The lights had dimmed to quarter-strength, casting the Virek home in a soft amber hue. A dust storm was settling beyond the dome walls, the kind that made every sound feel distant, cushioned beneath layers of static haze. Inside, the home was still.
Most nights, Kael went to bed without being told. He'd curl beneath his patchwork blanket, facing the wall, silent and content. But not tonight.
Tonight, he lingered.
He stood in the archway to the supply room, small hands tucked behind his back, watching Lenn sort through a bin of mixed pressure fittings under the low overhead light. Lenn, crouched on the floor, was halfway through matching sets when he felt that quiet, unmoving presence behind him.
"You need something, kid?" he asked without turning.
Kael didn't answer. He stepped forward and picked up a single bent fitting from the wrong tray.
"This one's steel," he said.
Lenn blinked, then looked at it. "So?
"It'll crack under tension," Kael said plainly. "Aluminum's better. No micro-fractures.
Lenn turned the fitting over in his hand, spotting the faint scoring along the collar just like Kael had said.
"Well, I'll be…" He grinned and tossed it into the scrap pile. "You trying to replace me yet?
Kael looked up, expression flat. "I don't want your job.
Lenn burst into laughter, the kind that filled the room like warmth from a space heater. He reached out and ruffled Kael's hair.
"Don't worry. You'll be running this whole place by the time you hit ten.
Kael didn't smile. But he leaned into the contact, just slightly. For him, it was enough.
Lenn sat back on his heels and studied him.
"You ever wonder what's outside this place?
Kael nodded.
"You ever want to leave?"
Another pause. Then, quietly: "Not without you.
Lenn's heart stuttered.
He tried to play it off with a grin, but there was a lump in his throat when he said, "Yeah. You're one of us.
Later that week....
Every few months, Grey Hollow ran a manual reset on its secondary grid, a brittle, half-functional tangle of outdated systems buried under layers of salvaged infrastructure and half-patched lines. They called it "the swap."
It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't even official. But it was the closest thing the settlement had to a social gathering. Locals came out in faded gear, laughing through complaints, and worked side-by-side to keep the lights on for another season.
This cycle, Lenn and Jace had been tapped to lead the overnight crew. It was mostly routine inspection, power checks, and panel resets. But the system was old and unpredictable, and every reset came with its own risks.
Mirena was hesitant at first. She didn't want Kael near the open junctions, the hot cores, the unpredictable relays.
"He won't touch anything," she promised Arik. "He'll just observe.
"He's not like other kids," Arik had said. "They see a blinking light and poke it. He sees a blinking light and fixes it.
"I'll keep him with me the whole time," Lenn added. "He won't even step off the lane.
Reluctantly, Arik agreed.
So, just after dusk, they brought Kael along.
He rode in the back of Jace's pony-cycle, bundled in his work coat, goggles hanging from his collar. When they reached the grid square, he stepped down calmly and followed Lenn to the central relay hub, walking as if he had done it a hundred times.
The repair crew was already in place about a dozen settlers with flashlights strapped to their foreheads and worn gloves on their hands. They were hauling cables, threading bypass couplings, barking soft commands over the whine of the wind.
Kael stood quietly beside Lenn.
He didn't wander. Didn't speak.
But he watched.
He watched how one technician grunted when lifting a spool, favoring an old back injury, how another woman reached for a cable too thin for the load she was preparing. How the central tower flickered slightly with every third pulse, indicating a grounding fault no one else had noticed yet.
He said nothing.
But he remembered everything.
Lenn caught him studying the wire spools and leaned down. "See anything?
Kael pointed. "That gauge is too thin.
Lenn followed his finger, checked the tag, and quietly swapped it without a word. Just nodded.
But they weren't alone.
Others saw them.
Some smiled, amused to see the quiet kid from the Virek family tagging along like a miniature engineer.
Others frowned, confused, uncertain.
One man whispered something to his partner.
Kael didn't flinch. He never did. He just stood with his hands behind his back, watching the town he had always known… and beginning to understand what it meant to be seen.
And when the lights finally returned clean, steady, brighter than they'd been in weeks, Kael looked up.
Not with pride.
But with quiet certainty.
As if this was how it should have always been.
Like everything had slotted into place.