Callum took a breath.

  Deep. Unrestricted. The kind of breath that used to be ordinary… back when Earth's gravity pressed evenly against his chest, back when air was something you could waste.

  The catch was gone. That drowning-from-the-inside sensation, the fluid that had colonized his pleural cavity like an invading species, had finally surrendered to Patrick's drainage protocol. The tube was out. The ache in his ribs had downgraded from crisis to complaint.

  He sat in his suspension chair by the viewport, anti-grav stabilizers humming their lullaby against his truncated frame. Light. He felt light. The way anyone would when they only had a third of themselves left to carry.

  Behind him, the air shifted. A familiar pulse threaded through the walls, vibrating faintly against his eardrums like sonar pinging off bone.

  He didn't turn. The sterile white room reflected in the viewport glass told him everything.

  "How'd it go, Patrick."

  “The infant was not clean. She arrived coated in a primitive, white-grey film and covered in light biological dust.”

  Patrick stood motionless in his Avatar form, recalling his optical sensors fixed on the writhing newborn, and shared the recording with Callum. To the Nexus, this substance was inefficiency, waste, a barrier to perfection. But here, bathed in the filtered light of the med-bay, it looked like stardust clinging to a traveler who had just crossed the universe to be born.

  "The glowing awe..." Patrick murmured, his voice synthesizer vibrating with a frequency that mimicked a whisper. "Even to me... she is precious. I wanted to hold her, but restrained."

  "I detect the energy again, Callum," Patrick said, not looking away from the child. "This... dust. And the visual-emotional radiation you humans emit. It is gold. Pure, oscillating gold."

  Patrick’s internal processor whirred, accessing archived histories that had been locked away for eons. "I believe the Nexus once lived in this energy, too. We swam in it without comprehension. But the gold dimmed. It became overwhelmed by heavy, dark frequencies… sadness, greed, corruption. The biological vessel was deemed too volatile. We traded the glow for immortality."

  He paused, watching the baby cry… a sound of life asserting itself.

  "I can only feel your light when I inhabit the ancient Avatar suits," Patrick confessed, a note of danger entering his tone. "The ones that have the blueprint within them to remember how to translate the sensation. I have hidden this fascination infection from the Nexus. I must… If they detect that I am compromised by the beauty of biology... there is a 94.6% probability they will purge the Terra Dome. They will leave humanity to figure itself out on Eden alone."

  "Purge?" He gasped. "You mean kill us?"

  "No." Patrick's lights flickered, confusion, perhaps offense. "The Nexus does not exterminate. That would be barbaric. Inefficient."

  "Then what does 'purge' mean?"

  "Evacuation. Termination of support protocols. They would accelerate Eden's completion, deposit all viable humans on the surface, and withdraw entirely from this system."

  Patrick paused, his processors cycling through implications.

  "You would be... alone. No medical support. No molecular fabrication. No atmospheric regulation beyond what Eden's automated systems provide. The Nexus would classify this rescue operation as 'complete' and move to the next sector."

  Callum's jaw tightened. "So not murder. Just abandonment."

  "Correct." Patrick paused. "The Hive considers this... merciful. You would have Eden. You would have infrastructure. You would have a chance."

  Behind him, a harsh, wet sound broke the reverie.

  Callum bent double, hacking into his elbow. The cough rattled deep in his chest, sounding like dry leaves scraping over concrete. He winced, one hand clutching his ribs, his face twisting in sharp pain before he forced himself upright.

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  Patrick turned, his sensors analyzing Callum's vitals. "You are damaging the mission, Callum. Your condition is deteriorating. We must inform Christine of your secrets. Her skillset is applicable to…"

  "No," Callum wheezed, his voice rough.

  "This is illogical deceit," Patrick argued, stepping closer. "She could be a substantial variable in your survival. I do not like this concealment. It contradicts the cooperative parameters of our shared goals."

  "Not yet," Callum snapped, straightening himself as he controlled his breath. "I will tell her soon... today maybe. A few days, perhaps. I want it to be a gift."

  Patrick processed this refusal, categorizing it under 'Human Stubbornness,' but remained silent. He turned back to the console and engaged the dictation protocol, his voice shifting to a flat, clinical timbre. Continuing his report.

  "Subject K-103, Kimberly Tigart is stable. Recovery proceeds within expected parameters. Dr. Brown performed… adequately."

  Callum exhaled through his nose, a quiet blooming of relief… or perhaps just air… in his chest. He looked at the monitor, where the nurse had taken and wrapped the newborn child.

  "One down," Callum said, his voice quiet. "Ten more mothers due within the next few weeks. We'll be busy!"

  A smile crept across Callum's face. Unexpected. Unguarded. The kind that happens when the body overrides the brain.

  Movement is seen outside the room. A shadow against frosted glass. Confident. Measured. Unmistakable.

  "She's here," Callum said softly. "Remember. Not a word.”

  The avatar zipped to its charging port without acknowledgment. Optical sensors dimmed to ash.

  The door slid open.

  Red stepped through.

  Her gaze swept the room with the efficiency of someone cataloging threats, then landed on him. Those sharp, calculating, perpetually exhausted eyes widened slightly. She paused, tablet clutched to her chest like armor.

  "Well." A slow smile unfurled. "Look at you."

  "Do I pass inspection?"

  "You've got color in your cheeks." She stepped closer, laid a hand gently on his shoulder—careful to avoid the healing scar where the chest tube had been. "You look… alive."

  "I feel it." He drew in a breath, savored it like wine. "I'm ready to get out of here, Red. Ready to work."

  Her expression flickered. Professional detachment gave way to something warmer, more electric. She glanced back, verified the door had sealed behind her.

  "Speaking of work." Her voice dropped. "I just came from the lab."

  Callum stilled. "And?"

  "They’re holding," she whispered, afraid to speak it too loud. "Cellular cohesion is perfect. Callum… we just hit the fourteen-day mark."

  His breath escaped him… slow, steady, controlled. "Week Two."

  "It's ours, Callum." Her eyes searched his face like a scanner looking for flaws. "Yours and mine. Two of them."

  A pulse thudded against his ribs. Alive. Urgent. Insistent.

  "Two?"

  "Growing in their artificial wombs. Growing in your noise.”

  A grin split his face, uncontrollable. "Red, do you know what this means? If we can sustain division past…"

  "Don't." She raised a hand. Turned away. Walked toward the viewport. "Don't get ahead of it. Not yet."

  "But we've never made it this far."

  "I'm waiting for the heartbeat." Her voice flattened, went soft. "Until I see that flutter on the monitor. Complex, yes. Miraculous, maybe."

  Callum's voice gentled. "You're protecting yourself."

  She didn't deny it.

  "I have… already named them," she said. “For getting this far.”

  He engaged the motor. His chair hummed as it glided beside her. "You did?"

  "Rain." She said it like a prayer. "And River."

  Callum tasted the names in his mouth… Rain. River. They felt impossible. Wet syllables in a world of filtered air and dry, recycled everything. They tasted of Earth. Of a sky that opened up and wept. Of water that moved in one direction and never asked permission.

  "Rain and River. In that order?"

  She nodded. "Order of implantation. Rain first. Then River."

  "Boys? Girls?"

  "I don’t know, and it doesn't matter." Her voice thickened. "We will find out as they grow."

  Silence fell between them. Heavy, but shared. The kind of silence that holds more truth than words can carry.

  Then she shook her head, shrugged off the weight like a coat.

  "Come on. Let's get you home."

  She moved behind him, unlocked the chair's manual override. Together they rolled out, leaving Patrick's dormant shell in the corner like a discarded conscience.

  They moved slowly through the long white corridor. Quieter now than it had been a months ago. The screams had faded. Only the rhythm of machines remained: The percussion section of survival.

  "How's the medical ward census?" Callum asked.

  Red glanced at a digital board as they passed the nurses' station. "Stable. The alien tech…" She paused. "It's a miracle, Callum. Twenty more people were discharged this morning after successful un-fusing."

  "And the rest?"

  "Thirty-one left in critical care. Fifteen won't make it. Six long-term. Ten comatose."

  She looked at him. "Four hundred seventy-three, Callum. That's how many humans there are left."

  She didn't know about Sollace. Callum swallowed the truth.

  They reached the airlock to the living quarters. Red tapped the release panel. The mechanism hissed, equalizing pressure.

  Callum looked at her. Then beyond her… to the idea. The image. Two invisible clusters of cells dividing in a humming womb somewhere in the bowels of this station. The birth of the Genesis Project.

  Rain. River.

  Two names for children who might never draw breath. Two promises in a world that had broken every other promise it made.

  "Soon," he said, as the door hissed open. "Soon we'll have something real to celebrate."

  If I'm still here to see it, he didn't add.