## The Static Bloom The salt-licked viewport smelled of ozone and regret. Kaito traced a finger across the bioluminescent scar blooming on the hull of the *Aetheria*, a megafraug salvaged from the Mariana Trench birth-fields. It pulsed with a sickly…
## Node Seven The rain tasted metallic, a constant film on everything in Sector Gamma. Elara wiped her cheek with the back of her gloved hand, leaving a smear of grey against her skin. She’s been tasting it for fourteen…
## The Static Bloom The chipped Formica countertop smelled faintly of chlorine. Rain lashed against the corrugated metal roof of the research shack, a frantic drumming that nearly drowned out the hum of the bioreactors. Dr. Aris Thorne traced a…
## The Echo Weaver The hum vibrated through Elias’s teeth, a low thrum he felt more than heard. He sat in Unit L’, the padded chair molded to his form, staring at the grey wall. Grey always. It was the…
## The Bloom Weaver Dust motes danced in the shaft of sunlight slicing through the grimy window. Old Man Tiber, they called him, though he couldn’t have been more than sixty, lived in the husk of what used to be…
## The Glow Echo The November air smelled like wet iron and dying leaves. Rain slicked the cobblestones of Old Town, reflecting the violet bloom from the willow trees lining the canal. Not natural light. The Glow. Everyone called it…
The rain hammered against the corrugated iron roof of the Helix, a sound like a thousand frantic fingers drumming. Below, the city – or what was left of it – bled into an oppressive grey. Layers upon layers of concrete…
The rain tasted like iron and ozone. It hammered against the corrugated steel roof of the Bio-Nexus, a persistent drumbeat accompanying the low thrum emanating from within. I watched it fall on the moss-slicked windows of Sector 7, my fingers…