Chapter 44: Beneath the Sky, A Single Life
The skies above Saphros glowed faintly with artificial aurorae. They weren't natural—just ambient bleed from the city's defense dome refracting through low-cloud ether residue. Most people had grown used to it, but not Leron.
He always looked up.
Leron Jax, twenty-eight, delivery technician, zone-licensed on both hoverpads and conduit trams. He didn't have a high clearance ID. He didn't speak to governors or shadow councils. He didn't even know who ran his district, and most days, he didn't care.
He had an apartment cube with solar tinting. He had a mid-range kinetic cycle he rebuilt from scrap. He had a sister he visited every seven days and a cat that came and went through his wall vent like it paid rent.
Today started like most others.
He rolled out of his capsule-bed, activated the panel wall, and stepped into a 3-minute decontam mist. He skipped breakfast—nutrient cubes were running low—and swiped through his delivery schedule.
Seven packages. Mostly memory cores and one sealed container bound for a mid-tier lab near the Core Loop.
He strapped into his courier vest, adjusted the magnetic clamps on his forearms, and stepped onto the glide-ramp. The city moved around him like clockwork. Drones hummed above. Ads flickered on translucent platforms. Holo-news updated headlines:
> "New resonance flicker detected in Far West District."
"Citadel announces Project Pallum to begin phased deployment."
Leron blinked them away.
First stop: a retired sculptor. Package: replacement spine disk.
The woman didn't speak much. Just smiled and bowed her head. Leron returned the nod.
Second stop: a tea vendor. A new leaf-pulse sampler for blending.
Third: A girl no older than ten opened the door. Her mother was behind her, coughing. Leron saw three small medical drones hovering in her apartment, one flickering with low charge. He handed over the parcel and said nothing. They both knew it wouldn't fix anything.
By the fourth delivery, he was sweating. Not from heat. From the echo.
It came from nowhere, like a sound that had no beginning. Just a vibration in the back of his spine. It happened sometimes. People said it was nothing. Ghost signal. Resonance lag. Solar shifts.
But Leron knew better. Ever since the Kaelon event, the world felt off. Like a song with a note always missing.
Kaelon used to be a bustling outer sector—a hub for experimental tech, education, and design.
Until one day, people began to change. Quietly, at first. Speech patterns slurred, thoughts slowed, memory errors cascaded. The air shimmered with things that weren't there.
Then came the disappearances. Then the panic.
The Citadel sent in a special division. Silence Generators were used, or so the rumor went. But Kaelon never reopened. It was cordoned off completely.
Since then, those who lived near the fringes felt it—like a hum under their skin. Leron's cousin had worked security near the border fence. He never came back.
No explanation. No report. Just reassignment papers sent to his mother.
People didn't talk about Kaelon anymore. But they remembered.
That's what made the news flickers so unsettling. Another resonance zone meant another Kaelon. Another chance to lose everything without even understanding what was being lost.
Leron parked his cycle by the observation rail near Loop Sector 8. The sky stretched endlessly above. Somewhere, the Citadel was deciding things. Somewhere, ships moved in orbit, unseen.
He looked down at his gloved hands.
"I'm just one person," he whispered.
But he knew even a single life could fracture. Or shine.