Gravity of Love

Chapter 1

RHEA

The camera’s red light pulses like a heartbeat, and I’m already sweating under the studio lights.

Not from nerves—God no—but from the thick layer of powdered foundation baking on my face.

I’ve done this a thousand times. Maybe more.

Sunrise Sector Live doesn’t wait for personal crises or meteor showers.

It just rolls on. Bright, peppy, and synthetic as a prepackaged pancake.

“...and that’s not all!” My voice chirps out, perfectly modulated. “With just two servings a day, these little green miracles could boost your circadian rhythm by up to thirty percent—making early risers out of even the deepest space slackers!”

Cue the audience laugh. It’s real-ish. Probably prompted by the AI audience director, nudging a few to chuckle in unison for that authentic vibe. I smile. I wink. I hold up the stupid algae smoothie with two manicured fingers like it’s a goblet of sparkling stardust.

Behind the camera, Chuck flashes the OK sign and mouths, “Stretch!”

I pivot, still smiling. “Of course, results may vary depending on your planetary schedule. Just ask our producer—he’s been trying these for two weeks, and he hasn’t fallen asleep at his desk once. Isn’t that right, Chuck?”

More chuckles. Chuck gives me a double thumbs-up like he’s still a frat boy slamming shots in a Jupiter moon dive bar.

The camera cuts. Theme music swells, glittering synth notes echoing through the studio.

“And we’re clear!” someone shouts.

I drop the smile like a lead weight. My cheeks ache.

Chuck wanders over, still clutching his own green sludge smoothie. He leans in, and I subtly lean back. Not enough to be obvious. Just enough so he doesn’t smell the tension.

“You really sold that one, Rhee,” he says, grinning. His eyes do a quick inventory of my neckline before darting away. “Ever think about branching into sponsored streams?”

I stare at him. “Only if it comes with hazard pay.”

He laughs like I’m kidding. I’m not.

I slip past him, waving off the stylist who wants to touch up my hair for the next segment. “Bio break,” I lie.

Once I’m out of the blinding studio lights and into the quieter control corridor, I pull out my compad. I just want five seconds to breathe, maybe swipe through the rest of today’s segments, prep some real questions in case a guest goes off-script again.

But my compad buzzes. Hard.

New Alert: Matrix Broadcast Disruption Logged. Unauthorized File Attached. Review Immediately.

I blink.

“What the hell…” I mutter, tapping into the feed log.

A data spike occurred during the algae segment—right when Chuck was doing his double thumbs-up routine. It’s subtle, buried in the transition frames. But there’s a data signature attached: ARGUS.FALL.001.

The name “Argus” slams into me like a cold draft. He was a mid-level analyst. Helios Combine. Just another suit. But he died last week. “Hovercar malfunction,” they said. Corporate gloss. Except now his digital fingerprints are on a corrupted file embedded in my morning show broadcast.

I should delete it.

I don’t.

I hit download and override my compad’s firewalls with the passcode I haven’t used since my university days.

“Rhea, you’re on in three!”

I jump. Chuck’s voice. Too close.

I stuff the pad back into my blazer and paste on the smile again. “Be right there!”

I float through the next two segments like a ghost. One with a Martian tea influencer, the other with a kid from a Venusian rehab project who built a music box that plays whale song. The audience eats it up. I barely hear my own voice.

When the show wraps, I bolt. No meetings. No debriefs. I ignore Chuck’s shout of “Hey, drinks later?” like it’s a fly buzzing near my ear.

District Eight is quieter at night. Still humming, but not the kind of buzz that gets under your skin. My high-rise apartment knows me. The doors swish open as I approach, lights blooming softly.

“Welcome home, Rhea,” chirps the apartment AI. “Would you like your evening mood lighting in lavender or—”

“Shut up.”

It dims in offended silence.

I kick off my heels and pour myself a glass of synth-wine. Something dark. Red. Bitter. I don’t sit. I stand by the window, looking out over the skyline. Neon bleeding into smog. Drones skating past with carryout and pills and pleasure packages.

Then I turn back to the compad.

I pull it out like it might bite me.

ARGUS.FALL.001.

Still there.

I tap. A loading bar crawls across the screen.

Encrypted. Alliance format. Black-band tag.

This isn’t a prank.

The first image that appears is incomplete. Blurry. A manifest of some kind—names, coordinates, dates. Then it glitches. A wave of code floods the screen.

I scroll. My fingers tremble.

A line stands out in blood-red font:

...unauthorized biometric testing on unregistered settlements...

I stare. Then scroll more. Images now. Corpses. Alien, human, hybrids. All blurred, but the captions are enough.

A child’s face. Missing eyes.

A facility tag: Helios Combine Research Node Zeta-4.

My breath catches.

Someone sent this. On purpose. Not to my inbox. Not to my station. To the show. The fluffiest, most disposable airtime in the system.

Because they knew I’d see it.

Because they wanted me to.

I close the file. Sit down. Stare at the darkened screen.

Then I open it again.

I read.

And I don’t stop.

The next morning, my compad wakes me up before the alarm.

Only—it doesn’t ring.

It screeches. A distorted blurt of static that stabs straight into my ear and yanks me upright like I’ve been shot. I smack the screen. It won’t shut up. I have to hold the power button for a full five seconds before it flickers off, hissing like a kicked feralcat.

“What the actual hell?”

I sit there on my couch—hair a rat’s nest, synth-wine headache pounding like I swallowed a timpani—and stare at the screen.

Something’s wrong.

The interface is… off. The colors are too cold, fonts slightly misaligned like the UI got drunk and decided aesthetics were optional. I tap the home key. It flashes a few times, then throws me a spinning wheel of death and a string of characters I don’t recognize.

I tap again.

Nothing.

I tap harder.

Still nothing.

By the time I manage to brute-force a boot override, I’m sweating. This isn’t just a crash. It feels intentional. Like the file last night bit into the system and chewed its way through.

The moment the dashboard opens, my messages flicker. Then vanish. Not deleted. Not unread. Just gone.

Poof.

I sit back and whisper, “Okay. That’s new.”

The AI assistant doesn’t respond.

I try the backup menu. Tap into my cloud archive.

Error.

Error.

SECURE PATH UNAVAILABLE

I push harder. Pull up the broadcast logs. Nothing after the algae segment shows. No backups. No auto-capture. No mirror stream. Not even the damn parrot clip.

I try sending a ping to Bryn in IT.

Error. Message not delivered.

I try again.

Same result.

I start to sweat.

And that’s when the lights flicker.

All of them. The kitchen strip, the ambient floor glows, the temperature status bar on the fridge—all blink out, then shudder back on in a half-powered hum.

No storm outside.

No rolling blackouts scheduled.

I walk to the wall console and slap the manual override. The AI chirps weakly.

“Diagnostics unavailable.”

“No kidding,” I mutter.

I pull up my security feed, praying the cams still work.

They do.

But what I see makes me go cold.

There’s a guy standing outside the lobby entrance. Just inside the rotating doors. Maintenance jumpsuit. Tan. Non-reflective. Looks like any one of the building’s repair crew—except he hasn’t moved in ten minutes.

Ten.

Solid.

Minutes.

He’s not talking to anyone. Not checking equipment. Just… standing. Facing the desk. Waiting for something.

Waiting for me?

My heart starts to beat in my ears. I switch cams. Another angle. No weapon visible. No ID badge. Just a shadow of a man who doesn’t seem interested in pretending he’s got a reason to be there.

I flick off the feed.

Okay.

Okay.

So maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe someone’s fixing a broken water line and I’m making him into the boogeyman because a ghost file blew up my inbox and scrambled my interface. That’s reasonable, right?

Except when I walk into the bathroom and the smart mirror glitches mid-reflection, then flashes the Helios logo—flickering red and gone in a blink—I scream.

And it echoes.

And I stand there, shaking, toothpaste dotting the corner of my mouth like a joke.

That’s when I decide: I’m not staying here tonight.

I pack a bag. Just the basics. Change of clothes. Burner pad. Makeup kit. Stun baton.

The stun baton is my dad’s. He gave it to me when I got my first apartment. “Never trust glass walls, baby girl. They don’t keep monsters out—just give ’em a better view.”

At the time, I laughed.

Now I strap it to my thigh under my coat.

The hallway is quiet. Too quiet.

I walk with my keys threaded between my fingers. Stupid trick, but it makes me feel armed.

The elevator takes too long, so I use the stairs. All fifty flights. I’ve never done it before. By the tenth floor, my calves are screaming. By the twentieth, I’m shaking with adrenaline and sweat.

By the time I reach the lobby and step outside, the man is gone.

No jumpsuit.

No anyone.

But the desk clerk’s cup of caf is cold and full, and the holopad at the counter is logged into a diagnostic screen I’ve never seen them use.

I don’t say anything. I just keep walking.

I crash that night on my own couch. Not because I forgot my plan to leave. Because I walked the city for six straight hours trying to decide where I could go and who I could trust—and came up blank.

Everyone I know works for the network.

Everyone I know lives on the cloud.

And now the cloud’s been compromised.

I sleep with the lights on and the stun baton under my pillow.

I dream about red bands and children without eyes.

The next morning, I wake to the sound of glass clicking.

Not shattering.

Not breaking.

Clicking.

Like fingers tapping rhythmically.