Callum steered his hover chair through the cafeteria, marveling at the noise. He kept his posture rigid, though his lungs felt like they were being squeezed by iron bands. Every breath was a shallow, hard won victory.

  A year ago, this room had been a morgue of silent, terrified people staring at gray paste. Now? It sounded like a high school lunchroom during a riot. The humans of Terra Dome had not just survived; they had colonized.

  Over in the corner, a group of former engineers was arguing over a board game they had 3D printed with little plastic hexes and resource markers. They called it Settlers of Terra. At the long tables, a trio of women with varying degrees of fusion scars was strumming instruments made from extruded plastic and synthetic wire.

  Couples sat knee to knee. Some held hands with fingers that were fused together. Others leaned against partners whose legs ended in smooth stumps. Four hundred and seventy-three walking, talking, scarred miracles.

  But none of them were pregnant. That was the one silence that still hung over the room. The teleportation had sterilized them all.

  “Attention!

  “Callum’s voice amplified through his collar speaker, cutting through the din. He felt a sharp, burning tickle in his throat and swallowed hard against the copper taste of his own blood.

  The room quieted. Beside him, Red stood tall. She wore her white coat like armor, her face with its twisted jaw and wide eye looking fierce and proud.

  “We have news,” Callum announced, letting the hover chair drift to the center. “Phase One of the Genesis Project is complete. We have heartbeats.”

  The gasp that went through the room sucked the air out of the vents.

  “Two of them,” Red added, her voice ringing out. “Growing. Forming. Beating. They are past the critical window.”

  Cheers erupted. People were hugging, crying, pounding tables. It was not just science; it was salvation.

  “We are not done!” Callum shouted over the applause. He felt the room tilt for a second and gripped the armrest of his chair until his knuckles turned white. “The Builders are still working on Eden. The aliens are continuing the construction as we speak. Soon, we will all be going home! We are going back to a world with a future!”

  He watched them celebrate. He watched Red smiling, really smiling, the gold light of her joy practically radiating off her. They were heroes.

  “I have a meeting,” Callum whispered to her amidst the chaos. "Keep the party going."

  "Don't work too hard," she said, squeezing his shoulder. Her hand was warm, but her touch made him feel like he was made of glass.

  He zipped out of the cafeteria, his chest tight. He did not let himself cough until the heavy doors hissed shut. Then, he doubled over, hacking into a rag until he saw black spots.

  In his office, the hologram flickered to life.

  "Dr. Hartley," the voice said. "Good to see you."

  "And you, Builder," Callum replied. He took a long, shaky pull from his oxygen mask before setting it aside, hidden from the camera.

  The image resolved. Nathan Reeves sat in a workshop that looked impossibly warm compared to Terra’s chrome. There was wood grain behind him. Real wood.

  "We need to discuss the Nursery specs for Eden," Callum said, pulling up the blueprints. "The initial capacity was set for one hundred units. I need you to scale it."

  Nathan frowned. "Scale it down?"

  "Up," Callum said. "To a thousand. We have a thousand viable embryos on ice. If we crack the artificial womb stability, we are going to have a population boom. I need the room, Nathan."

  Nathan whistled low. "Optimistic."

  "Necessary." Callum’s eyes drifted to a digital file on his secondary screen. Legacy Naming Project. He had been cross-referencing names for the future citizens of Eden. One name had jumped out from the Earth archives, a name he had seen on the original transport manifest.

  "Got it," Nathan said, making notes on a physical pad of paper. "I can push the walls of the East Wing. We will need more power for the incubators, though."

  "I will handle the power," Callum said, his voice dropping. He looked at the "Healthy" status on Nathan’s file. "Family Unit: 2 Partners. 2 adopted children. 1 expecting."

  "Must be nice," Callum said, the words slipping out before his professional filter could catch them.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Nathan looked up. "What?"

  "The arrangement, your wives," Callum gestured vaguely. "I see your file. Must be nice to have that kind of company. Over here, we are all a bit more solitary." Callum's cough is increasing, starting to become noticeable.

  Nathan’s face changed. The professional mask dropped, revealing something rawer. Guilt.

  "It is complicated," Nathan said quietly. "It just sort of happened. Survival. Community. Elara and Mara are great women, were all just trying to figure out our place in this world."

  "I get it," Callum said after composing himself. "No judgment. We do what we have to do."

  "It feels wrong sometimes," Nathan admitted, leaning back. "Feeling this alive. Feeling happy, even when so many people did not make it."

  "Survivor's guilt," Callum diagnosed. "It is a heavy coat to wear."

  "My wife," Nathan said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "She was the best of us and I miss her so much. She was a nurse. My Christine."

  The name hung in the air like a localized singularity.

  Callum remembered a woman’s face, illuminated by the emergency lights of the transport ship a year ago. He had been on the floor, dying, and a nurse had knelt over him. She was before she introduced herself as Red.

  “I’ve got you,” she had said. “My name is Christine. Stay with me.”

  "She had this laugh," Nathan continued, looking past the camera. "She would laugh so hard she would snort. And then she would get embarrassed and laugh harder."

  Callum’s blood turned to ice. He knew that laugh. He had heard it yesterday. Christine. The nurse on the ship. The woman in the white coat. She was talking about naming the twins Reeves-Hartley, for her Earth name... Reeves.

  He looked again at Nathan’s file. Nathan Reeves. Callum couldn't find his breath.

  "Dr. Hartley?" Nathan asked. "You okay?"

  Callum tried to speak. But his lungs finally reached their breaking point. The fluid that had been waiting for a moment of weakness surged.

  "I..." Callum hacked, doubled over. The sound was wet and tearing.

  "Doc?"

  Callum wheezed, slamming his hand on the disconnect button.

  The hologram vanished. Callum slumped forward, his chest heaving, fighting for every molecule of oxygen.

  "Architect?" Patrick glided into the room. "Your biometrics have spiked. Hypoxia is at critical levels."

  “Patrick," Callum gasped. The word was a wet rattle. He leaned forward, his chest heaving in a desperate, rhythmic struggle that made the frame of his chair groan.

  "The Builder," he wheezed, the effort of speaking forcing a spray of copper-tasting mist onto his lips. He swallowed hard, his throat clicking. "Nathan. He is... he is Red’s husband."

  Patrick paused. His lights cycled rapidly. "Clarification required. Resident Red Lando does not have a mate listed."

  Callum wheezed, vision tunneling. "Christine Reeves….. is …Red."

  Patrick went still. He accessed the memory of the laugh snort in the hallway and Nathan's searching for Christine Reeves, his Earth mate. "The data aligns. The probability is 59.9%."

  Callum tried to nod, but his head was too heavy. His body, held together by sheer will for a year, finally quit. He slid sideways out of the hover chair, hitting the floor with a dull thud.

  "Architect!" Patrick moved faster than a human could blink. "Code Blue! Medical assistance required! Administration Office!"

  The door hissed open seconds later. Red burst in, her lungs already burning from the sprint across the dome.

  She skidded to a halt, her eyes darting from the empty hover-chair to the floor.

  Patrick was already in motion, a low hum pulsing from his chassis as alien hover-tech activated beneath his frame. Without warning, a shimmer of blue energy engulfed Callum’s limp body. The field snapped tight, lifting him with unnatural precision and speed.

  In one smooth motion, Patrick spun and accelerated… too fast.

  Callum’s arms flailed, his body jolting side to side, head snapping loosely as the AI whipped through the cluttered room. A table crashed over. A med kit skittered across the floor.

  “Patrick, slow down!” she shouted, chasing after them.

  They didn’t listen.

  Callum slammed into the side of a console with a dull whump, then rebounded as Patrick pivoted sharply toward the trauma bay.

  “Stop! You’re killing him!” Red screamed, voice cracking.

  Patrick froze mid-air, hover coils whining, as Callum sagged in the containment field.

  Patrick halted instantly. Callum was caught in a grotesque, halfway position, his legs dragging on the floor and his neck bent at an angle that made Red’s stomach turn.

  "You are killing him!" she snapped, lunging forward. She shoved Patrick’s cold, unyielding chassis out of the way with a strength born of pure adrenaline. "Look at him! He is barely oxygenating, and you are throwing him around like cargo!"

  Patrick’s processor lights flickered in a rapid, confused amber pulse. "Architect Hartley is in respiratory failure. Protocol dictates immediate transport to medical..."

  "Protocol is going too rough!" Red barked.

  She dropped to her knees beside Callum. He looked gray. Not the metallic gray of the dome, but the hollow, translucent gray of a cooling corpse. A thin trail of pink, frothy foam was leaking from the corner of his mouth.

  "Cal," she whispered, her hands hovering over his chest. She could feel the heat radiating off him, the frantic, shallow vibration of a heart trying to pump through sludge. "Cal, stay with me."

  She looked up at Patrick, her wide eye fierce and narrowed. Her voice dropped, vibrating with a terrifying, focused intensity.

  "Move him. Now. But slowly. Gently. If that chair jolts him or if you let his head drop, I will strip your boards and melt them for scrap. Do you understand?"

  Patrick’s sensors whirred as he recalibrated. "Understood, Red. Adjusting stabilizers for maximum dampening."

  The robot deployed a secondary set of support struts, cradling Callum’s torso with a delicacy that bordered on the organic. Together, they hoisted him back into the chair. Red immediately stepped in, and she walked flush against the side of the hover-unit. She placed one hand firmly behind Callum's head, bracing his neck, and the other gripped the oxygen mask to his face.

  "Go," she grunted.

  As they moved through the corridors, the bright gold light Patrick usually saw around her was gone. A jagged, flickering aura of yellow and deep crimson had replaced it.

  "Don't you dare," she muttered under her breath, her face inches from Callum’s ear as the elevator ascended. "We just announced the babies, Cal. We just gave them hope. Don't you dare leave me to do this alone."

  Patrick watched her hand. Her knuckles were white, her fingers trembling where they pressed into Callum’s skin. He processed the data of her Earth name... Christine... and the image of the man on the hologram screen.

  He looked at the woman who was currently saving the life of the only person who knew her husband was alive.

  The Gold did not return. Instead, as the critical care unit doors swung open, Patrick recorded a new emotional frequency for her: Desperation.