By the fourth year, Ethon had learned something important about cities: they didn't feel alive all at once. They revealed themselves in fragments, in habits repeated so often they stopped feeling like choices. The city did not announce its rules. It simply waited to see who broke them and punished those people quietly, efficiently, without spectacle. For someone like Ethon, who had grown up measuring days by the sun and seasons by the weight of the soil, this kind of invisible order was unsettling at first, and then strangely comforting once he stopped resisting it.
Mornings began with sound before light. The distant hum of transit rails, the overlapping murmur of vendors setting up stalls, the faint rhythmic thudding of machinery from the lower industrial blocks that never truly slept. Ethon woke on the thin mattress in the abandoned duplex with his eyes already open, staring at the ceiling where a long crack ran like a frozen lightning bolt from one corner to the other. He traced it with his gaze every morning, not because it mattered, but because it grounded him in the idea that this was real, that this place existed whether he believed in it or not.
On most mornings, Jax was already awake, sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, boots half-laced, scrolling through job listings projected from a cracked handheld screen. He muttered constantly, not to anyone in particular, but as if speaking the words aloud gave them weight. Mira usually occupied the small kitchen area, surrounded by half-disassembled devices that hummed, clicked, or occasionally sparked in protest as she modified them into something marginally useful. Oren, when he was there, moved with the slow certainty of someone who had accepted that time would pass whether he hurried or not, preparing food, cleaning tools, repairing the same loose hinge for the third time because it annoyed him that it squeaked.
Ethon fit into these mornings without trying to. He learned when to speak and when silence was more valuable. He learned that Jax talked more when he was nervous, that Mira became sharp and defensive when she was focused, not angry, and that Oren's quiet was not distance but patience. It was during these quiet routines that Ethon felt the strangest sense of familiarity, a feeling that troubled him deeply because it had no obvious source. He had no memories of waking in a place like this, surrounded by people like these, yet his body moved through the space as if it had done so for years longer than it actually had.
One morning, as Ethon adjusted the strap of the small delivery pack slung over his shoulder, Jax looked up at him with an expression that hovered somewhere between curiosity and suspicion, the kind that usually preceded one of his longer monologues.
"You ever gonna explain why you still flinch every time a drone passes overhead," Jax asked, his tone casual but his eyes sharp, watching Ethon closely rather than his screen.
Ethon paused, fingers tightening briefly around the strap before relaxing again, and took a moment to answer not because he wanted to lie, but because he didn't know how to tell the truth in a way that would make sense. "Where I grew up," he said slowly, choosing each word with care, "anything that came from the sky usually meant something had gone wrong."
Mira snorted from the kitchen without looking up from the mess of wires and circuit boards spread across the counter. "That's just superstition dressed up as trauma," she said, though there was no real malice in it. "Sky's been trying to kill people since we figured out how to walk upright. Difference now is we record it and sell ads around it."
"That doesn't make it less dangerous," Ethon replied, his voice calm but firm, the way it always was when he felt certain about something.
Oren glanced up briefly from where he was sharpening a tool, his eyes lingering on Ethon a fraction longer than necessary. "Danger doesn't always announce itself," he said quietly, and then returned to his work as if that settled the matter.
Work that day was ordinary, and ordinary work, Ethon had learned, carried its own kind of exhaustion. They hauled scrap from a collapsed warehouse on the edge of the Average Zone, sorting through twisted metal and broken machinery under the watchful eyes of automated security units that didn't intervene unless someone crossed an invisible boundary. Ethon worked steadily, lifting pieces that made Jax raise an eyebrow and Mira mutter comments about "genetic lottery nonsense," but no one pushed too hard. They had learned that questioning Ethon's physical capabilities only resulted in answers that made them more uncomfortable than satisfied.
During a break, they sat on overturned crates, sharing lukewarm water and staring out at the distant skyline where the Rich District towers gleamed unnaturally clean, their surfaces reflecting sunlight in ways that felt deliberate rather than natural. Jax followed Ethon's gaze and scoffed softly.
"You ever wonder what it's like up there," he asked, gesturing with his chin toward the towers, "to live somewhere where the ground doesn't smell like oil and rust and desperation?"
Ethon considered the question seriously, his eyes tracing the smooth lines of the buildings in the distance. "I think," he said after a long pause, "that places like that are built to make people forget what holds them up."
Mira laughed, sharp and sudden, and shook her head. "You say things like that and then act surprised when people think you're weird," she said, though there was a hint of amusement in her eyes. "Most people just want to live somewhere quiet."
"Quiet is rare," Ethon replied. "Even when you think you've found it."
They didn't argue with him. They rarely did anymore.
At night, the news played softly in the background while they ate, the screen flickering as reports cycled through economic updates, political statements from the unified governing body, and carefully worded segments about "unexplained incidents" in the southern regions. Ships that lost contact. Research stations that went dark. Data anomalies dismissed as technical errors. Ethon listened more closely than he let on, his attention sharpening whenever the south was mentioned, a faint pressure building behind his eyes that he had learned to ignore.
One evening, as a reporter spoke calmly about another missing vessel, Mira reached over and muted the sound with an irritated flick of her finger. "They're doing it again," she said, leaning back against the wall and crossing her arms. "Same language, same phrasing. You notice how they never show debris anymore?"
Jax frowned, chewing slowly. "You think they're hiding something?"
"I think," Mira replied, choosing her words carefully for once, "that when powerful people stop showing evidence, it's because evidence no longer tells the story they want told."
Ethon stared at the darkened screen, his reflection faintly visible in the glass, looking older than he felt and younger than he should have been. "Sometimes," he said quietly, "things disappear because they were never meant to stay."
The room went still.
Oren was the first to speak. "You talk like someone who's seen that happen," he said, not accusing, just observing.
Ethon met his gaze and did not look away. "I have," he answered, and left it at that.
Later that night, long after the others had gone to sleep, Ethon sat alone on the roof, the city stretching out below him in a tapestry of lights and shadows. He watched people move through streets far beneath him, tiny figures following paths that felt pre-written, and wondered how many of them felt the same quiet sense of dislocation that he did, the feeling of being present in a world that did not quite align with their memories.
It was then that he felt it again.
The sensation was subtle, barely more than a shift in the air, but Ethon had learned to trust the instincts that lingered beneath conscious thought. He did not turn immediately. He did not tense. He simply listened, extending his awareness outward in the way that came naturally to him despite having no explanation for how or why.
Across the street, partially obscured by the shadow of a taller building, a figure stood still, watching.
Ethon could not make out details. The figure's outline seemed to blur at the edges, as if it refused to fully occupy the space it stood in. For a long moment, neither of them moved. Then, slowly, the figure stepped back, dissolving into the darkness as if it had never been there at all.
Ethon remained on the roof until dawn.
Days blended into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. Ethon learned the rhythms of the city so thoroughly that he sometimes forgot how foreign it had once felt. He laughed more easily now, found himself joining Jax's jokes, listening to Mira's rants about outdated infrastructure and corporate monopolies, sharing quiet conversations with Oren about work, about endurance, about the cost of surviving in a world that demanded constant compromise.
They celebrated small victories. A good job payout. A repaired heater. A night without bad dreams.
On the anniversary of his grandparents' deaths, Ethon went alone to the cemetery, standing before the modest markers with his hands clasped loosely at his sides. He spoke to them softly, telling them about the city, about the people he had met, about the life he was building piece by piece. He did not mention the voice. He did not mention the dreams of silver doors and oceans without horizons. Some things, he had learned, were not meant to be shared yet.
When he returned that evening, Mira looked at him more closely than usual. "You're quieter today," she said. "That saying something."
Ethon smiled faintly. "Some days require it."
Jax leaned back in his chair, grinning. "Man, if you ever decide to write poetry, don't," he said. "You'd put people to sleep."
Ethon laughed, genuinely this time, and for a brief, fragile moment, the weight he carried felt lighter.
But deep beneath the ordinary days, beneath the routines and the laughter and the carefully constructed normalcy, something waited.
The voice had been silent for years.
When it finally spoke again, it would not whisper.