Soren stirred before he knew he was awake.
It was not the jolt of sudden consciousness, nor the smooth ascent from sleep into awareness. It was something in between—his mind surfacing first, body following at a distance. A half-formed thought clung to him as he drifted upward, indistinct yet immediate, like a sound heard underwater.
A voice.
Low. Familiar.
So familiar that recognition came before comprehension.
His name was not spoken, not clearly. The sound did not carry words so much as presence—cadence, texture, the unmistakable shape of a voice he had heard many times before.
Bram.
The certainty struck without effort. There was no doubt, no need to search memory. The recognition lived somewhere deeper than thought, immediate and instinctive, like the way one knew their own heartbeat.
But before Soren could hold onto it—before he could orient himself toward the sound, before he could ask, or listen, or even decide whether it was real—the voice slipped away.
Darkness folded back in on itself.
He sank.
Then, just as abruptly, he was awake.
Soren inhaled sharply, breath catching in his chest, eyes opening to the dim interior of his quarters. The transition was disorienting—too fast, too clean. There was no lingering echo of sound, no afterimage of presence. Only the familiar hush of the Aurelius at night.
The ship hummed softly around him.
Not loudly. Not insistently. Just enough to be felt rather than heard, a constant vibration threading through the walls, the floor, the bed beneath him. Systems cycling. Wind pressing against the hull. Everything as it had been for days now—steady, restrained, unremarkable.
Soren blinked once.
Then again.
His body felt… fine.
That was the first thing he noticed. No tightness in his chest. No ache behind his eyes. No lingering heaviness in his limbs. He flexed his fingers beneath the blanket, rolled his shoulders slightly against the mattress. Everything responded as expected.
Sound. Intact.
Sensation. Normal.
The absence of discomfort unsettled him more than its presence would have.
He exhaled slowly and turned his head toward the slate on his bedside table. Its screen glowed faintly in the darkness, dimmed to night-cycle settings. He did not need to sit up to read it.
03:00.
Too early to be morning. Too late to be called evening. The hour when the ship thinned out into its quietest self, when routines loosened and the corridors belonged more to systems than people.
Soren stared at the numbers for a long moment.
He did not feel tired.
That, too, was unusual.
Normally, waking at this hour came with a weight behind the eyes, a sluggishness that clung even after movement. But now, his mind felt alert—slow, perhaps, but not dull. Thoughts lingered longer than usual, circling before settling, as though they required extra consideration before being allowed to pass.
He lay still, listening.
The Aurelius did not change its rhythm for him. The hum remained even. The wind outside pressed and released in its measured cadence, invisible but constant. Somewhere deeper in the ship, a system shifted—metal expanding, then settling.
Nothing else intruded.
No footsteps. No voices. No alarms.
Soren closed his eyes again, intending to rest. If he could sleep a little longer, perhaps the edges of his thoughts would smooth out. Perhaps the strange clarity—this wakefulness without fatigue—would give way to something more familiar.
He turned onto his side.
Then onto his back.
The mattress was cool against his skin, the blanket resting lightly over him. He focused on his breathing, slow and deliberate, counting each exhale the way he sometimes did when he needed to quiet his mind.
It did not help.
Images surfaced unbidden.
The mess, bright with early expedition energy. The first day aboard the Aurelius, when everything had felt new and sharply defined. He remembered standing near the counter, scanning unfamiliar faces, cataloguing movement and sound out of habit.
He remembered him there.
Not the name. Not yet.
Just the presence.
Broad shoulders angled slightly forward, posture worn with fatigue rather than weight. The way he leaned against the counter while waiting for food, fingers drumming absently against the surface. A mechanic's hands—calloused, sure, moving with an economy that spoke of long hours and practiced familiarity.
He had looked tired.
Not the kind of exhaustion that demanded rest, but the quieter sort that settled into the bones and stayed there, day after day.
Soren remembered thinking, distantly, that the expedition would wear on him.
He had not known, then, that it would wear on all of them.
The memory shifted. A later encounter. A brief exchange near the lower deck, voices half-lost beneath the ship's hum. The way the man's tone had been rough around the edges. How he dismissed concern with a shrug that felt practiced.
"You'll see," he had said once, or something like it. "The ship holds."
Soren frowned faintly.
The words were clear in his mind, but the context blurred when he tried to pin it down. He could recall the sound of the voice, the cadence, the way it carried over the noise of the Aurelius—but the details around it softened, like edges worn smooth by repetition.
He shifted again, a subtle restlessness settling into his limbs.
Maybe he was overtired, after all.
The thought came easily, slipping into place without resistance. It would explain the early waking. The half-dream. The way his mind lingered too long on memories that did not require revisiting.
He had been working steadily for days. Observing. Recording. Walking the ship from deck to deck, tracking changes that corrected themselves before they could accumulate. The wind had persisted. The crew had adapted.
He had adapted.
A deeper vibration rolled through the Aurelius then—a long, low hum that resonated through the structure, stronger than the baseline but not alarming. It passed through the walls and into the bed frame, a reminder of the ship's size, its constant motion through an unyielding sky.
Soren's eyes opened again.
The sound grounded him, anchoring him in the present. He focused on it, letting the vibration settle into something familiar.
"I'm awake," he murmured softly, though there was no one to hear him.
The slate reads 03:04.
Time had not move much.
He lay there for several more minutes, doing nothing at all. Listening. Feeling. Letting the hum of the Aurelius wash over him until the memory of the voice faded into something less immediate, less sharp.
_________________________
By the time the slate ticked over to 03:30, Soren had already made his decision.
It had not arrived fully formed, nor announced itself with certainty. It came instead as a quiet settling of intent, the way one's body adjusted posture without instruction. He sat up slowly, the movement unhurried, allowing his balance to recalibrate before his feet touched the floor.
The room felt unchanged.
The air was neither warm nor cold, carrying the faint metallic cleanliness of recycled circulation. The hum of the Aurelius remained constant, threading through the walls with its familiar steadiness. Nothing in the space suggested disturbance—no flicker in the lights, no change in pressure.
Soren paused there for a moment, seated at the edge of the bed, hands resting loosely on his thighs.
He did not feel unwell.
That, too, registered with a quiet insistence. His thoughts lingered, yes—moving slower than usual, circling impressions rather than passing through them—but his body felt sound. Alert. Capable.
He stood.
The mirror in the washroom reflected him back without distortion. He wet a cloth and wiped his face, the coolness sharpening his senses just enough to feel grounding. His expression did not look strained, nor pale beyond what the lighting imposed. He studied himself briefly, then turned away.
A quick change of clothes followed—nothing heavy, nothing layered. He moved through the motions with practiced efficiency, hands familiar with the sequence. When he reached the door, his fingers rested on the panel longer than necessary.
Not hesitation.
Bracing.
Maybe.
He opened it.
The corridor beyond was dim, lit by night-cycle illumination that softened edges and elongated shadows. The Aurelius felt different at this hour—not altered, exactly, but thinned. Less human noise, more space between sounds.
Soren stepped out and let the door seal behind him.
The air moved gently along the passage, guided by systems designed to circulate without calling attention to themselves. He could feel it brush past his ears, a faint twirl that dissipated before it could be named. He adjusted his stride instinctively, aligning himself with the flow rather than moving against it.
His footsteps echoed softly, each one distinct before being absorbed by the ship.
As he passed Atticus' door, his pace slowed.
He did not look at it.
The awareness came anyway—an impression rather than a thought, a subtle tightening beneath his ribs. His heart skipped once, sharp and brief, then resumed its steady rhythm as if nothing had happened.
He continued forward.
The mid-deck felt emptier than he remembered. Not abandoned, but redistributed. Operations had shifted downward in recent days, drawing more crew toward maintenance zones and systems junctions. What remained here was quiet efficiency—panels glowing softly, pathways clear.
He stopped near a recessed board set into the wall.
The crew schedule display glowed faintly, cycling through assignments and rotations. Soren did not study it with intent. He let his gaze pass over the information, absorbing patterns rather than specifics.
Names repeated.
Tasks overlapped.
Absences smoothed over by redistribution.
He registered it without comment, filed it away without emphasis. Perhaps it would be useful later. Perhaps not.
After a moment, he moved on.
The mess greeted him with a broader sense of space than usual.
At this hour, it felt expansive—tables unoccupied, chairs neatly aligned, the ambient hum of systems filling what human noise usually claimed. The air here flowed more freely, less contained by the presence of bodies and conversation. It was not warm in the way it often was during peak hours, nor cold. Just open.
Soren approached the counter directly.
A different crew member stood behind it, moving with measured precision. Their motions were efficient, unhurried. They acknowledged Soren with a brief nod as he requested something light.
He chose a seat near the edge of the room, not quite in the corner but removed enough to observe without being observed.
Time stretched.
He waited without impatience, watching the way the crew member worked—how they moved between stations, how they adjusted the equipment with practiced familiarity. There was no rush. At night, the mess operated on a different rhythm, serving fewer people with fewer hands.
Soren's gaze drifted.
He noted the way the light pooled across the floor, the subtle variations in tone where panels met. He listened to the distant echo of a door opening and closing somewhere deeper in the ship, the sound softened by distance and structure.
When the food arrived, he accepted it with a quiet thanks.
He ate slowly.
The first bite gave him pause.
The taste was… off.
Not spoiled. Not unpleasant. Just different enough to register. He took another bite, then a third, testing the impression. The familiar seasoning was present, but something was missing—a faint sharpness, a grounding note that usually balanced the dish.
Pepper, he thought distantly.
Or perhaps not.
He considered the possibility that the recipe had changed, adjusted for supply or efficiency. Operations shifts often brought minor alterations. It was reasonable.
He finished the meal without further scrutiny.
As he rose, he felt no urge to linger. The mess, expansive as it was at this hour, did not hold him. He returned his tray and stepped back into the corridor, the door sealing behind him with a soft hiss.
For a moment, he stood there.
Then his feet carried him downward.
The stairs to the lower deck curved gently, their surfaces worn smooth by countless passages. As Soren descended, he felt the ship's character shift—less movement in the air, more weight in the structure. The lower deck had always been steadier, anchored by systems and maintenance rather than traffic.
When his foot reached the bottom step, something stirred.
Not a sensation that lingered—more a perceptive flicker, a brief tightening that passed before it could fully register. He paused, weight balanced evenly, and waited.
Nothing followed.
The air settled back into its familiar stillness.
He continued.
The lower deck corridor stretched ahead, quieter but not inactive. Crews moved through it with purpose, footsteps paced and efficient. Conversations murmured briefly before dissolving into the hum. Soren walked among them without drawing attention, his presence absorbed into the flow.
As he passed a systems junction, his steps slowed.
The space looked unchanged.
Panels secure. Readouts stable. No sign of disturbance. And yet, he lingered there longer than necessary, gaze tracing familiar lines, memory overlaying the present.
He dismissed the impulse.
There was no point in lingering.
He moved on, turning back toward the stairs after a time, letting his path loop naturally upward. The mid-deck received him again with its softened lighting and open pathways.
As he climbed, a word surfaced in his thoughts.
Decide.
It echoed faintly, detached from context. Decide what? He did not know. The word held no instruction, only the shape of expectation.
He reached the mid-deck and paused once more, breath steady, posture relaxed.
The Aurelius hummed on.
Unconcerned.
Soren adjusted his coat and continued forward, the ship's rhythm guiding him back into its quiet flow.
_________________________
Soren saw Nell before he quite registered why he had stopped.
She was stepping out of the mess, a cup cradled loosely in one hand, her movements slower than usual—unhurried in the way people moved when time was not pressing against them. The overhead lights caught the edge of her hair, softening its color, and for a brief moment she looked almost out of place in the dim quiet of the mid-deck.
She noticed him at the same time.
"Oh," she said, surprise lifting her brows. Then she smiled, small but genuine. "You're up early."
Or late, Soren thought, though he did not say it aloud. Instead, he inclined his head in greeting, the tension in his shoulders easing by a fraction. There was something grounding about the familiarity of her presence—not anchoring, not steadying, but known.
"I could say the same," he replied.
Nell huffed softly, lifting her cup a little as if in explanation. "Couldn't sleep. Figured I'd steal a warm drink before the day properly starts."
Soren glanced down the corridor instinctively, toward the schedule board recessed into the wall. He had already seen her name earlier. She wasn't on rotation yet.
"You're not due on shift," he said, more observation than question.
"Nope." She took a careful sip, then lowered the cup again. "Thought I'd give myself a few quiet minutes before everything ramps up. You know how it is."
He did know. The mid-deck, at this hour, felt suspended between states—no longer fully night, not yet morning. The ship breathed evenly around them, its hum lower, almost contemplative. A faint movement of air passed by Soren's ear, brushing close before dissipating down the corridor.
He found himself lingering on it.
"Would you like to step outside?" he asked suddenly.
Nell blinked, then followed his gaze toward the hatch leading to the exterior hull. After a moment, she smiled again, this time a little crooked. "Yeah. I think I would."
They walked together without haste.
The path to the hatch was familiar to Soren, his steps guided more by memory than sight. Nell matched his pace easily, the sound of her boots soft against the deck. Neither of them spoke for a few moments, letting the quiet stretch naturally between them.
When Soren keyed the hatch, it opened with a controlled sigh.
The wind greeted them immediately—cooler than it had been earlier, more expansive. It curled around them, tugging gently at Soren's coat, lifting loose strands of Nell's hair. The sky was still dark, but not entirely so; a muted blue hovered overhead, lightening at the edges where dawn waited just beyond reach.
They moved toward the rail, settling into the familiar rhythm of standing side by side without crowding one another.
Nell rested her forearms against the barrier, exhaling slowly. "It's different today," she said after a moment.
"The wind?" Soren asked.
She nodded. "It doesn't feel… wrong. Just unsettled. Like it hasn't decided what it wants to do yet."
Soren considered that. He could feel it too—the way the air shifted direction without warning, how currents overlapped instead of flowing cleanly. It reminded him of thoughts that refused to settle, circling the same points without resolution.
They stood there, watching the sky, listening to the Aurelius beneath them.
After a while, Nell spoke again, her voice quieter. "I think I've been making mistakes lately."
Soren turned slightly toward her. "What kind?"
She hesitated, fingers tightening briefly around her cup. "Little things. Misjudging timing. Assuming someone else has covered a task when they haven't. Nothing catastrophic," she added quickly. "But it adds up."
"The operational changes haven't helped," Soren said.
"No," she agreed. "Everything's been shifting. People are doing double duty, systems are being rerouted. It's like the ship's asking us to adapt faster than we're used to."
He nodded. "You're not the only one feeling it."
She glanced at him then, something more searching in her expression. "You too?"
Soren exhaled slowly. The wind tugged at his sleeve again, lingering near his ear before moving on. He didn't pull away from the sensation this time.
"I've been having headaches," he said. "More often than usual."
Nell frowned. "That's not like you."
"No." He paused. "But I suppose nothing is, lately."
She accepted that without pressing further, her understanding evident in the way she shifted closer to the rail, giving him space rather than demanding explanation. They talked a little more after that—about nothing in particular. About the way the sky looked different at odd hours. About how quiet the mess felt at night. About how strange it was to notice changes only after they'd already settled in.
Time passed.
Eventually, Soren found himself drawing a breath, the question forming before he could stop it.
"There's someone I've been trying to find," he said.
Nell turned toward him fully now, attentive. "Oh?"
He hesitated, choosing his words with care. "A mechanic. He works—worked—mostly on the lower deck. Brown hair. Tan skin. A bit taller than me."
Her brow furrowed slightly as she considered. Soren continued, softer now, the uncertainty creeping into his tone despite his effort to contain it.
"He has an edge to him. Voice rough. We've spoken before—more than once. I thought… I thought you might know him."
Nell was silent for a long moment.
The wind shifted, brushing past them both, then pulling away toward the bow. Soren watched her face carefully, the way her eyes moved as she searched her memory.
"I was meaning to tell you," she said finally. "But I don't think I know him."
The words landed gently.
Not dismissive. Not sharp. Simply stated.
Soren felt the pause inside himself—the brief, weightless moment where something threatened to tip. He held steady, breathing through it, letting the sensation pass without resistance.
"I see," he said after a moment.
Nell watched him closely. "I'm sorry."
"It's all right," he replied. "I've just been… recollecting."
She nodded, understanding more than he had explained. Neither of them lingered on the topic. They stood together for a while longer, the silence between them comfortable again, filled only by the sound of the wind and the distant hum of the Aurelius.
Eventually, Nell straightened. "I should head back in. Try to get a little more rest before things start up."
"Of course," Soren said.
She gave him a small smile, then turned and walked toward the hatch. The door sealed behind her with a soft hiss, leaving Soren alone on the exterior walkway.
He remained there, hands resting on the rail, eyes fixed on the sky as it lightened by imperceptible degrees.
The wind moved around him, calmer now, its touch less insistent than before.
"The wind feels, gentler today."
_________________________