Who Am I?
A charge, high and thin, followed by a thump. Then again, louder. Then a third time, the voltage climbing until the discharge tore a gasp out of me that felt like it belonged to someone else. Air came in ragged pulls, my chest heaving like a dog that had run too far. It took a few moments to wrestle the breathing back under control. By the time I had it, the calm had already given way to alarms and the stutter of emergency lighting.
“What's going on? Where am I?” I said it out loud, mostly to hear a voice and confirm I still had one. “I need to figure this out. Get out of here fast. Wish it weren't so dark.”
As if it had been listening, the suit answered. Light bled out from the seams of the fabric, soft and even, just enough to see by.
“What the, I just think light, and my clothes light up?” A short, disbelieving laugh. “Guess I need a weapon too.”
The thought had barely finished forming before something built itself out of the material at my wrist, fast, mechanical, alive. A weapon, gun-shaped, with a short blade fused along the barrel. It startled me so badly it dissolved back into the suit almost as fast as it had come.
“Did I do that? What is this thing? It's reacting to my thoughts.” I raised my hand and half-shouted at it. “Knife-gun thingy, appear!”
Nothing. I stood there in the dark wondering if I'd just broken it, if demanding would make it stubborn. So I tried the opposite: a slow breath, a loose hand lifted like I was already holding something. It appeared. An old six-shooter's silhouette, fluorescent green light tracing each chamber, the barrel drawn out long with the front sight sharpened into a blade. A weapon and a light. That would have to be enough.
My heart hadn't slowed down since I woke up. I moved fast and low through the rubble-choked corridor, senses raw, and then a shout cracked off the walls, not close, but not far either. A voice, cracked open by fear.
“HELP! SOMEBODY, ANYBODY! HELP!” It could be a trap. I didn't know anything about this place or what was hunting in it, and a cry for help was the oldest bait there was. But something about the voice snagged at me, familiar in a way I couldn't place, like a word on the tip of my tongue.
“HELP! ALEX! I know you're out there. I'm pinned under the rubble!”
Alex. The name landed somewhere behind my ribs before my mind caught up to it. Is that me?
“I'm coming,” I called back. “Hold on.” “Knew you'd find me.” Relief cracked his voice wide open. “Now use that yoctotech and get us both out of here before it's too late.”
Yoctotech. I didn't know what that word meant, and there wasn't time to figure it out, not with him buried and time running short. I picked my way toward his voice.
“Aren't you a sight for sore eyes,” he said when I found him, half his body pinned under a collapsed support beam. “Guess that makes me a bachelor in a bind.”
“What happened?” I crouched near the rubble. “I'm kind of at a loss here.”
“At a loss?” He stared at me like I'd grown a second head. “Did you hit your head or something? I was counting on you to get us out. Get your head in the game.”
“Let's get you out first,” I said. “Then we can talk about what I remember and what I don't.”
I circled the debris, looking for a way in. “I need more light. I can barely see what I'm working with.”
When I glanced back, he was grinning at me. Not in pain, in something closer to delight.
“Why are you smiling? You're trapped under a beam.”
“If I have to be stuck somewhere,” he said, “at least the view's good.”
I frowned, not following, until he added, “I love a good show as much as the next guy, but you might want to cover up.”
I looked down. My suit had split at the seams somewhere along the way, tattered enough that I understood exactly what he meant. In the half-light I could see the shape of it: dark blue, form-fitting, a shallow collar, a deep gold-trimmed V at the chest, sleeves that ran to a loop over my middle finger, a utility belt riding my hip, boots laced to the thigh. None of that mattered right now. What mattered was the man in front of me and how fast I could get him free.
“I'll fill in the gaps,” he said, “but first, cover up. You're distracting me and my blood's starting to boil. I might pass out from the excitement of being rescued.”
“Let me just grab my spare uniform,” I said flatly. “Where exactly do you expect me to find one of those down here?”
“The suit's smart material reads off your yoctotech. Just picture what you want it to look like. It does the rest.” A beat. “Though I won't complain either way.”
His grin made my face go hot with embarrassment, and as if the heat itself were the instruction, the suit knitted itself whole again, seams closing, fabric smoothing over like it had never torn.
“Exactly,” he said, delighted. “That's yoctotech. You can shape it with your mind because it's part of you. Just concentrate.”
He wasn't lying, I'd already made light and a weapon out of nothing. I looked at him properly for the first time. “Who are you?”
“If you weren't so ...” he stopped, exhaled, started over. “Get me out of here and we'll do proper introductions.”
I reformed the weapon, the Derlass, a name that came to me the way my own name had, unearned and certain, and stretched the blade long and humming. It cut through the debris pinning him with almost no resistance. In minutes he was free.
He scrambled up and covered himself like I'd caught him mid- shower. “Don't stare. I'm shy.”
I rolled my eyes, already cataloguing him without meaning to, the set of his shoulders, a shallow cut over one eyebrow that wasn't bleeding anymore. “You're fine. Minor injuries. I guess I'm getting the hang of this, again.”
“Let me try that introduction one more time.” He straightened, mock-formal. “I'm your future husband.”
“Doubt that.” He clutched his chest like I'd shot him. “You know me. Calix. I built the tech running through you right now. In a way, you're carrying my babies.”
I gave that the response it deserved, none, and asked if anyone else was down here with us. Calix started filling in the blanks: where we were, what we'd come here to do, who else was in the building. “Pull up the facility schematic,” he said. “Use what we mapped going in and layer whatever we've picked up since.”
“How am I supposed to do that? Do I look like I'm carrying a computer?”
“Well,” he said, eyes dropping, “I see a lot on you ...” “Ow. You didn't have to ...” I hadn't touched him. I gave him a look instead, and he put his hands up. “Okay, okay. Not the time. Open your hand like you're holding a ball.”
I did. “The yoctotech listens to your thoughts,” he said. “It's an extension of you. It'll come back to you, the tech backs up your memory, sort of. Like insurance for your brain.”
It did come back, in pieces, muscle memory ahead of conscious thought. A holographic display bloomed from my palm, a full 4D render of the facility, a tower rising far above ground level, an express elevator buried in the blueprints that shouldn't have existed, dropping hundreds of feet to a research level with no official record. One section refused to resolve, blurred, jammed by some kind of interference, tucked at the far end of the complex.
I switched the display to thermal. One signature stood out, fading fast.
“That's Dom,” Calix said, going still. “That's where we split up. He told everyone to keep moving and stayed back as a decoy.”
The name did something to me I didn't have words for yet, a pull, low and certain, like a hand closing around something I hadn't known I was holding.
“Something must have gone wrong,” Calix said quietly. “If his signature's fading like that, we don't have long.”
Four more clusters moved through the facility in a search pattern. Near the blurred room, more heat signatures clustered, and scattered through the halls, the cooling outlines of bodies that weren't moving anymore.
“So we get Dom and go,” I said. “And the twins,” Calix said. “Mission parameters. We can't leave without them.”
“Why the twins specifically?” He started to explain, something about their role, their importance, and I cut him off before he could bury me in it. “Anything else I should know?”
“Let's move. I'll fill you in on the way.” We started toward Dom's fading signal, Calix talking low and fast about yoctotech, about the mission, about anything that might matter in the next ten minutes. I let it wash over me while some other part of my mind ran through the ways this could go wrong. I was nervous. I was also, strangely, calm, the kind of calm that only comes from having done this before, even if I couldn't remember doing it.
“Even with your memory shot,” Calix said, watching me sideways, “I can guarantee you one thing. I'm going to keep looking, because you're built like a total eclipse. Blinding.”
“Not the time for that,” I said, and meant it, even as the corner of my mouth betrayed me.
“I'm not a fighter,” he said. “I'm a lover. A genius, technically, since I made the tech that's currently living inside you. Which means I'm inside you. Really, you should be thanking me.”
“Quiet,” I whispered, and grabbed him by the collar, hauling him back against the wall. I pressed close, using my own body to block him from whatever was moving toward us down the corridor.
“I told you,” he breathed, voice gone thin, “I'm not built for this part.”
Footsteps, then voices, clipped and close: “Area clear. Moving to the next section. We need the woman alive. Kill anything else that moves, even the boss's science experiment.”
They passed without slowing. My pulse was a drumbeat in my ears. They were hunting for me, specifically, and there was some experiment loose in this building that Calix hadn't mentioned once.
“Why didn't they see us?” I asked once the footsteps faded. “You must've triggered camouflage without meaning to,” Calix said. “It doesn't hold long, but it's useful in a pinch.”
We pushed on toward Dom, more careful now. Calix was dead weight in a fight and Dom was already down, that left me as the only thing standing between our team and whatever was hunting us. Every minute we lost mattered.
“Who is Dom to me?” I asked, not slowing down. “Not important right now. Focus on the task.” “Who is he to me?” I said again, harder. “I'm terrified of what's happening to him and I don't know why. I need to know.”
Calix glanced at me, something softening in his face. “He's your guy. You two are together.”
We reached Dom the same moment the soldiers did. Someone in charge barked an order, open fire, but don't touch the woman, or you'll wish you had died with the rest of them. That told me everything I needed to know about how badly they wanted me alive. I used it, throwing myself into their sightline as cover while Calix hauled Dom around the bend toward a door.
It was locked. Calix swore he could open it. Behind us, the soldiers advanced in a careful crawl, guns up, rounds chewing the walls just wide enough to keep me pinned without risking a hit. I weighed stepping into the open, buying seconds, trusting the suit to take a graze, when the door gave way behind me. We dragged Dom through and barricaded it.
For once, Calix had nothing to say. He paced instead while I worked on Dom's wounds with whatever I could find, enough to stop the bleeding, enough that he could be moved.
Then the pounding started on the other side of the door. Fists first, furious, demanding. Then something changed in the sound, the rhythm broke, the voices behind it curdled from arrogance into raw, animal terror.
Then nothing. Silence, total and sudden. I pressed my ear to the door and heard, faint, a snarl that didn't belong to anything human.
Whatever had done that to trained soldiers was now the only thing standing between us and the way out.
Dom stirred before we had to decide anything. His eyes opened, found mine, and some of the pressure in my chest eased. He told us he could move. Calix pulled up the room's terminal and found a partial camera feed, the corridor outside looked clear except for what was left of the men who'd been pounding on the door a minute ago.
I opened it. The bodies told their own story, nothing a bullet had done.
I lifted a comm unit off one of them so we could track whatever was still moving through the building. It crackled to life almost immediately.
“AT3 is down. Sensors confirm: all of them, wiped. I repeat, AT3 is down. AT4, stay sharp, the experiment's tracker is headed your direction.”
A burst of gunfire answered, and then: “WHERE IS IT? WHERE DID IT GO?” Then screaming. Then: “AT4 is down too.”
Someone was calling for a retreat that wasn't going to save them. The hunters had become the hunted, and whatever this thing was, it wasn't taking prisoners.
“Let's gather what we can from here,” Calix said, all the jokes gone out of his voice. “We can't rush Dom out at less than a hundred percent.”
He stripped gear off the fallen soldiers and started wiring it together with his own equipment, then asked to sync it to my suit. I let him. Whatever he was building, I trusted it had a purpose.
“What are you doing?” “Syncing my PortTerm to your yoctotech.” A satisfied grin. “There, now I've got everything you've picked up since we got here, plus theirs. We can track the experiment and steer around anything else that wants to kill us.”
The PortTerm bridged onto the facility's closed network and unlocked a handful of scout drones, releasing them to feed data back in real time. We got Dom on his feet, Calix close at my side, and pushed toward the twins' last known position.
We rounded a corner and I understood immediately why the tracker had been useless. The thing was right there, and it smiled at us.
Without looking away, it drove one hand straight through a man's chest and laughed while he died. No hesitation. No weight to it at all. Bodies lay in pieces around it, and near my feet a woman dragged herself across the floor, one leg gone, blood streaking the tile, begging for help I couldn't give her. This thing wasn't just killing soldiers. It didn't discriminate between guard and scientist. It killed because it enjoyed it.
Dom looked at me, and I understood: as long as this thing was close, I couldn't protect him and fight it at the same time.
“Surround them! Capture the woman alive. Kill the experiment, it's out of control!”
I called the Derlass back to my hand, revolver and cutlass fused into one line of green light. “Come any closer,” I said, “and I kill every one of you.”
More soldiers converged from behind us, full strength now, ready for exactly this. The creature laughed and peeled off with half of them chasing after it, leaving the rest to close in on me.
I understood the choice in front of me. Either I found a way through them, or none of us walked out. I planted my feet and let them come.
They hesitated, they'd been ordered not to hit me, and that hesitation was the only opening I needed. I moved through them the way water moves through a crack, the Derlass flashing from gun to blade and back, each shot and cut placed with a precision that felt older than my memory of the last hour. It wasn't chaos. It was choreography.
Somewhere behind the gunfire, a voice, low, wet, delighted, rode over the noise.
“You will all die this day. And she will be mine.” The creature reappeared out of the dark like it had never left, and dread rolled off it in a wave that hit every person in that corridor at once. The soldiers who'd been advancing on me broke and scrambled backward from it instead. Dom clenched his jaw against his own wounds, calculating how much fight he had left in him. I looked between him and Calix and understood we'd just traded one problem for a much worse one.
Calix straightened to his full height, dragging every ounce of nerve he had into his voice.
“Nobody's dying tonight.” He pointed at me, somehow managing a grin even now. “I refuse to die in a place like this, I haven't even had one night with Alex yet. You're making me breakfast in the morning. That's non-negotiable.”
Whoever, whatever answered him would have to wait. Because before the thing in the dark could take another step, the whole corridor seemed to remember something older than either of us, older than InterVent, older than the war that had made this building necessary in the first place.
I didn't know it yet, standing there with a blade of light in my hand and a stranger's confidence borrowed for the occasion, but I was about to find out exactly how far back this went.
In the Beginning Humanity's climb ran the way it always had: stone tools to steel, gunpowder to the atom, until the calm after the World Wars finally turned every eye upward. It wasn't a graceful climb. It never had been. Every leap forward on Earth came stitched together out of desperation and blood, a species that only ever seemed to innovate fast enough to survive its own last mistake. The spacefaring age arrived on the back of exactly that kind of calm, purchased at a price nobody wanted to say out loud, and with it came new energy, new medicine, and, inevitably, new ways to kill each other faster.
The real turning point came in 2033, when nanotechnology stopped being theory. Dr. Shaunjay Isaac Greene, a man who'd spent years trying to save a brother maimed in the Third World War, cracked what the world would come to call invisi-tech: machines a hundred nanometers wide, programmable, injected into the bloodstream, capable of fusing prosthetics to nerve endings until a manufactured limb felt exactly like the one it replaced. Greene never set out to change the species. He set out to give his brother a hand that could hold a coffee cup without shaking. History has a way of not caring what you meant to do. By 2045 invisi-tech was simply how people lived, threaded so completely into daily life that an entire generation grew up unable to imagine a body that couldn't repair itself.
Thirteen years later, Greene went further, and this time the ambition was entirely his own. Picotechnology could rewrite the body at the level of DNA, stripping out disease, disability, and the fragile ceiling human biology had always imposed on what a person could survive. It was picotech that finally made survival in deep space something other than a slow death sentence, radiation no longer a countdown, decompression no longer an automatic death, and it was picotech that sent humanity outward in earnest: mining asteroids first, then colonizing Mars, then building the outposts strung between them like beads on a wire, waypoints that would, given enough time and enough resentment, decide they didn't want to be waypoints anymore.
Mars grew a generation who'd never seen Earth and resented laboring for a planet that saw them only as a resource to be extracted and shipped home. They called themselves the Rufescents, a name they wore with the particular pride of people who'd been told, over and over, that they were less than the world that made them. Earth called their independence movement insurrection and answered with an invasion that badly underestimated both the will and the ingenuity of the people they were trying to put down. Soldiers raised on Earth's gravity, Earth's assumptions, Earth's certainty that the colonies existed to serve the homeworld, found themselves fighting people who had spent their entire lives learning to survive on nothing. War bled resources from both worlds and spilled outward into the space between them, where the outposts, caught in the middle, pressured from both directions to pick a side, chose neutrality instead. It nearly got them destroyed more than once. It also made them strong in a way neither Earth nor Mars had counted on.
Those outposts united, took the name Spacers, and carved out something that belonged to no one else, a culture built entirely between two warring worlds instead of underneath either of them. It didn't last clean. One station was lost outright during the worst of the fighting, caught in a crossfire it had no part in starting, its survivors scattering to the others with nothing but the clothes they'd been wearing when the hull breached. The Spacers who remained buried their dead in the only way available to them, out an airlock, into the same dark that had almost killed them all, and swore, in whatever passed for a unified voice among people from a dozen different stations, that they would rather die free than live as leverage between two worlds that had never once asked what they wanted.
That war, and the grudges it left behind, were still writing themselves into the present. Treaties had been signed. Anniversaries had been celebrated. None of it had actually finished anything, and Alex, Calix, and the rest of the Silk Ashes were about to find out exactly how unfinished it all still was, in a facility built on secrets that reached back further than any of them, further even than the war itself, to something that had been sleeping under Mars long before humanity ever thought to go looking for it.