Chapter 2
ROXY
My apartment is quiet in the way a locked room is quiet—
Safe. Controlled.
Faintly suffocating.
The hum of the wall processor has a tinny edge to it tonight, like the filters are grinding down their own teeth.
The air smells recycled six times over, tinged with hot plastic and that sharp mineral scent of metal warmed just enough to be suspicious.
No outside noise, no station babble, no drift from the neighbor’s unit.
Just this boxed-in hush, draped over me like a weighted shroud pretending to be a blanket.
I don’t move much anymore. I sit. I tap. I work. That’s the routine. Keeps the blood from boiling.
The holo-net interface glows in front of me—half a dozen screens arranged in a collapsing tree of diagnostic branches and data clusters.
Routing maps. Traffic flow reports. Ghost pings.
Endless recalibrations of core bandwidth allocation for some mid-tier outpost I’ll never visit.
My eyes are burning. Not just from the light, though that doesn’t help.
They’ve got that sandpaper drag with every blink, the sting of too many hours spent filtering patterns that don’t matter through a brain that won't shut off.
I lean forward. Fingers hover. One final ping, one last reroute. Line code confirms the transfer. I log the shift.
That’s it.
Done.
No fanfare. No thanks. Just the flicker of the system dimming down and leaving my face lit in a smear of pale blue glow. My hands look bloodless in it—scars washed out, fingers twitching slightly from disuse and too much artificial tension.
The messages are waiting.
Cynna’s been busy.
They’re stacked on the comm panel like bright little landmines—personal, glowing, too damned cheerful.
Her name’s all over the feed. Timestamp after timestamp after timestamp.
Some of them have tags. “You okay?” “Seriously, Vrok.” “Answer me, asshole.” “I’m going to show up with soup and consequences. ”
I don’t touch them.
I look at them, yeah. For a second too long. But I don’t tap. Don’t scroll. Don’t open.
Because if I open them, I’ll answer.
And if I answer, I’ll feel.
And if I feel—
Well. That’s a whole other kind of hell.
So I ignore her with the kind of precision only guilt can sharpen.
I’ve gotten good at it.
My shift ends, and silence rushes in.
Not gently. Not like a door closing. More like a vacuum breach. Fast. Total. Violent in the way stillness can be when you’ve been holding it back with noise. I sit there for a beat too long, watching the screens go dark, waiting for my reflection to flicker back at me in the black glass.
I don’t like what I see when it does.
Not because it’s monstrous. But because it’s small.
Contained.
Predictable.
This isn’t rest.
This isn’t solitude.
It’s a mirror.
And in it, I can see the shape of the trap I’ve built around myself. Every wall, every habit, every circuit reroute and carefully calculated silence. It’s all just structure, isn’t it? A scaffolding made of don’ts: Don’t engage. Don’t respond. Don’t react. Don’t trust. Don’t make waves.
Don’t remind anyone you’re still here.
I push up from the desk. My legs ache like I’ve been running even though I haven’t gone anywhere.
The room doesn’t look back. It never does.
Four walls. One bed. One console. One drawer that sticks every time I open it, like it’s protesting the routine too. There’s food in the cabinet. Not real food. Processed nutrient packs. Chewable regret. Nothing in this apartment has texture. Or scent. Or risk.
It’s all so controlled.
And I know exactly why.
Because if things are small enough, still enough, stripped enough... maybe I won’t detonate.
Maybe if I shrink my world down to the size of a single task—shift in, shift out, ignore the past, ignore the noise—I can survive myself.
Then the knock comes.
And it’s not polite. It’s Cynna.
Before I can pretend I didn’t hear it, she’s already overridden the buzzer somehow—probably hacked the damn thing again—and is pounding on the metal like she’s auditioning for the role of Wrecking Ball in a musical I never signed up for.
I consider hiding. Briefly. Like an idiot.
“Rox!” she calls, voice muffled through the door but still infuriatingly chipper. “I know you’re home. Don’t make me break in. I brought lipstick, attitude, and a good reason to misbehave.”
I mutter something anatomically impossible under my breath.
My fingers hover over the lock like they might choose differently this time.
They don’t.
The door hisses open.
Cynna stands there, backlit by the hallway lights, wrapped in something glittery and tactical—a hybrid of nightclub and utility belt that somehow makes sense on her. Her hair’s pinned back in a style that says I planned this ambush. Her smile is all teeth and conspiracy.
“You look like a trash ghost,” she says, walking past me like she lives here. “Charming, in a post-apocalyptic hacker queen way.”
“I wasn’t expecting company.”
“You never expect company. That’s the problem.”
“I was working.”
She glances at my console. “You were staring at nothing and brooding. That’s not work. That’s emotional composting.”
I close the door with more force than necessary. “Why are you here?”
“Because you haven’t answered any of my messages. Which means you’re spiraling. Which means you need to put on pants and come outside before you become a myth told by your apartment building’s maintenance crew.”
“No,” I say instantly.
“Yes,” she counters, breezing into my kitchenette and opening cabinets like she’s taking inventory for an intervention.
“I have plans.”
“You’re lying.”
“I have anxiety.”
“Duh. Who doesn’t? But you still need to see people who aren’t made of pixels.”
I rub my temples. “Cynna, I can’t. Not tonight. It’s not—”
She shuts the cabinet and turns, eyes narrowed but soft. “It’s not about tonight. It’s about every night. It’s been months, Roxy. You’ve been hiding in this cave like it’s warding off demons, but the only thing it’s doing is starving you of light.”
“I don’t do well out there.”
“You don’t give yourself the chance to try.”
My throat tightens. That old, acidic dread bubbles up from somewhere deep. My mind flashes—unfamiliar environments, noise too loud to think over, the flicker of pity in someone’s smile, the clink of drinks I didn’t want, the brush of fingers I didn’t ask for.
I wrap my arms around myself. “You remember what happened last time.”
Her voice softens. “I do. And I was the one who helped you pick up the pieces.”
I nod. “They don’t bruise, but they stay.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want new scars.”
She steps closer. “Then don’t let the old ones win.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I don’t want a scene.”
“You won’t make one.”
“I don’t want to be looked at.”
“They’ll be too busy looking at me.”
I open one eye. “Wow. Humble.”
“Realistic,” she says with a smirk. “Look, I’m not taking you to some synth-heavy nightmare bar. Just a lounge. Chill music. Soft lights. No pressure. We’ll stay near the exit. You can leave the second it feels wrong.”
My heart’s thudding like a warning system. I shake my head. “I’ll freeze. You know I freeze.”
“Then I’ll unfreeze you. Like emotional jumper cables.”
“That’s not how—”
“One drink. One hour.”
I hesitate.
She steps back, arms wide. “You get dressed, or I do it for you. And my taste in tops is, like, aggressively cleavage-forward.”
I want to say no. I plan to say no.
But something slips.
Something awful.
Curiosity.
It cracks the door open in my ribs and peeks through, and I hate it. I hate that part of me that still wants. Still wonders. Still imagines there’s something out there that won’t hurt like the last time.
I sigh.
“Fine.”
She freezes. “Wait. Seriously?”
“One drink. One hour.”
She shrieks like she just won a planetary lottery. “YES. Victory. Your boobs are going outside!”
I regret everything.
I lock the door behind me with fingers that shake like I’m defusing a bomb. The hallway light feels too bright. My boots are too loud. Everything about this feels exposed.
Cynna, of course, walks like she owns every corridor.
“You’re doing great,” she chirps, already halfway to the lift.
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“You opened the door. That’s a win. I’m counting it.”
The ride down is a metal coffin. My stomach flips at every floor ding. My skin prickles. Every nerve on alert. Cynna hums beside me, oblivious or pretending to be. She’s good at that—letting me have my panic without making it weird.
I glance at her.
She’s not watching me.
She’s watching the numbers tick down like they mean something.
And just that tiny grace—her pretending not to notice how I’m vibrating apart—makes my throat burn.
The doors open. We step into the crowd.
And I feel it.
That first full-body hit of being outside.
The smells—oily street food, over-perfumed air recyclers, the sharp sting of ozone from a security drone drifting overhead. The sound—voices layered in too many languages, laughter too close, footsteps coming and going without rhythm. The pressure of being seen.
I try not to flinch.
Cynna loops her arm through mine.
“Focus on me,” she says quietly.
I nod.
And I do.
Her voice, steady. Her stride, confident. Her scent—spice and skin oil and something floral she’ll never admit to buying. I match her rhythm. Let her lead.
We reach the lounge in four minutes flat.
It’s smaller than I expected. Warm light. Rounded edges. Music that hums like it’s trying not to intrude. The entrance is tucked between two shops—one selling knockoff tech, the other hawking sweets shaped like cartoon creatures. It smells like candied grease.
Cynna grins at me. “You made it.”
“I haven’t died yet.”
“See? Progress.”
“Yet,” I say with a glare. “The operant word here is yet.”