ch7: Lunchtime
- Jun 6
- 4 min read
The bite of the needle snaps the hush. A cold surges beneath her skin, chased by returning warmth. The DNAT accepts the feed immediately. Lights bloom along its seams like a Dyson catching a small star. She attaches the dressed clamp, in part, to steady her arm. Eyes fixed on the rhythm of the chamber lights rather than her wrist.
Her blood joins the circuit.
Memory is mapped in haste. Patterns are quickly half-formed. The DNAT was built for triage, to capture fading signal, stabilize, preserve. Used properly, it’s mercy. Used this way, it’s theft.
Feedback ricochets in her cortex. Signals bounce back. Thoughts reflect thoughts until they blur. The DNAT mirrors her, trying to build from echo.
Her jaw tightens. The hum sharpens. Input seizes what it finds easiest to replay: Trauma. Regret.
< < <
That morning. Heat from the kilns pressed against her chest. The smell of slag. Ordinary, intimate. Workers funnelled to their stations, the hum of motion pretending to be purpose.
He leaned close, shoulder brushing hers. Voice low, meant only for her.
“It’s all arranged,” he whispered, calm. Certain.
“Is it?” she asked, pretending to know. Happy. Willing. Forgotten emotions.
“We can leave. Now.”
She didn’t believe him. He didn’t mind.
“Passage is ready. We’ll work for Phoenix. The hauler’s fueled. If we go now, we’ll reach the spaceport by lunchtime.”
She turned to him, cautious. Ready for the punchline. Instead, his face changed. The expression he always wore before a cheeky reveal. He pulled out folded paper. Actual paper. Notarized passage. Off planet.
Her chest should have lifted, but it didn’t. Her eyes found Garren in the rafters. Cam at his post. Siah, already in rhythm at her station. Anchors. Excuses. Family. Loyalty, she called it. Beneath that: fear.
The wish she carried for so long, finally was made real. And she couldn’t step into it.
“Not without them,” Her voice broke, brittle from years of survival. Softened by her love of him.
He didn’t argue. Pressed her hand. Steady. Sure. A man who believed choice can wait.
> > >
The DNAT disagrees, rejecting her reasoning like a corrupt signal. It pushes past her cortex. Searching. Deeper. A fuller truth. Her pulse spikes. The chamber flares. Her body jolts.
The line between thought and machine dissolves.
She smells wet stone and furnace at once. She sees him. His face lit by the dim light, and again by memory, and again by the machine feeding both. Her hand holds his and slips away. She calls his name but cannot hear her voice.
Zero sits motionless. In standby.
The DNAT forces the past to the front, like looped exposure singeing a moment of imagery. Every detail becomes present tense. The brush of his sleeve. The warmth of his voice. Arrived.
Her muscles shake. Lights on the console blur. What she didn’t realize she withheld, she gives now. Not permission. Not bravery. Everything.
The light settles into focus. His face glows with reckless joy.
“Alright. Not without them.”
His promise to her. Pure. Unconditional.
Unattained.
He was joyful, almost holy in it. And she—the one who had sworn all her life to leave—failed to match him. This hated moment, truer, burns hotter than ports.
The hum rises. The DNAT pulls harder, demanding more. She feels it searching, looking for something whole. Only scraps are left to offer. Still, she yields.
If she can’t leave with him, she’ll leave to him.
The DNAT swallows the dim light around her. The Bin folds into itself, collapsing time. The moment fractures again, in sync with her failing body.
The hum peaks. She sees only light. Her veins feel hollowed. Her heartbeat misfires against the rhythm of the machine. She tries to catch herself, find control. The DNAT draws on systems meant for a different purpose. It reads resistance as life fading. So it draws harder.
Her body stiffens. Jaw locked. Hands braced against the table she can no longer feel. The hum sharpens to an inaudible note.
Then, silence.
A pressure wave, internal and absolute. Like the air between lightning and thunder. In a held breath, she hears him. Not memory. Faint, small as it is dragged away.
Carry on.
Lights on the console flicker and die. Her sight folds. She doesn’t know if she’s standing. Unaware if the pain is gone or too great to know. She floats in it.
Her body gasps, soundless.
Vae’s hand slides off the table. Her body follows, folding to the floor in slow surrender. The needle tears free. A trail of beading blood arcs across her wrist.
She lies still. The Bin holds its breath.
The only light rising and falling comes from fluctuation of the sconce on the wall. The DNAT dims as its hum recedes to a whisper. It waits for instruction that won’t come.
Minutes pass without measure. The Bin no longer feels vast. It feels entombed. Her pulse slows, matching the machine’s dying hum. It blinks once more. Then release. The chamber’s faint glow gutters out.
Silence.
Then a low whir elsewhere. Soft. Circuitry catching a new current.
Zero stirs.
His optics flicker open, searching the dark behind his eyes. He lifts an inch from the workbench, unsteady. Stabilizers ramp up. Balance returns.
He drifts to the edge, scanning. Below, Vaelyn’s chest doesn’t rise.
The DNAT powers down. Zero disconnects from it.
The air settles as he drifts down to her. Vaelyn’s eyes are open just enough to wonder. He reaches toward her face, initiates his voice box, but without warning, a small sound escapes his speaker array.
“Hfn-ktchuh!” A sound too human to be anything else.
There, in the sorting room, at the back of the Bin, creation and creator.
Dev steadies beside her, in hover form. Silent now, as the Bin cools around them.