Time in the Dome was a liar. It crawled in the silence of the sleep cycles and sprinted during the crises, blurring the line between yesterday and tomorrow. There was no sun to mark the passage of hours, only the eternal, unblinking blue gaze of the Hive suspended in a cloudless, purple sky. It was a terrifying, alien beauty that never slept. Only when the interior lights dimmed could one catch a glimpse of strange stars burning through the violet haze, marking the passage of months that had dissolved into a single, gray loop. The routine never changed: Wake up under the blue watch. Eat the rations… mostly paste, occasionally real fruits. Mend the fused limbs of the survivors. And then, the hardest part of all… waiting for the Genesis Project to breathe.

  The ultrasound wand hummed, a low vibration that felt too loud in the silent exam room.

  "Ovary is accessible," Callum said. His voice was steady, filtered slightly through the speaker on his hover-chair. "Follicle count is... decent. Better than last month, Red."

  Christine stared at the ceiling. The lights were recessed panels of white glow, perfect and shadowless. She tried not to think about what was happening. She tried to think of it as just another procedure.

  "It’s a statistical absurdity," Callum muttered, tilting his chin to adjust the monitor screen. "The teleportation rearranged your facial bone structure and fused half the population’s limbs, yet it somehow spared your ovaries."

  "My surgeon would be proud," Christine said, her voice dry.

  "Thank God for partial hysterectomies," Callum said, his eyes scanning the data. "Because right now, Red, you are one of the few viable vaults we have left."

  "Ready for retrieval?" she asked, done with the small talk.

  "Ready," Callum said.

  He moved his chin, a subtle twitch to the left, and the mechanical arm attached to his pod extended. It moved with fluid grace, far smoother than a human hand. The needle glided into position, an inch above her skin.

  "We have the ether, you know," Callum offered gently, pausing the arm. "Patrick synthesized it last week. It works."

  "And wake up losing three hours to the purple fog?" Christine shook her head against the pillow. The alien version of anesthesia was effective, but the side effects—hallucinating colors and feeling like your brain had been disconnected from your body—were worse than the procedure. "No thanks. I’d rather keep my head clear."

  "Deep breath," he murmured, respecting the choice. "And... got it."

  Christine exhaled. She felt the pinch, the dull cramp, but she didn't flinch. The pain was becoming routine.

  "How are your lungs today?" she asked, watching the monitor where her own potential children appeared as grainy grey blobs.

  Callum laughed, but the sound turned into a wet, rattling cough. The mechanical arm paused instantly… a safety protocol he had coded himself. He waited until the fit passed, his chest heaving under his lab coat.

  "Operating at... let's call it seventy percent," he wheezed. "Low tide today. But the coffee was strong, so morale is high."

  "You need a breathing treatment," Christine said, her nurse brain overriding her patient brain.

  "I need a new set of lungs," Callum corrected gently. "But the aliens say my warranty expired at the event horizon. They can rearrange atoms, but creating biological material is beyond their technology. As luck would have it. I'm fine, Red. Focus on the eggs. They're the VIPs."

  He finished the retrieval with practiced efficiency. The sample was secured in a heated transport vial… alien glass, warm to the touch.

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  "Six," Callum announced. "Six chances."

  They took the vial to the incubator lab.

  Patrick was there, his avatar shimmering in a gown of liquid mercury, the blue light of his consciousness pulsing beneath the translucent skin.

  "Director Red. Dr. Hartley," the alien greeted. "Optimization complete on the nutrient bath."

  "Is it?" Callum steered his chair to the microscope. "Because last time, the 'optimized' bath calcified the cell walls."

  "Adjustment made," Patrick said. "We removed the incompatible elements. Added simple glucose."

  They transferred the eggs. They introduced the sperm… donated by one of the few men who hadn't been sterilized.

  They waited.

  On the screen, the magic happened. Cell division. One becomes two. Two becomes four.

  "Looking good," Callum whispered. "Come on, little guys."

  At eight cells, it stopped.

  The walls of the embryo shimmered, then dissolved. The structure collapsed into grey sludge.

  "Failure," the computer intoned.

  Christine closed her eyes. It was the twentieth failure this month.

  The alien looked at the screen, his lights dimming to a sad blue. "The meat... lacks instruction. It forgets how to be."

  "It's not forgetting," Callum said, frustration edging into his voice. "It's giving up. It's the environment. It’s too static. There’s no rhythm."

  He let the words hang there, heavy and unresolved, until the sheer physical reality of their hunger forced them to stop. There was no point in staring at failure on an empty stomach.

  Dinner was late. The cafeteria was nearly empty, just the low drone of the air recyclers and the clinking of spoons against metal bowls.

  Callum nudged his bowl away with his chin. "You know," he said, lowering his voice, "I have a bottle of something that technically qualifies as wine in my quarters. One of the chemists fermented the alien fruit."

  He gave her a tired, conspiratorial look. "Same guy who helped Patrick synthesize the ether. He figured if he could knock us out medically, he could probably figure out how to do it recreationally, too."

  Christine looked up, exhausted. "Is it safe?"

  "It's 14% alcohol. It doesn't have to be safe; it just has to work." He smiled, and for a second, the tired lines around his eyes smoothed out.

  "Come back to my quarters, Red. We can get this to go."

  Christine hesitated. The familiar hint of connection and wanting something more. She looked around the bleak, white room. She looked at her lonely reflection in the dark window.

  "Okay," she said.

  Callum’s quarters looked different. He had dimmed the lights. He had projected a star map on the ceiling… a nebula of swirling purples and golds. It was the only thing in the Terra Dome that felt soft.

  They drank the chemist’s wine. It was terrible. It burned going down.

  It helped.

  When Callum kissed her, it wasn’t aggressive. It was more of a surprise followed by a question.

  She answered it. She leaned in, her hands finding his shoulders, the only solid place to hold him.

  The intimacy was... logistical. It had to be. Without limbs, Callum couldn’t hold her, couldn’t guide her. She had to be the one to move, to touch, to orchestrate their connection.

  For Callum, it was clearly a revelation. He made sounds she hadn’t heard in months… sounds of relief, of joy. He looked at her with a reverence that made her chest ache.

  She wanted to feel alive.

  Her body responded. The friction, the heat, the human contact… it was starving for it.

  But when she closed her eyes, the ghost was there.

  She felt Nathan’s hands, big and rough from building houses. She felt the weight of him, the way he used to wrap his arms around her and squeeze until she squeaked. She remembered the specific, heavy rhythm of his breathing against her ear.

  Callum was light. He was gentle. He was here.

  She chased the release anyway, clinging to Callum’s shoulders, burying her face in his neck so he wouldn't see that her eyes were wet.

  When the activities subsided, she lay beside him on the narrow bed, the sheet pulled up to her chin. Callum appeared to be dozing, his breathing raspy but peaceful.

  "You okay?" he murmured, eyes still closed.

  "Yeah," she lied as she smiled, pretending to be satisfied.

  "You're thinking about the embryos," Callum concluded, mistaking her distance for work stress.

  Christine rolled onto her side, facing him. "I'm thinking about the rhythm. You said they give up because it's too static."

  Callum opened his eyes. They were clear and intelligent. "A womb isn't a beaker, Red. It moves. It has a heartbeat. It has blood flow that wooshes. It has digestion noises. It's a chaotic, noisy environment. That’s what tells the cells they're alive."

  "So we need to make noise," Christine said.

  "We need to build a machine that mimics a mother," Callum said. "Not just the chemistry. The physics. The sound."

  He smiled at her, a sleepy, crooked grin. "We can do it. Me and you. We will figure this out.”

  Christine reached out and brushed a strand of hair off his forehead. He leaned into her touch, starved for it.

  "Me and you," she agreed.

  She snuggled closer to him, resting her head on his chest. His heart was beating… a little fast, a little uneven, but it was there.

  It wasn't the slow, steady drum of Blue Lando.

  But it was a heartbeat in a world of silence. And for tonight, that had to be enough.