Kyle woke to the sound of metal cooling.
It was subtle — the faint ticking of steel contracting after heat. The noise mapped the room before his eyes opened. Distances. Mass. Density.
He opened his eyes anyway.
The ceiling was low, patched with uneven welds and stains that told a long story of neglect. A single bulb flickered above him, its light inconsistent, slightly delayed from the current feeding it.
Someone lived here who didn't trust systems.
Kyle tried to sit up.
Pain answered.
Not sharp. Not sudden.
Deep.
His muscles protested first, then bone, then something lower — exhaustion layered beneath trauma. His body had not healed wrong. It had healed slowly. Correctly.
He accepted that.
"Don't move."
The voice came from the left.
A girl stood near the door, arms crossed, weight shifted subtly to her back foot. Defensive posture. She wasn't afraid — she was ready.
"You collapsed," she continued. "You were bleeding. You didn't wake up for two days."
Kyle processed that.
Two days meant no pursuit.
No retrieval teams.
No alarms close enough to matter.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"My father's workshop," she said. "You're alive because he hates waste."
She paused.
"And because I told him not to call anyone."
Kyle met her eyes.
That was the moment he decided not to lie.
"Thank you," he said.
She blinked.
People didn't say that often enough for it to sound normal.
"I'm Sarah," she said. "And you?"
Kyle hesitated.
Names were anchors.
He wasn't ready to choose one yet.
"…Kyle."
It wasn't true.
But it wasn't false either.
He stayed because no one asked him to leave.
Clinton spoke little. When he did, it was functional.
Eat.
Sleep.
Don't touch that.
Kyle followed the rules.
Mostly.
He watched instead.
How machines failed before they stopped.
How metal fatigued under repetitive stress.
How people aged differently when their hands built things instead of destroying them.
At night, when the workshop was quiet, Kyle lay awake and counted.
Not sheep.
Distances.
The gap between ceiling and floor.
The variance in gravity near the mag-rail line.
The way space shifted when large vehicles passed.
It shouldn't have been perceptible.
It was.
That frightened him more than the lab ever had.
The first anomaly was unintentional.
A wrench slipped from a bench.
Kyle reached for it instinctively.
The wrench slowed.
Not stopped.
Slowed enough to clatter softly instead of crashing.
Sarah stared at it.
Kyle stared at his hand.
Neither spoke.
Clinton grunted from across the room. "Gravity's been acting weird all day."
He went back to work.
Kyle exhaled.
If the world wanted to ignore him, he would let it.
For now.
That night, Kyle stood outside the workshop, looking up at the stars.
They felt closer than they should.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
Something inside him responded to the emptiness between them, as if space itself was no longer neutral territory.
He clenched his fists.
"I'm still human," he whispered.
The universe did not disagree.
It simply waited.