The corridor did not change after Carden spoke.
The lights remained steady. The hum beneath the deckplates continued at its usual register, low and even. Air flowed gently through the vents above, consistent with the mid-range wind conditions that had persisted for days now.
Yet the question lingered between them.
"Who are you talking about?"
Soren did not answer at once.
He stood facing the door marked 2, hand lowered at his side now, fingers relaxed but not entirely still. The knock he had just delivered seemed suddenly farther away, as though it belonged to a different moment than the one he now occupied.
He drew a breath—controlled, shallow—and turned slightly toward Carden.
"Bram Cutter," he said. "A mechanic. Quartermaster-in-training."
The phrasing came out precise, structured. The kind of answer built from habit rather than improvisation. Soren did not hedge, nor did he soften the certainty in his tone.
Carden's expression shifted—not dramatically, but enough to register.
"Bram Cutter?" he repeated, brows knitting faintly.
"Yes."
Carden exhaled through his nose, thoughtful rather than dismissive. "Can't say that rings any bells."
He pushed off from the wall, posture loose, arms folding comfortably across his chest. There was no defensiveness in the movement—no sense of being challenged.
"I work in mechanics," Carden continued. "Still apprenticing, sure, but you get to know the names pretty quickly. Especially anyone training into quartermaster support."
Soren nodded once, acknowledging the information.
"I also tend to remember people," Carden added, a small smile touching his mouth. "It's one of those things you develop when you're still proving yourself."
The comment landed lightly. If there was pride in it, it was understated.
"I don't recall anyone named Bram," Carden finished.
The ship hummed.
Soren felt it then—a faint pressure blooming behind his eyes. Subtle. Familiar. Not enough to disrupt function, but enough to be noted.
"I see," he said.
For a brief moment, his mind replayed the previous days: outside the hull, the lower deck, the maintenance bay, the place where Bram had collapsed. The memory remained intact—clear in sequence, spatially sound.
But memory, he knew, was not infallible.
"It's possible I misremembered," Soren said after a pause. "The ship was loud at the time. There was a significant hum."
The explanation was reasonable. Environmental interference could distort perception. He had accounted for such variables before.
Carden accepted it without hesitation.
"Happens," he said easily. "Especially lately. Feels like the Aurelius has been breathing louder than usual."
Soren inclined his head.
"If you want to be certain," Carden went on, "Tamsin would know. She keeps track of everyone, unofficially or not. Or the Captain, if you prefer something formal."
The mention of Atticus brought a brief, grounding weight to Soren's awareness. Steady. Familiar.
"Yes," he agreed. "I'll inquire."
The pressure behind his eyes pulsed once—then settled, as if satisfied with the resolution.
They stood in silence for a beat longer before Soren spoke again.
"Are you on day-shift today?"
The question shifted the conversation cleanly, the way a well-placed adjustment rebalanced a system.
Carden laughed softly. "Nope. Still on night rotation. Just woke up, actually."
He gestured down the corridor. "Heading to the mess. Dinner for you, breakfast for me."
Soren almost smiled.
"That's correct," he said. "I was about to do the same."
"Well then," Carden replied, already turning, "we can walk together."
Soren hesitated only long enough to register the offer.
"Alright."
They moved off side by side, footsteps aligning without effort. The corridor widened as they left the quarters wing, light brightening incrementally. The air felt warmer here, more lived-in.
Conversation resumed naturally.
Carden spoke about a misaligned brace he'd been assigned to the previous night—not in technical detail, but in passing. Soren listened, offering brief acknowledgments, the exchange settling into something easy and unforced.
By the time they entered the mess, the earlier tension had thinned into background noise.
The space was warm, filled with low voices and the clatter of trays. Food service was running smoothly, despite the foot traffic. Nothing felt out of place.
They took seats near the corner.
Midway through the meal, Carden glanced at Soren again—this time more deliberately.
"Can I ask you something?" he said.
Soren looked up. "Yes."
"You notice things," Carden said. "Patterns. Changes."
Soren did not deny it.
"Do you ever worry," Carden continued, tone casual, "that noticing something doesn't mean you understand it?"
The question wasn't sharp. It wasn't even confrontational.
But it landed.
Soren considered it carefully.
"Understanding," he said, "is a process. Observation is the first step, not the conclusion."
Carden smiled. "Fair answer."
They finished eating not long after.
When they parted ways, it was without ceremony.
Yet as Soren stepped back into the corridor, the question remained—quiet, unresolved.
_________________________
By the time Soren left the mess, the ship had shifted into its evening rhythm.
The corridors no longer carried the hurried cross-traffic of overlapping shifts, nor had they settled into the quieter cadence of night. Instead, there was a steadiness to the movement—measured footsteps, murmured exchanges, the soft mechanical punctuation of doors opening and sealing behind passing crew. The Aurelius moved through it all with unbroken composure, her internal systems humming low and constant, a sound that threaded through the decks like a continuous breath.
Soren stepped into the mid-deck corridor and adjusted his pace without conscious thought, falling into the rhythm he had followed for months now. His steps aligned with the ship's subtle sway, his posture correcting itself as it always did, spine straightening just enough to counterbalance the gentle pull of motion beneath his feet.
The migraine had settled in fully.
Not sharply—not yet—but with a presence that could not be ignored. A tightness behind his eyes, a dull pressure that pulsed in slow intervals, synchronized almost imperceptibly with the ship's vibrations. He registered it clinically, as he always did, noting the sensation without assigning it urgency.
He continued walking.
As he moved deeper along the mid-deck, he found his thoughts returning, uninvited but persistent, to the conversation outside Room 2. To Carden's certainty. To the absence of recognition where Soren had expected at least neutrality.
It's possible I misremembered.
The explanation settled easily enough. He's acquainted with Bram in the beginning, but he might've been too nervous during the start of this expedition to recall his position accurately. Mechanic. Or. And, the Aurelius had been loud that day—wind pressure fluctuating, systems compensating in layered corrections. He recalled the low hum that had filled the lower deck at the time, how it had blurred the edges of sound and made voices harder to distinguish.
It would not have been difficult to hear the room number incorrectly.
Two.
Or something close enough to it.
The thought did not distress him. It fit neatly into an existing framework: sensory interference, imperfect recall, environmental noise. The mind, after all, was not immune to distortion.
Ahead, the corridor widened into a junction where the crew rotation board was recessed into the wall, its display cycling through assignments, names, and shift indicators. Soren slowed as he approached, attention drawn to it without intention.
He scanned the list once.
Then again, more carefully.
There were names he recognized easily—crew members whose schedules he'd grown accustomed to seeing repeated across different tasks as staffing adjusted to ongoing conditions. A few were marked as limited duty. Others rotated more frequently than usual, their names appearing across multiple assignments in shorter intervals.
Rysen's name appeared often.
Medical oversight, consultation, follow-up checks. It was subtle, but noticeable. Soren realized he had not seen him much lately—only in passing, never lingering.
Bram's name was not there.
Soren did not linger on the absence.
Instead, he noted the pattern: redundancy in assignments, slight compression in rotation intervals. Manageable. Efficient. Nothing that required intervention.
The wind shifted as he moved on.
It was more noticeable here—not stronger, exactly, but more present. It flowed low along the floor before lifting in gentle currents that brushed against his calves and arms, cool against his skin. The sensation grounded him, gave his body something external to register beyond the pressure in his head.
He matched his breathing to it, slow and even.
The migraine eased slightly—not receding, but stabilizing.
By the time he reached his quarters corridor, the lighting had dimmed to its evening setting. The air felt cooler here, quieter. Footsteps echoed faintly, absorbed quickly by the structure of the ship.
Soren keyed his door.
The panel responded at once, the door sliding open with a soft hiss.
He paused at the threshold.
For a moment—brief enough to question afterward—he thought he heard something.
Not a voice. Not words.
A murmur.
It seemed to pass through his awareness rather than reach his ears, indistinct and without direction, as though it had risen and faded within the same breath. His body reacted before his mind did, heart giving a single, pronounced beat against his ribs.
He turned his head slightly, gaze shifting down the corridor.
It was empty.
The Aurelius continued to hum, steady and unchanged. The wind moved as it had been, curling gently along the floor before dispersing into the vents above.
Nothing else stirred.
Soren exhaled.
Fatigue, he reasoned. The migraine, pressing insistently now, had likely heightened his sensitivity. It was not unusual for sound to blur at the edges under such conditions, for perception to momentarily misalign.
He stepped into his quarters.
The door slid shut behind him, sealing the space with a familiar click.
Inside, the room felt still, insulated from the ship's larger movements. Soren stood there for a moment longer than necessary, allowing the quiet to settle, before moving further in.
Routine would take over from here.
And routine, he trusted.
__________________________
Soren moved through the small rituals of the room with practiced ease.
He set his boots aside first, aligning them against the wall without looking, then shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on the hook beside the door. The fabric settled with a soft whisper, the sound absorbed quickly by the room's muted acoustics. The Aurelius' hum was present here too, but distant—filtered through layers of structure, a steady vibration that felt more like pressure than sound.
He crossed to the washroom and turned on the water.
The temperature adjusted automatically, warming in gradual increments rather than sudden shifts. Steam began to gather along the edges of the mirror as he leaned forward, bracing one hand against the sink while the other rubbed briefly at his temple. The migraine had not worsened, but it had not receded either. It sat behind his eyes like a weight, dull and persistent, reminding him of itself each time he moved too quickly or let his thoughts drift unchecked.
He straightened, reached into the cabinet, and retrieved the medication Rysen had given him earlier. The tablet rested briefly in his palm—small, unremarkable—before he took it with a swallow of water. The motion was automatic, unceremonious.
Afterward, he let the water run longer than necessary.
He stood beneath the spray, head bowed slightly, eyes closed, allowing the warmth to loosen the tightness in his shoulders. The water traced steady paths down his skin, grounding him in sensation, pulling his awareness back into his body where it belonged. Thoughts attempted to surface—disconnected fragments, half-formed questions—but he let them drift past without engagement.
When he finally shut the water off, the room felt quieter for it.
He dried off, dressed in simple sleepwear, and crossed back into the main space of his quarters. The lighting had shifted subtly while he was gone, dimming to its evening setting, casting soft shadows along the walls. Outside the viewport, the sky had deepened into darker tones, streaked faintly with the last remnants of light.
Soren sat on the edge of the bed and exhaled slowly.
For a moment, he remained there, hands resting loosely on his thighs, posture slightly forward. Then, almost without conscious decision, his gaze shifted toward the desk.
The ledger lay where he had left it.
The pull toward it was not urgent. It did not feel like concern, or alarm. More like a quiet insistence—an awareness that something waited to be acknowledged.
He stood and crossed the room, lifting the ledger from the desk and settling back against the headboard with it resting in his lap. The familiar weight of it steadied him. He opened it carefully, pages whispering as they turned.
At first, everything appeared as it should.
Neat entries. Consistent spacing. Observations recorded with the same precision he had always maintained. Wind conditions. Structural responses. Crew flow. Each line measured, restrained, free of speculation.
Then he reached a page that made him pause.
The handwriting was his.
There was no mistaking that—the slant of the letters, the pressure of the strokes, the slight variation in spacing where his pen naturally hesitated. And yet, something about it felt… different.
The lines were tighter here. The strokes marginally heavier, as though the pen had moved more quickly across the page than usual. A few letters leaned more sharply forward, overlapping just enough to suggest momentum rather than deliberation.
He frowned faintly.
He did not remember writing in a rush.
Soren read the entry once.
Then again.
Wind sustained. Fourth day.
The words themselves were unremarkable. Accurate. Appropriate, given the conditions. There was nothing inherently concerning in the observation.
Still, he read it again.
A dull throb pulsed behind his eyes, more pronounced now, as if responding to his focus. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them and continued reading the surrounding entries, searching for context.
Everything else followed his usual pattern.
There was no indication of stress. No deviation in content. And yet, the physical act of the writing on that page suggested a pace he could not recall inhabiting.
I must have been pressed for time, he thought.
The explanation was simple enough. A delayed rotation. An unexpected interruption. Any number of routine variables could have required him to record the entry quickly before moving on.
The memory might simply not have lingered.
That, too, was normal.
He let the ledger rest open for a few moments longer, gaze unfocused now, thoughts drifting. The migraine softened at the edges, replaced by a creeping drowsiness that settled into his limbs. Fatigue weighed on him more heavily than he had anticipated.
Eventually, he closed the ledger.
The sound was soft, final.
He placed it back on the desk, aligning it carefully with the edge as he always did. The act felt grounding, a return to order after the subtle dissonance of the moment.
Soren leaned back against the pillows and allowed himself to sink into the mattress.
His breathing slowed.
The hum of the Aurelius filled the space again, constant and familiar, threading through his awareness until it became indistinguishable from his own pulse. His thoughts loosened their grip, images blurring at the edges as sleep approached.
Just before he drifted off, a question surfaced—quiet, unforced, slipping into his mind once again without urgency.
Am I accounting for absence—
or smoothing over it?
The thought did not linger long enough to trouble him.
Sleep claimed him gently, and the room remained unchanged.
_________________________