My father waits near the outer gate, hands in his jacket pockets, uniform stained with the kind of grime you can’t wash out after ten years around machines. He’s not tall, not loud, not much of anything really. But the way he stands — back straight, feet planted like he belongs there — would make people step around him instead of through him, if he wasn't standing with his back to the wall.
“Jun-Tao,” he says. He opens his arms for a hug. I oblige and smell oil and sweat.
“Father.”
We start walking without another word. That’s how it usually goes. He doesn’t ask how school went. I don’t bother to pretend I’d tell him anything that was new or exciting.
A tram squeals past on rusted tracks, overloaded with workers from the morning shift. The sound hits that perfect tone for pain in the ear. Behind us, someone’s already yelling to his Mother about how his lunch was especially delicious today. Wei, probably.
“Do you have any Assignments you need to do over the Weekend?” my father asks after a minute.
“No.”
“Good. Do you want to come with me to the Depot tomorrow?.”
“Yes!.” I let the excitement show on my face.
A breath that might have been a stifled laugh escapes him.
We turn down a street that isn’t really a street anymore. Just cracked concrete, puddles that never dry, and low brick buildings pretending they don’t all belong to some subdivision of the war machine. Half the signs are slogans: Loyalty is Strength. The Confederation Provides. Sabotage is Treason. The other half are just numbers and arrows pointing toward the depots.
A group of militia troopers marches past on the opposite sidewalk, boots slapping the ground in rhythm. Some of them look at us. We look at them.
My father adjusts the strap of the small bag on his shoulder. “They pushed us to rush maintenance again,” he mutters more to himself than me. “Someone decided the militia gets first priority on coolant lines.”
I nod like an obedient little Capellan child. "Preparation for something, probably." Not something an adult would say out loud in Public, luckily I wasn't one.
My Father shushes me with a look.
"Did you get an answer if skipping Technical II is possible?."
"No, the Instructor told me to be patient."
"You asked him after a single day?" His face crinkled in amusement.
"I wanted to know." The biggest Perk of Childhood: Low expectations in most disciplines of social life.
We cut past the corner where the tram lines end. A drainage tunnel runs beneath, big enough for the hum of the city to pool inside. And just like that — it’s there again.
The low vibration crawls up through the soles of my boots, settles in my chest like a second heartbeat. No one else reacts. I can feel myself resonate with it.
I keep walking and it goes silent.
This stretch of road always smells like iron filings and burnt lubricant. This part of the City doesn’t know how to be quiet.
“Mother still working late?” I ask.
“Drills at the garrison. She said she’ll be home before curfew.”
He doesn’t ask why I’m suddenly talkative. I don’t explain that it’s just easier to focus on small talk than on the thing vibrating somewhere under the asphalt.
We cross the last checkpoint between the industrial District and the Noble blocks. The guards don’t even check papers — they know our faces. Most of the families around here belong to the same labor allotment. Children of technicians that work for the Nobility. Sons and daughters of the not-quite-important, but still connected.
Our building waits like every other one on the block. Concrete, five floors, no decoration. A red banner above the entrance reads: Every Hand Builds Victory. It flaps limply in the wind.
Father pushes the door open and holds it without looking at me.
“Come on,” he says. “Your mother will want to hear if you learned how to multiply 16 by 12 today.”
I laugh. He smiles.
The stairwell smells faintly of boiled cabbage and machine oil, which could be Father or another technician and Mrs. Wu on the third floor made soup again. We climb two flights in silence. My father’s boots hit the concrete with the same unhurried rhythm they always do.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
The walls are painted the kind of green bureaucrats love — institutional, soul-flattening, and impossible to chip off even if you try. Someone once scratched a slogan into the plaster near the landing. It’s been painted over so many times it’s just a ghost of a phrase now. "Yo_r Mot_er is..."
Our door is at the end of the hallway. A small, square apartment. State standard for families of skilled labor. Father slides his key through the worn lock and pushes it open.
The smell of something fried hits me first. Mother’s home.
She’s sitting at the small kitchen table when we enter, uniform half undone, jacket draped over the chair, hair tied back in a tight braid that still somehow looks like she just left the garrison even after a shower.
“Jun-Tao,” she says without looking up from the ration pack she’s turning into something that resembles food. “No punishments today?”
“Only Wei, Mom.”
She giggles and finally looks up. Sharp eyes. The kind that assess things before deciding whether to care. I’ve seen the same look on soldiers patrolling the tram lines. She often needs some time to lose them.
“I still don't know,” she says. “what you have against the poor boy.”
Father lets out a small chuckle and hangs his jacket on the peg. “He spends too much time around the upper Classes. He also wants to come with me to the depot tomorrow.”
She raises a brow at me. “Trying to escape Wei and the school already?”
“Technical II is boring,” I say. “I already know how a basic turbine works. They are making me build slingshots out of already made parts.”
That gets an actual laugh out of her. “You sound just like your father.”
“Handsome,” he says from the kitchenette. We all laugh at that one. Especially because it is true.
Dinner is a patchwork of noodles, fried greens, and the kind of protein block that claims to be pork and tastes like it. We sit at the table, legs bumping into the metal legs beneath the chipped surface. The radio in the corner clicks on automatically at the hour, flooding the room with the clean, clipped voice of a state announcer.
“…further evidence of Davion infiltration along the border has prompted heightened security in several sectors, including Tikonov. The Chancellor reminds all loyal citizens: vigilance is strength. Report suspicious activity to your local militia commander. In other News, the School District Competition Comitee has been founded again and will start preparations in..."
Mother snorts softly. “They always find spies when the budget’s tight.”
Father shoots her a warning look — more out of habit than fear — but she just shrugs. “It’s not like they’re listening to every kitchen in Tikograd.”
Which is exactly what someone would say in a kitchen being listened to.
“They could be,” I say, mostly just to poke.
She gives me a smile. “Then they’re getting very bored reports about how your father’s depot doesn’t have enough coolant and how I had to yell at a new recruit to stop trying to evade the autocannon by walking backwards.”
I grin. That actually sounds funny.
The radio moves on to a speech about production quotas and subsequent Celebrity Drama. Same script as last week. And the week before. And the week before that.
Mother leans back in her chair after finishing her food, stretching out her arms, old scar tissue peeking out her tank top. “The nobles are whispering again. You can feel it. No one tightens schedules like this unless something’s moving.”
Father doesn’t answer. He just keeps eating. That’s how they relieve stress— one throws out a stone, the other pretends it didn’t make a splash, and then they...
“The food is very good today,” I say with the grace of a Locust in a Capellan shop.
Later, I lie in bed staring at the ceiling. The rain outside has stopped, even Tikograd itself has laid itself to rest.
Then it comes again — the hum. Deeper this time. No longer a faint pulse through the soles of my boots, but a low vibration threading through the building like it’s in the bones of the city itself.
It’s not a hallucination, and I know what a panic attack feels like. This isn’t it.
I turn on my side. The faint outline of Kazan’s mountain range is visible through the window. Black teeth against a gray sky.
What is happening?
I press my forehead against the cold glass and whisper to no one in particular:
“Yeah. I hear you. Now what?”
The hum fades into the deep background. But it doesn’t leave as I fall asleep.
_____________________________________
The ground beneath me isn’t ground.
It’s black. Not soil, not ash, not stone. Just black. It crunches when I shift, like walking on layers of burned paper pressed flat. There’s no wind. No stars. Just the soft glow of nothing above me, bleeding enough light to see what shouldn’t be seen.
Things rise out of the black. Or maybe they sink into it. Hard to tell where the line is.
A warship’s prow juts from the ground like a rusted blade, its plating bent inward as if the planet had tried to eat it. Nearby, a glasshouse full of withered fruit trees leans on its side, roots and branches tangled with broken steel. A church bell, cracked down the middle, rests half-swallowed beside a massive puppet made of bronze wires, its empty sockets fixed on the sky. And further out—something that looks like a single child’s shoe the size of a house.
Every step I take, the black ground gives just a little. I can’t move any of the things buried here, not even the loose strands of fabric from what looks like a flag. The soil clings to everything like a greedy hand.
I don’t know how long I’ve been standing. Time doesn’t seem to work right here. Then, a breath I can’t hear slides across my skin like cold fingers.
I’m being watched.
There’s no shape to it. Just pressure. Weight. A sense of eyes behind the darkness, patient and unblinking.
I try to dig — with my hands, with my heels — and the ground doesn’t yield. Not even the top layer. It’s like trying to dig into tempered glass.
So I walk.
The longer I walk, the stronger it gets. A pull. A sound that isn’t a sound. Like a hum sinking into my ribs. It calls me in a language that isn’t one. I follow, because what else is there to do.
I find it at the base of something too big to see the top of. A bag. Small enough to hold in my hands. Old leather, tied shut with fraying red cord.
Inside are a brass gear polished to a mirror shine, a strip of stained silk, a lump of blue glass, a silver coin with no face, and a single key that doesn’t fit anything. They glitter even though there’s no light here.
I don’t hear the voice. But I understand it all the same.
We make beautiful things.
We fix what is broken.
We shape. We do not rest.
Use us, and what you touch will be beautiful.
But only if you use us. Always.
Creation without us is no creation at all.
The pull tightens around my throat like an invisible collar.
I clutch the bag. It’s warm. Too warm.
Something in the darkness shifts. Watching. Waiting. Disapproving.
I don’t remember agreeing.
But the bag doesn’t care. It knows.
I wake up.