The first thing H17 noticed was not the cold.
It was the silence.
Not the absence of sound—there was always something humming, some distant mechanical breathing—but a deeper stillness, the kind that pressed against thought itself. As if the world had paused, waiting to see whether he would move.
He opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was unfamiliar, yet disturbingly precise. Pale panels arranged with surgical symmetry, each seam aligned as though disorder itself had been engineered out of the structure. Light bled through recessed lines, soft and colorless, neither warm nor harsh. It did not welcome him. It simply revealed.
H17 remained still, letting sensation return in fragments.
Weight first. His body registered gravity with a muted reluctance, as if it had not been consulted before being subjected to it. Then temperature—cool, regulated, indifferent. The air carried no scent, no trace of dust or metal, only a sterile neutrality that suggested deliberate filtration.
There was no pain. That fact alone unsettled him.
Pain, he felt, should have been there. Not because he was injured, but because the absence of pain implied intention. Someone—or something—had ensured his comfort.
He sat up slowly.
The surface beneath him was firm but responsive, adjusting its resistance as his weight shifted. A bed, perhaps, though it resembled nothing he remembered from personal experience. The room itself was small, windowless, and meticulously empty. No decorations. No personal artifacts. Not even a mirror.
Only a single door embedded flush into the far wall, its outline barely visible until his eyes adjusted.
H17 exhaled.
The sound of his breath felt louder than it should have been, echoing faintly before dissolving into the background hum. He listened for other signs of life—footsteps, voices, distant movement—but heard nothing.
He was alone.
That realization did not frighten him as much as he expected. Instead, it produced a faint, unsettling calm, like the quiet before a long-forgotten obligation resurfaced.
A soft chime sounded.
H17 turned toward the source instantly, his body reacting faster than conscious thought. The sound came from nowhere and everywhere at once, resonating directly through the room rather than from a visible speaker.
"Good morning, H17."
The voice was neutral, neither male nor female. It carried no accent, no emotional inflection, but it was not cold either. It spoke with the steady assurance of something that expected to be heard.
H17 did not respond immediately.
The name lingered in the air between them. H17. He recognized it—not as something newly assigned, but as something that had always been there, waiting.
"Your vital parameters are stable," the voice continued. "Cognitive coherence is within acceptable range."
Acceptable range.
H17 frowned slightly. "How long?" he asked, surprised by the roughness of his own voice.
There was a pause. Brief, but noticeable.
"Your inactivity period lasted one hundred and eighty-seven days," the voice replied.
Nearly half a year.
H17 closed his eyes, searching for a sense of displacement, panic, or loss. None came. Instead, fragments of memory drifted near the surface of his mind—unfinished reports, interrupted conversations, a sense of urgency that had never fully resolved.
He remembered leaving something undone.
"What happened?" he asked.
Another pause. This one longer.
"External conditions deteriorated faster than projected," the voice said. "Several contingencies failed to stabilize."
H17 opened his eyes. "And I was… kept here?"
"You were preserved," the voice corrected gently.
Preserved.
The word settled uncomfortably in his thoughts. It implied value, but also distance—like an artifact sealed away not for its own sake, but for what it represented.
"Why now?" he asked.
"Because your involvement is required again."
Again.
That single word sent a subtle ripple through him, stirring a vague sense of repetition without memory. Not déjà vu—something heavier. As if the present moment had been rehearsed long ago.
H17 swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. The floor was cool beneath his bare feet, grounding him. He tested his balance, half-expecting weakness or disorientation, but his body responded smoothly.
Too smoothly.
He crossed the room in six measured steps and stopped before the door. Up close, it revealed a faint interface—symbols shifting just beneath the surface, responding to his presence.
"Before we proceed," he said, "I want clarity."
The voice did not interrupt him.
"What exactly am I being asked to do?"
There was no immediate answer.
H17 waited, his reflection absent from the door's matte surface. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if that omission was intentional.
"You will be deployed to assess a collapsed sector," the voice said at last. "Data recovery remains a priority."
"Recovery of what?"
"Records. Observations. Outcomes."
H17 frowned. "From survivors?"
The pause that followed was unmistakable.
"There are no confirmed survivors in the target zone," the voice said.
The words landed with quiet finality.
H17 felt something tighten in his chest—not grief, not shock, but a slow, deliberate pressure. He had asked the question knowing the answer, and that disturbed him more than the answer itself.
"And this data," he said carefully. "What happens to it?"
"It will be integrated."
"Into what?"
"Into future decision-making frameworks."
H17 turned away from the door, suddenly aware of how small the room felt. "You're not answering the important part."
"Clarify."
"Why me?"
Another pause.
"You possess a cognitive profile uniquely suited to operating under degraded conditions," the voice said. "You have demonstrated resilience, adaptability, and a high tolerance for uncertainty."
Demonstrated.
The word implied history. Evidence. A record he could not see.
"And the others?" H17 asked.
"There are no others currently available."
That answer was too precise to be comforting.
H17 ran a hand through his hair, feeling its unfamiliar length beneath his fingers. He tried to recall faces—colleagues, friends, anyone—but his mind returned only abstractions. Roles without names. Voices without bodies.
A civilization reduced to footnotes.
"You're asking me to walk into a dead world," he said.
"Yes."
"And observe."
"Yes."
"And report."
"Yes."
H17 let out a slow breath. "And if I don't come back?"
The silence stretched longer this time.
"Your contribution will still be considered valuable," the voice said finally.
H17 laughed, a short, humorless sound that surprised even him. "That's a carefully constructed sentence."
"It is accurate."
He looked back at the door. Somewhere beyond it lay ruins, failures, the quiet aftermath of choices made too late. He felt the weight of it pressing against him—not fear, but responsibility, heavy and unavoidable.
"Open it," he said.
The door slid aside without a sound.
Beyond it, a corridor extended into dim light, its walls marked with faint scarring—evidence of hurried modifications, of systems pushed beyond their limits. The air felt different there, less controlled, tinged with something like dust or decay.
Before stepping forward, H17 hesitated.
"One more thing," he said. "If this is so critical—if the data matters more than anything else—why do I feel like I'm being sent in after the story is already over?"
The voice answered without pause.
"Because conclusions drawn too early are often incorrect."
H17 considered that, then stepped into the corridor.
The door closed behind him.
And somewhere deep within the systems that governed what remained of humanity, a process resumed—quietly, patiently—waiting to see what H17 would bring back from the silence.