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Chapter 3 — What the Ruins Keep
> Ruins do not forget.
They remember every shortcut taken, every door forced, every life that assumed the place was already dead.
Delta-9 had rules once.
They were not written anymore, but Kevin felt them as he moved—pressure thresholds that punished haste, corridors that rewarded patience, systems that failed loudly for the careless and quietly for the observant. The habitat was not empty. It was only unattended.
Kevin advanced with measured steps, Astra close enough that he could feel the heat of her body through his sleeve. Her limp had worsened. Each uneven movement sent a subtle spike through the stabilizer's output. Kevin adjusted without thinking, throttling energy in short, disciplined pulses. Too much would burn him out. Too little would let her slip.
He chose the service routes deliberately.
Main corridors collapsed first. Service routes collapsed last.
They passed a shattered transit car suspended in zero-g, its passengers long gone, their shadows still burned into the wall by a brief surge of radiation. Kevin did not look for bodies. He looked for patterns—stress fractures, warped seams, the faint shimmer that suggested a thin veil between pressure zones.
Astra sniffed the air, then paused.
"What is it?" Kevin asked, quietly.
Her ears flattened. A low vibration rippled through her chest.
Kevin felt it too.
Not sound. Not movement.
Attention.
He killed his wrist-light and pressed himself into the recess beside an access hatch. The stabilizer hummed lower, obedient to his restraint. In the darkness, the habitat seemed to breathe. A second passed. Then a third.
A scavenger drone drifted into view.
It was old—pre-standardization—with mismatched plating and an exposed sensor array that flickered erratically. Not military. Not rescue. Autonomous scavenging unit, probably abandoned decades ago and repurposed by habit alone.
It did not see them.
It felt them.
The drone rotated slowly, sensor array tasting the space. Kevin recognized the pattern immediately. Energy leakage detection. It would triangulate Astra's stabilizer within seconds if he let it.
Kevin made a decision.
He stepped out.
The drone reacted instantly, pivoting toward him, emitter charging. Kevin did not run. He advanced three steps, then twisted, hurling a fractured panel into the drone's path. The panel shattered. The drone fired anyway.
The bolt grazed Kevin's shoulder.
Pain bloomed white-hot, searing muscle and nerve. Kevin bit down hard enough to taste blood, forced himself not to scream, and closed the remaining distance in a rush that cost him more than he could afford.
He slammed his palm into the drone's exposed housing and discharged everything he had left in a single, brutal pulse.
The drone died quietly.
Kevin collapsed to one knee, gasping. His vision tunneled. The stabilizer screamed in protest as his reserves dipped dangerously low.
Astra was there instantly, bracing him, her body pressed against his side with surprising strength. She made a sharp, insistent sound, and Kevin forced air back into his lungs.
"I know," he rasped. "I know."
They stayed like that for a long moment, neither moving, until the habitat settled and the silence returned.
Kevin scavenged the drone methodically, hands steady despite the tremor in his arms. He salvaged a functioning capacitor, a cracked sensor lens, and a length of conductive filament. Not much.
Enough.
The first marked location lay ahead: an auxiliary storage vault near the research ring. The door was intact. That alone made Kevin uneasy.
Intact meant claimed.
He signaled Astra to stay back and approached slowly. The vault's seal responded sluggishly to his override, protesting as though reluctant to wake. Inside, the air was stale but pressurized.
And occupied.
Three people looked up as the door slid open.
A woman with a shaved head and grease-stained hands. A tall man with a cracked visor and a rifle held low but ready. A boy—no older than fifteen—half-hidden behind a crate, eyes wide and calculating.
Kevin froze.
So did they.
No one spoke.
The woman broke first. "We thought everyone was gone."
Kevin raised his empty hands. "We are."
The man's gaze flicked to Astra, then back to Kevin. "That thing yours?"
Astra growled softly.
Kevin did not correct him. "She's with me."
Silence stretched again, thicker now.
The woman exhaled. "Name's Lira. This is Dorn. And the kid's Jax."
Kevin nodded once. "Kevin."
He did not offer explanations. He did not ask for permission.
Lira noticed the stabilizer immediately. Her expression shifted—professional, assessing. "That unit won't last," she said. "Your output's unstable."
"I know."
"We have parts," she continued. "Limited. But enough to stabilize her."
Kevin met her gaze. "What do you want?"
Lira's mouth twitched. "Honesty."
Dorn snorted. "And a reason not to take what you've got and leave."
Kevin considered them. Three survivors. Armed. Afraid.
He thought of the drone. Of Astra's limp. Of the quiet weight in his chest that had nothing to do with pain.
"You can leave," Kevin said. "I won't stop you."
Lira frowned. "And you?"
"I'm staying."
Jax spoke for the first time. "Why?"
Kevin looked down at Astra, then back at the boy. "Because she chose me."
The answer settled into the room like dust.
Lira studied Kevin for a long moment, then sighed. "Fine," she said. "Then we stabilize the beast. After that, we talk."
Kevin nodded.
Outside the vault, deep within Delta-9's dormant systems, a classification tag updated.
Anomaly detected.
Still low priority.
For now.
The ruins watched.
And they remembered.