The small, repetitive motion of wiping down the soft sensors was a comfort in the quiet of the Boiler Room. The work was never done. There was always another mind to unlock.
The single red light on the main terminal blinked. It had been blinking for almost ten minutes. A small, insistent pulse of wrongness in the steady hum of the Boiler Room.
He ignored it. For a moment, he could pretend it wasn't there. He could hold onto the small victory of the session, the memory of the girl weaving a blanket from light and warmth. He thought of the single, frayed thread he had seen in her construct, the tiny glitch where the rust of the real world showed through. A flaw in the weave. He was seeing them more and more lately.
Lena Petrova stepped out of the shadows by the main water pump. She had been there the whole time, watching. She did not move like a person. She moved like a decision that had already been made. Her face was sharp angles and impatience, a stark contrast to the recruit’s drained calm. She was the rebellion’s fiercest student, a young woman who forged weapons from her pain.
She watched the recruit disappear down the corridor, her expression hardening with each step the girl took. Then she turned her gaze on him. It was like being measured for a coffin.
"You teach them to build sandcastles while the tide is coming in, Coach," she said. Her voice was flat, stripped of all warmth, leaving only the hard edge of conviction. It cut through the damp air.
He finished wiping the last sensor and placed it carefully in its case. He had heard this speech before. It was her favorite. He had to choose his own currency, and his was patience. He couldn't afford to spend it on her anger. The price of engaging her was a loss of the very peace he was trying to build.
"She learned to control her own mind for five minutes, Lena. In a world that owns every second of our lives, that is not a small thing."
"It’s a hobby," Lena countered, taking a step closer. The heels of her boots clicked sharply on the grated metal floor. "You’re teaching them a beautiful, useless hobby. They have machines that unthread people, Elias. And you’re teaching them needlepoint."
He felt a flash of anger, hot and unwelcome. He pushed it down. He was the coach. He was the calm anchor. He had to be. He picked up his tin cup from the floor, swirling the last of the cold, gray Nutrient Broth. The bitter taste was a reminder of the Waking world, the world he was trying to hold at bay.
"It’s not needlepoint. It’s architecture. It’s the first principle. You can’t build a house if you don’t know how to lay a single brick."
"You can’t build a new world by hiding from the old one," she shot back, her voice rising. She gestured around at the massive, silent pumps, the weeping walls, the dim light. "This isn't a world. It's a tomb. A comfortable tomb where we tell ourselves pretty stories before the Mandate buries us."
He set the cup down. The argument was always the same. He saw the rebellion as a clinic for the soul, a place to reclaim the humanity that Optima Consolidated had optimized into oblivion. She saw it as an army. Healers versus hunters. He was tired of the debate. It was a loop of its own, just as pointless as the ones the Mandate forced on its citizens every night.
"This isn't a war," he said, his voice low and firm. He was trying to convince himself as much as her. "It’s a reclamation. We are taking back territory that was always ours. The mind. The soul. If we use their methods, if we turn this into a fight of force and fear, we become another one of their machines. We will have lost before we even begin."
Lena laughed, a short, sharp sound with no humor in it. It was the sound of a wire snapping.
"Reclamation? They are killing us, Elias. They killed a man two days ago. Left him a breathing corpse. Is he 'reclaimed'? Are the ones on the prison barges 'reclaimed'? Your philosophy is a luxury we can no longer afford."
She was right about the dead man. The thought made him feel cold. He had sat by the man’s bedside. He had tried to build a bridge into that empty mind and found nothing on the other side. Just a void. His methods had failed. The finality of it was a weight in his chest.
But to admit that to Lena would be to surrender the soul of their movement. It would be to concede that her rage was a better guide than his hope. He couldn't do that. The cost was too high. It was everything.
He looked away from her, his eyes falling on the main terminal. The red light blinked. On. Off. On. Off. A heartbeat for a dying man.
Lena followed his gaze. A flicker of something—triumph, maybe—crossed her face. She had him. The argument was no longer philosophical. It was right there, a single point of blinking red light. It was real.
She took another step, standing beside him now, both of them facing the screen. She didn't need to raise her voice anymore. The room was quiet enough to hear the drip of water from a pipe high overhead.
"Tell that to them," she said.
Her words hung in the air. He knew who "them" was. Cell-Gamma-7. The source of the alert. A remote safe house that had missed its check-in. The blinking light wasn't an abstraction. It was a question that demanded an answer. It was the tide, and it was no longer coming in. It was here.
Lena didn't wait for a reply. There was nothing left to say. She had made her point with a single, blinking light. She turned and walked away, her footsteps echoing in the vast, quiet space until they were gone.
He was alone.
The hum of the pumps seemed louder now, the sound of a great, indifferent machine. The peace he had felt after the session was a distant memory, a dream already fading. He was left with the cold, damp air and the taste of bitter broth in his mouth.
He stood there for a full minute, watching the light. On. Off. A question. A demand. A judgment. It was everything his philosophy was designed to ignore, and it was demanding his attention. The world was what you paid attention to. He had taught the girl that himself, not an hour ago.
He took a slow breath. The air smelled of rust and failure.
Then he walked toward the main terminal.
