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Twenty-three percent.

The walls of her pod dissolved. She was standing in a field of poppies, but the red wasn’t flowers—it was the shredded remains of a battalion’s banner. A clock tower in a distant village read 04:58 AM, November 11th. The silence was the loudest thing she’d ever heard. A silence waiting to be broken.

Elara felt her body move against her will. She was a passenger in a vessel made of scar tissue and desperation. A young man—no older than eighteen, with her exact shade of brown eyes—handed her a letter. "For my mum," he whispered. "In case." Download-3.49MB-

Outside her apartment pod, the Sprawl hummed its endless hymn of traffic and algorithmic commerce. But inside, the air had gone thin. Cold. The kind of cold that doesn’t come from a broken climate seal.

Ninety-nine percent.

She read the letter through his eyes. Dear Mum, the war ends at eleven. They say we’ll be home for Christmas. But the lieutenant has a different kind of math. Love, Thomas. Thomas. Her name was Thomas. No. Her name was Elara. But the download was a key, and the lock was her soul.

Sixty-one percent.

His hand touched the white puddle. His fingers trembled.