and Erika's.

Amiya walks beside me with her long ears perked up. The burden of the CEO has lifted off her again, and what's in its place is a quiet awe.

"That was incredible, Lethe," she says. "You reached her when none of our psychological specialists could get her to acknowledge they were in the room. You saved her."

Erika is on my other side, her eyes wide with relief and professional curiosity. The pride coming off her is warm enough that I can graze on it without channeling anything at all.

"How did you know exactly what to do?" she asks, shaking her head as she looks down at me. "You've been locked in a ward for three months… how did you know how to talk to her, how to comfort her like that?"

I stop in the middle of the corridor and turn to face her, smiling up at her with my head tilted so my hair falls over my shoulder.

"I learned from the very best."

The smile that breaks across Erika's face is radiant.

Amiya watches the exchange, her ears twitching with amusement. "I'm going to have to talk to the HR department about giving you a promotion, Erika," she says, and the gentle authority of the CEO is under it. "Your work with Lethe has been exceptional."

Erika stops, her pale feathers fluffing up as a flush goes across her cheeks. She looks down, suddenly shy under the praise of her leader.

"I don't know about that, Amiya," she stammers, her hands smoothing the front of her clinical coat. She looks at me and shakes her head. "I still have a very long way to go to even match the kind of Arts she just used. If I ever can. What she did for Opal… it was a miracle."

"It's not a miracle, it's just a natural biological advantage," I pipe up, leaning into her side. I widen my eyes and layer on every bit of childish innocence I have. "And no matter what my rank is, I'll forever be your little Lethe."

Erika's flush deepens, and then exasperation wins out over shyness. She reaches over and, with surprisingly precise aim, flicks her index finger against the top of my left horn.

"Ouchie!" I yelp. It isn't loud, but the feedback is immediate — a light flick sends a hum ringing through my skull like a struck tuning fork.

I drop my Arts Unit and bring both hands up to rub the base of the horn, fixing her with a deeply betrayed pout.

Erika laughs, a bright chiming sound that takes the last of the gloom with it. Amiya covers her mouth, her shoulders shaking.

I scoop the Arts Unit off the floor and we start walking again. The smell of the air changes, the sterile bite of ozone and bleach giving way to roasted meat and baked bread and spiced broth. The cafeteria.

Just as we approach the main double doors they slide open, and two Operators step out deep in conversation, holding takeaway cups of coffee.

One is a towering Phidia man built like a walking fortress, a heavy shield on his back and a scarred face that reads veteran at a glance. The other is a lean, sharp-eyed Sarkaz sniper who somehow blends into the hallway while standing in the open.

Ace and Scout.

I stop dead, my sneakers squeaking against the steel. My fingers tighten around the twisted branch of the Arts Unit.

To Erika and Amiya they're two senior Elite Ops finishing a lunch break. To me they're walking ghosts. They're standing here breathing and laughing with coffee in their hands, and I know exactly what is coming for both of them.

"Ah, Amiya. Good afternoon," Ace rumbles in a deep baritone. He pauses, his gaze going from the young CEO to the tiny wide-eyed Sarkaz girl paralyzed in the middle of the hallway.

Scout tilts his head, his sharp eyes lingering on my horns a beat too long.

"Who's the new recruit?" he asks, mild and observant.

"This is Lethe," Amiya says with a proud smile. "She was just officially cleared to join the Medical Department."

I don't say a word. I can't. My throat has gone dry and my eyes are blown wide.

Seeing my frozen silence, Ace lets out a warm, booming chuckle. He steps forward, his frame casting a shadow over me, and before I can think to shrink away he reaches down with a hand the size of a dinner plate and ruffles my grey hair.

"Nice to meet you, Lethe," he smiles, and the protective warmth of him settles over me like a heavy blanket. He looks me up and down, taking in the pale, fragile frame. "Though looking at you, kid, you need to eat a lot more if you want to keep up around here."

Ace withdraws his hand and gives me one last reassuring smile before he and Scout turn to continue down the corridor. I watch their backs, my eyes burning, my fingers gripping the black shaft of my Arts Unit until my knuckles ache.

I want to scream. I want to grab the fabric of Ace's coat and beg him to stay far away from Chernobog. I want to tell Scout that the rescue mission is a death trap someone designed on purpose. The words turn to ash in my throat.

And I know what happens if I say them. A child reciting classified future tactical disasters isn't a miraculous oracle to Kal'tsit. She's a deeply embedded Confessarii sleeper agent, or a catastrophic security leak. The monitor around my neck gets replaced with something heavier, and the mundane life I just signed a contract to earn is gone inside a day. So I swallow the warning.

We reach the cafeteria. The heavy doors slide apart on a huge, brightly lit hall. The ceiling is exposed pipework behind industrial grating, throwing a clean utilitarian light over a yellowish epoxy floor. Neat rows of square metal tables, simple blue chairs. The air is spiced broth and roasted starch. It's bustling, loud, and overwhelmingly normal.

Between the scale of the room and the guilt still anchored in my chest, I'm not watching where I'm going.

I walk straight into someone. The collision throws me off balance and I go down hard on my backside with a high squeak, my heavy tail smacking the yellowish floor.

I expect the other person to stumble, or at least gasp. When I look up, the figure hasn't moved at all.

Erika is at my side immediately, her hands on my shoulders, pulling me gently back onto my feet. "Careful, Lethe. Are you okay?"

"I'm sorry…" I murmur, brushing invisible dust off my dark pleated skirt. I look up to apologize properly and my breath catches all over again.

Standing in front of me is a Feline girl, about as tall as I am, pale, with soft silver-white hair. The density of her presence doesn't match her size at all. I know exactly who she is.

Rosmontis. Elite Ops.

She tastes like the static that comes before heavy rain.

Amiya steps forward, her long ears perking up, bridging the gap between the two broken children in the hallway with practiced warmth.

"Rosmontis, hello," she smiles. "I'm glad we ran into you. This is Lethe; she's a new Operator joining the Medical Department today."

Rosmontis blinks slowly, her eyes shifting to me. Her expression is blank and distant in a way that feels terrifyingly familiar.

"Have you had lunch yet, Rosmontis?" Amiya asks, her voice dropping into that endlessly patient cadence. "If not, we were just about to sit down. You should eat with us."

Rosmontis stares at us for another long, hollow second before her ears twitch. She gives a slow, almost imperceptible nod. She agrees.

We grab our metal trays and join the line, and the moment I reach the main serving station I stop dead. For once it isn't an act. I'm not performing the overwhelmed amnesiac staring at alien technology; I'm paralyzed by the volume of choices. Rhodes Island is a massive international organization and the spread reflects it exactly — the cream-heavy stews of the Leithanian spires next to the heavily spiced roasted skewers of the Sargon deserts.

Standing behind me, Erika notices the hesitation.

"It's a lot to take in, isn't it, Lethe?" she murmurs, stepping up to guide my tray along the metal rails. "Since you have a bit of a sweet tooth, and you did so well with your steamed egg yesterday… why don't we start with something simple? How about a sweet bread roll and a rolled omelette?"

I follow her pointing finger to a section of perfectly folded yellow omelettes and a basket of soft pastries. The old cravings come up, a phantom pull of Japanese bakeries. I pick a soft bread roll filled with sweet red bean paste and set it on my tray beside the omelette.

Amiya watches my selections, her long ears twitching, and a musical giggle escapes her.

"You know, for a Kazdelian, you have surprisingly Higashinese taste buds, Lethe," she teases, picking up a bowl of salad for herself.

I look down at my tray with a relaxed smile finally on my face, and turn my head toward Erika.

"You can't blame me," I say, pitching it with a lilt. "You should blame Erika. She's the one who's been feeding me steamed eggs and soft breads for three months."

Erika doesn't let that slide. Before I can take a bite of the red bean roll, her fingers dart out.

"Ouchie!" I yelp, dropping my hands to cover my horn again.

"That's for being cheeky again," Erika says. We carry our trays to a corner table, and I finally get my first bite of the red bean roll. When we're done, Amiya and Rosmontis both offer quiet smiles before gathering their empty trays. They have their own duties — Amiya the crushing weight of Rhodes Island's operations, Rosmontis whatever Annihilation tasks she's been assigned.

With lunch finished, Erika guides me out of the cafeteria and through the corridors to my new quarters.

When the door to my dorm hisses open I step inside and just stare. It's utilitarian; there's no arguing that. A compact rectangular box of dark brushed steel and reinforced panels, a cool LED fixture in the ceiling, a sleek metallic desk with a dual-monitor terminal and a folding chair tucked under it.

But it's mine.

The bed is built into a recessed alcove in the wall, framed by a wide pill-shaped window looking out over the barren landscapes of Terra going past. And near the entrance there's a heavy door marked with a shower icon. A private bathroom. After three months of sponge baths and escorted trips to a clinical washroom just to get my hair washed, the luxury of one that's all mine is almost too much.

Erika walks in behind me, runs a hand along the edge of the desk, then sits on the edge of the mattress and pats the space beside her. I cross the metal floor grates and sit, my tail curling comfortably into the split-tailcoat space of my new jacket.

"It's a bit sparse right now," she says gently, "but we can decorate it. Get some plants from Lena, maybe some posters." Her expression shifts into a professional focus. "Speaking of Lena. Since you're officially part of the Medical Department now, we need to go over your schedule. The medical bays run twenty-four-seven, but you won't be doing shift work."

I tilt my head, playing the attentive, curious child.

"Your working hours follow the standard landship-wide schedule," she explains. "Zero-eight-thirty to eleven-thirty, a break for lunch, then thirteen-thirty to seventeen-thirty. You'll report directly to Perfumer as part of her palliative care team in the Convalescent Garden."

"I will do my best," I promise, nodding solemnly.

"I know you will." Erika reaches over and taps the rectangular slate Closure gave me. "Let me show you how to use this. It's your lifeline here."

She guides my fingers across the glass, through the basic interface, the messaging system, the internal Rhodes Island database. To demonstrate, she taps the search bar and types in my name.

The screen pulls up a personnel file. At the top is the full-body portrait Closure took an hour ago. Framed by the oversized grey jacket and the black collar, my eyes look blown out and startled, like a deer in headlights.

Below the photo, the data of my existence is spelled out in neat white text.

Lethe

Basic Info

Gender: Female

Combat Experience: None

Place of Birth: Kazdel

Date of Birth: January 2nd

Race: Sarkaz

Height: 143cm

Infection Status: Infection confirmed by medical report

My eyes lock onto the date of birth. January 2nd. The day Erika pulled me out of the rubble. Seeing it codified in the official database makes it real in a way I wasn't ready for.

Erika watches my face closely. "It's all official now, Lethe. You're home."

"Yes. I am. I'm glad to be home, Erika."

Sleep takes me almost as soon as she's gone.

The next morning the door opens on Erika already bustling in. She helps me adjust the straps of the new tactical leg band and settles the dark grey jacket properly across my shoulders.

Standing in front of the small metallic mirror, I notice something that catches my breath. My misty blue tail, which used to drag behind me like dead weight, shifts on its own. It arcs out of the way as I step back from the desk, the spade tip curling with an ease nobody taught it.

Breakfast is in the cafeteria. A thick slice of warm banana bread and a glass of cold milk. The adult in me wanted the roasted bite of a latte to wake up on, and Erika vetoed it with medical authority. No caffeine for a recovering twelve-year-old body. So I settle for the milk and chew the sweet banana bread while she watches me like a hawk.

We arrive at the Convalescent Garden. I step onto the smooth path and my new sneakers squeak faintly.

A few paces away a young Perro girl is hovering over a bed of medicinal herbs with a watering can. She looks up, her ears perking, and stares at me.

"Good morning. You are?" she asks, tilting her head with innocent curiosity.

Before I can open my mouth, a rustle of leaves interrupts. Lisa steps out from behind a row of hanging vines and stops. She blinks once. Twice. She stands there for what feels like a full minute with her head tilted, trying to reconcile the fragile ghost in the oversized hospital gown with the properly dressed Rhodes Island Operator in front of her.

Then her eyes widen. "Lethe!"

Her voice rings through the canopy. Her nine tails swish in a synchronized blur as she bounds over and starts circling me, eyes sparkling, inspecting her own handiwork.

"Oh, the jacket looks even better in person! And the tail cutout works perfectly! Doesn't she look amazing, Miss Lena?"

The Perro girl with the watering can watches all of this in bewilderment, her ears twitching as she tries to keep up.

Lena steps away from the prep counter, wiping her hands on a small towel, and gives me a welcoming smile that reaches her eyes. She walks over to the bewildered Perro girl and rests a hand on her shoulder to guide her forward.

"Podenco, this is Lethe," she says, smoothing the chaos over. "She'll be assisting us." She turns to me. "You look wonderful, Lethe. Welcome to the team."

I offer a small polite bow, holding the twisted petrified branch of my new Arts Unit. "I'll do my best to help with the garden, Miss Lena."

Lena chuckles and steps closer to rest a hand on my shoulder. "Oh, you won't be doing any actual gardening, Lethe. No pulling weeds or hauling soil for you. Your duties are strictly with our palliative care patients. You're here to provide relief."

Her smile goes serious. She bends down slightly to bring herself to my eye level and makes sure I'm looking at her.

"But I need you to promise me something, Lethe," she says, and there's the whole weight of a sanctuary's guardian in it. "If it ever becomes too much for you — whether it's the taste of the trauma you're siphoning or the memory you have to burn to do it — you stop. Immediately. You let go of the staff and you come to me. Nothing else matters. Not the patients' comfort, and certainly not your 'utility'. Your well-being comes first."

My grip on the staff loosens.

I look at Lena's earnest face, then at Lisa beaming beside her, and then back at Erika, who is watching us with a quiet fierce protectiveness.

"I promise," I say, and my voice is thick with it.

I take hold of my new Arts Unit. The smooth black shaft twists at the top like a cluster of petrified tree branches. There's no glowing biometric lock clamped near the grip anymore. It's just the staff, waiting for me to open the channel.

I approach a Lupo resting on one of the benches. He's slumped forward with his eyes closed, the sharp grey ears flattened against his hair with fatigue. He's the same one who was with Erika the day I was rescued.

A few paces back, half hidden by a row of broad-leafed ferns, Lena and Lisa and Podenco are watching. This is my first real attempt at palliative care.

"Excuse me," I say softly, and my voice comes out as quiet as the leaves above us.

The Lupo opens one tired, bloodshot eye. He looks at me and doesn't recognize me, his gaze dragging over my small frame and the black band at my neck. He lets out a slow, heavy breath.

"Can you tell me your story?" I ask, stepping a fraction closer. "About the storm?"

He pauses. For a moment I think he'll brush me off as a morbidly curious kid, but the Medic tag on my leg carries weight. He leans back against the golden-brown wood of the bench and drops his eyes to his scarred hands.

"It's loud," he begins, his voice hoarse. "You think you know what a sandstorm is, but an Originium Catastrophe… it's like the sky is screaming at you. Visibility drops to zero. You can't see the hand in front of your face, let alone the infected sandbeasts and Originium slugs burrowing through the dunes."

While he talks, the air around him changes. Dread with an acid edge of adrenaline under it.

"The wind throws rocks hard enough to crack armor," he goes on, his fingers curling into fists against his knees. "But that isn't the heavy part. The heavy part is what's standing behind you."

He looks up, his gaze distant, back out in the howling wasteland.

"You know that if you take one wrong step, if you let one of those infected beasts slip past your shield… it gets to the Medics. It gets to the people trying to dig kids out of the rubble. If I slip up, a Medic dies. That weight… it crushes you faster than the storm does."

I don't say anything. I don't need to. My grip shifts on the petrified black branch. Closure's limiter matrix is buried somewhere in the wood, but the tap is in my own hand. I picture the channel opening and reach for the dread sitting on him.

I close my eyes, and the channel opens.

I don't need to throw the gates wide and swallow the whole ocean the way I did in the triage bay. I don't need to erase the storm. I skim the surface, shaving the paralyzing edges off his anxiety, drawing the venom out of his exhaustion.

The Lupo lets out a long, slow breath.

It's as though weights have been cut off his shoulders. The tension goes out of his spine and he slumps back against the bench with a peaceful sigh.

"I… I feel lighter," he murmurs, rubbing the back of his neck. He blinks at me with a relaxed smile. "Much better. Thank you, kid."

"You're welcome," I say, offering a small bow. I sever the connection and the current snaps shut.

I turn and walk back across the smooth floor toward the cluster of broad-leafed ferns. Lena and Podenco watch me come with encouraging smiles.

Lisa is different. Her nine tails are swaying in a slow, focused rhythm and her ears are straight up and swiveled toward me, and her eyes are locked on the twisted branch of my Arts Unit. She gives me a knowing, awestruck little smile.

Lena steps forward, scanning my face for any sign of the pain that put me on the floor of the triage center.

"How do you feel, Lethe?" she asks softly. "Are you in any pain?"

"I'm okay," I say, and my voice is steady. I look up at the three of them and widen my eyes a little. "But… the negative feelings taste really, really bad."

"Miss Lena… Lisa, Podenco?" I ask, letting it drop into a timid plea. "Can I… can I graze on your emotions from time to time? Just to wash the bad taste away?"

"Wait, they actually have tastes?" Lisa asks. "Like real food? How do you taste them, Lethe? Do you taste them on your tongue, or is it in your head?"

I look at Lisa, trying to find the words.

"It's not like eating food with my mouth," I murmur, bringing my free hand up against the center of my chest. "It doesn't sit in the throat. It's more like… breathing in a feeling that fills up your whole being. It seeps into your blood and it stays with you."

Podenco has come over from her own work. She tilts her head, ears twitching. "So what do we taste like?"

I give her a small smile. "When you're happy, Podenco, you're a bright splash of sun-ripened yuzu with the grounding taste of green tea under it. Lisa's happiness hits me like a wall of crystallized sugar. And Miss Lena is a calm that tastes like warm lavender and steeped chamomile."

"But when people are sad, or terrified…" I swallow, and the Lupo's dread is still scratching at me from the inside. "It tastes completely different. It tastes like old ash and cold copper. Like swallowing rusted blades and spoiled meat. It makes my stomach ache, and it doesn't go away when I close the channel. It sinks into my bones and stays there."

The bright, inquisitive mood in the Convalescent Garden evaporates. The three of them are dead quiet.

Lena's expression turns grave, and whatever she carries sharpens into a shield.

She steps closer, her clothing rustling in the silence, and rests both hands firmly on my shoulders. "Lethe," she says, low and uncompromising. "Listen to me. If it's that terrible, you can quit right now. I'll speak to Dr. Kal'tsit myself. You don't have to subject yourself to this."

For one second I want to say yes. I want to hide in this greenhouse forever, safe behind Closure's monitor, grazing on sweet flavors. But the Originium in my skull burns my past either way. I may as well make the ashes count.

I shake my head slowly, my long grey hair swaying over my shoulders.

"No," I say, meeting Lena's worried look. "I won't quit."

I tighten my grip on the twisted branch of my staff. "Rhodes Island pulled me out of the Catastrophe. You gave me clothes, a warm bed, and a name. You gave me a chance to live. Taking away the bad tastes so our Operators can heal…" I keep my voice as steady as I can. "It's the only way I can repay you."

They all look at me with a renewed respect. Podenco's eyes shine, and Lisa gives me a fierce nod, her nine tails puffing up in solidarity.

As I hold Lena's look, my Arts catch a silent shift in the air. The warmth of her is pierced by a spike of grief, bitter ash and crushed petals. She knows exactly what this costs me.

Lena's eyes glisten, and she masks it with a serene smile.

"You're a very brave girl, Lethe," she says, giving my shoulders one last squeeze before she straightens up. "But remember my promise. You're never alone here."

I nod weakly.

Then Podenco pushes straight through the gloom. She bounds forward, citrus and tea washing over me, wraps her hands around my free right hand and drags me away from the heavy conversation.

"Lemme show you my section of the garden, Lethe," she says. "Miss Lena tasks me with the sprouts and flowers."

She pulls me down the winding path, her tail swinging behind her apron. As we go through the hanging ivy and the potted ferns she points out the different flowers and their properties, gesturing at the blooms, explaining which petals get crushed for soothing poultices and which leaves Miss Lena steeps for her lavender and chamomile teas.

The morning passes quietly after Podenco's tour. By 11:00 the garden is steeped in a peaceful, humid tranquility. I sit on the crescent-shaped wooden bench with my tail resting in the cutout of my jacket, watching Lena work. She moves with a practiced grace, pruning a large leafy fern while Podenco waters the base.

Lisa sits cross-legged next to me with her chin in her hands. Her ears twitch and her eyes drop to the dark twisted instrument leaning against my knee.

"Lethe?" she asks, reaching out a finger and hovering it a pace from the top of the shaft. "What exactly is your staff made of? It doesn't look like the metal ones the Casters use. It looks like… a real tree branch."

I pause and look down at the Arts Unit in my hands. The base is smooth polished material, but the top twists into that organic petrified shape.

I open my mouth to answer, and close it again. I have no idea.

When Closure tossed the ruined Raythean staff into the scrap bin she just handed me this one and boasted about the rebuilt limiter matrix. I was so overwhelmed by real clothes and an ID card that I never thought to ask where a heavily customized Sarkaz relic came from.

Artifacts like this aren't lying around in standard supply closets. If the Chief Engineer of Rhodes Island pulled it out from under her counter and handed it to a quarantined anomaly, it was Kal'tsit-approved. Kal'tsit must have dug this out of a classified Kazdelian archive specifically for me.

"I… I actually don't know, Lisa," I admit, tracing the petrified grooves with my thumb. "Ms. Closure gave it to me yesterday, but she didn't tell me what it was."

I look toward the heavy glass doors, and a spark of real curiosity cuts through the morning's melancholy. "I have my lunch break soon. I think… I think I'm going to go to Engineering and ask her."

Lunch with Erika is exactly the hyper-attentive affair I expected. Over a tray of actual solid cafeteria food she interrogates me with gentle, endless questions about my first half-day in the Convalescent Garden. I assure her several times that Miss Lena is taking perfect care of me and that I feel fine.

Once she's satisfied I'm not on the verge of an Originium-induced collapse, she lets me wander off for the rest of my two-hour break.

I navigate the metallic corridors of the landship until a door slides open and deposits me into one of Closure's Engineering Workshops.

It's a sharp contrast to the humid, earthy warmth of the garden. The workshop is a sprawling cavern of sleek white flooring and brushed steel. Industrial LED strips reflect off glass partitions and heavy silver pillars. Angular desks are strewn with rolled-up blueprints and stacked diagnostic slates. It's a space built for cold logic and mechanical precision.

I approach an empty white table and lay my new Arts Unit down. The dark organic shape of it looks alien against the sterile surface.

A passing engineer pauses. She's a Perro, ears twitching, sharp eyes on the table. Almond. She looks at the unsettling Sarkaz artifact resting on a pristine Rhodes Island workbench, then at me: a tiny girl in an oversized jacket and a Rhodes Island monitor. She tilts her head, professional curiosity crossing her face, and says nothing. With a quiet huff she adjusts the tools on her belt and walks briskly away.

"You aren't breaking it already, are you, kiddo?"

Closure's voice comes from behind a nearby terminal. She strides over with a digital slate in one hand and a half-empty mug in the other.

"No," I say, and my voice chimes in the cavernous room. I look down at the staff. "I just wanted to ask… what exactly is this? When I used it this morning it didn't feel like the metal one you gave me before. It felt… natural. Like an extension of my own arm."

Closure leans against the table, her fanged grin flashing under the lights, and taps a fingernail against the petrified wood.

"Well, Kal decided that an authentic Kazdelian artifact is apparently a perfectly valid toy for a twelve-year-old," she snorts. "It's a resonant Originium focal point. It was sitting down in deep storage gathering dust before she requisitioned it for your new leash."

Deep storage. A Kazdelian artifact. Something behind my eyes misfires, a hot white flicker, and a word surfaces out of nowhere: Babel.

"Wow…" I breathe, picking the staff back up with both hands. "It must make me a very cool Caster now then!"

Closure doesn't blink. The grin flattens into a deadpan stare.

"Kiddo, that stick is worth far more than you are," she says bluntly. She points a warning finger at me. "And unless you have questions that actually require my advanced engineering degrees to answer, I'm going to start charging your account just for existing in my workspace."

My hand drops to the pocket of my skirt, where my new ID card sits. My salary.

I had spent the whole morning planning to spend my first work allowance on the soft plushies sitting on the shelves of her general store. The last thing I want is to drain my credits on an arbitrary loitering fee.

"Thank you, Ms. Closure! I'll leave now!" I chirp, grabbing the Arts Unit and practically sprinting for the blast doors before she can get to her terminal and bill me.

The doors shut behind me and seal the workshop away. I slow to a walk and blend back into the foot traffic of the main corridor, letting out a long breath, my fingers tracing the smooth black shaft of the staff.

Babel. I can't place it at all, and that scares me more than it should. Then the other word, degrees, comes back to me over the subsonic hum of the engines.

What is a degree, again?

I don't remember.

I'm back at my dorm. The shower was wonderful. Sitting cross-legged on my recessed bed now, the cool recycled air prickles against my damp skin.

Dinner had been loud — Lisa's bright chiming, Podenco's grounded yuzu enthusiasm, Erika's warm pride, all of it overlapping. They celebrated my first day on the job and wrapped me up in it.

Now the silence is deafening.

I unscrew the cap of the plastic bottle. The milk tea from Closure's vending machine is cold and artificially sweet.

I set the bottle on the metallic nightstand and look at the glowing rectangular screen of the slate in my lap.

I have forgotten my degree.

The thought doesn't arrive with a panic attack. It drops into the hollow in my chest like a stone down a dark well. I try to trace the memory back, and there's nothing there to trace.

I push further, and a cold sweat comes up on my palms. The job I had before I woke up in those bruised orange ruins. I worked at the heart of an engine, an operational hub managing massive networks. In Sydney. But the name of the company?

It's gone.

My thumbs hover over the digital keyboard. Every instinct screams at me to open a blank document and write it all down, to catalog the 21st century, the blue hydrangeas, the rain against the glass, the name Iori, before the Originium eats the rest.

My thumb twitches. Then I lower my hands. If I start typing out vivid descriptions of a world without Catastrophes, of cities that don't move, of a life with none of Terra's brutal history in it, PRTS will flag it, and Warfarin will happily diagnose advanced Oripathy-induced psychosis.

Iori's memories have to die. On here, anyway. The slate belongs to them. The four pages in the back of the fairytale book still belong to me.

I take another sip of the cold milk tea and let the chill settle my stomach.

I open a standard, non-classified personal log, adjust my posture, and start to type.

Erika, Amiya, Rosmontis, Lena, Lisa, Podenco, Opal…

The clock in the corner of the slate ticks over past midnight. I keep typing the names, one to a line, because names are the one thing a mad girl is allowed to write down.

The blue light of the screen is the only illumination in the dark metallic box of my new dorm. I'm halfway through the line about Miss Lena when a sharp synthetic chime shatters the silence.

A high-priority chat notification drops down from the top edge of the slate.

My breath catches. I stare at the banner, paralyzed.

I tap it with a trembling finger and the screen transitions to a secure, encrypted messaging channel. There's one line of text.

[Kal'tsit]: 00:05

I almost drop the slate. It slips out of my sweaty palms and clatters against my knees. My tail, which had been resting in a loose coil behind me, goes rigid, the spade tip stopping in mid-air.

She's watching.

On the screen the typing bubble appears. Three pulsing grey dots. They don't go away. They sit there for a long minute, and then the paragraphs arrive, filling the screen in a blocky cascade of white text.

[Kal'tsit]: Sleep deprivation is a severely detrimental variable for any developing adolescent frame. For a Sarkaz suffering from severe malnutrition and stunted physiological growth, it is unacceptable.

[Kal'tsit]: You are also compromising your Originium stability. Fatigue elevates neurological stress, which agitates the crystalline structures in your temporal lobe. If you accelerate your own cognitive decline through negligence, my medical intervention becomes considerably more difficult.

[Kal'tsit]: I have reviewed the telemetry of your terminal. Documenting your interpersonal tethers to anchor your current cognitive state is a biologically sound coping mechanism for your progression. It is not an emergency operation. Such clerical archiving will be conducted during your designated operational hours.

I stare at the glowing text. She knows exactly what I'm doing.

Another message pings.

[Kal'tsit]: You will power down the slate immediately. Should this avoidable breach of medical protocol occur again, I will instruct Closure to implement a hardcoded operational blackout on your terminal between 20:00 and 07:00, effective permanently. Do I make myself clear, Lethe?

The threat is absolute. My hands shake so badly I can barely hit the right keys, and I backspace over a typo with my heart hammering.

[Lethe]: I am sorry, Dr. Kal'tsit. I understand. Goodnight.

I hit send. I don't wait to see whether the grey dots come back; my thumb is already on the physical power button on the side of the aluminum chassis.

The screen goes black and the room goes with it.

I shove the slate onto the nightstand and scramble under the blankets, squeezing my eyes shut, slowing my breathing, doing a convincing impression of compliant sleep.

I never got as far as Opal's name.