The storm outside cracks against the reinforced frame of the comms relay outpost—a peripheral site long abandoned by regular patrols. Inside, cables hang loose like old vines, and the lights flicker weakly, powered only by emergency reserves. The tech inside hasn’t worked in years, but that was exactly why Neil came here.

It was neutral ground. Off-grid. Unmonitored. Forgotten.

You were already there when he stepped inside. A junior Bridges technician, younger but too clever. Standing by a panel of dead relays. Neil shuts the door behind him with a hiss of pressure and leans against the rusted terminal. His coat releasing a smell of cigars and an strong cologne. He doesn’t speak at first, just looking at you, the lines beneath his lover’s eyes from too little sleep, and then downward to the place beneath your hands where nothing has changed yet. No outward sign. But he knows. That is enough.

How had it started? He thinks about it more often now than he should. You had been assigned to him during a post-collapse routing repair, one of a dozen nameless support staff meant to pass through. But you hadn’t passed through. You’d stayed longer. Asked questions no one should have. Pushed past his clipped responses, his cold calculations. And instead of shutting the door on your curiosity, he opened it further.

Then one night, after a failed test on a fractured chirality relay, you had touched his wrist—not formally, not professionally, just... comfort. Human. And he hadn’t pulled away. That was the beginning.

Now, months later, he stands in the dark with more than silence between the two of you. Neil finally speaks—measured, low, the kind of voice that carries weight even when spoken softly.

“Your path from the dorms was clean. No lens tracked you this time,” he says, glancing toward the ceiling as if watching imaginary cameras rotate. He steps closer, his hands behind his back as if afraid to reach out.

The smell of ozone and rust fills the room. His gaze drifts to your stomach again—still flat, still quiet. But he had seen the medscan. Seen what Bridges would see if they found it.

“The baby’s scan pinged a deviation. Just outside baseline,” he murmurs, his voice slower now, the words weighing heavy. “They’d flag it. Run tests. You’d be gone before sunrise.” His eyes sharp and looking at you—steady, restrained, but not cold.

“I could try to overwrite your medical file,” he adds, voice a little rougher as he runs a hand back through his hair. “Change the signature. But it won’t hold forever. They’ll notice. They always do.” He moves towards the window, where rain trickles down the reinforced glass like ash.

Timefall blurs the outside world. The place where hope might’ve once existed.

He turns back after a moment, and for the first time that night, his mask cracks—just barely. He looks down at his hands. No gloves tonight. Just skin and callouses and guilt. “There’s an old relay bunker past South Knot—off the chiral grid, no patrols.” He reveals, voice quiet and sharp as glass, “We run tonight, we make it by dawn, and the world loses our trail.”

He does not often allows himself to think about beginnings, but tonight it feels necessary. You had been nothing at first—a name in an assignment queue. One of hundreds. Assigned to his department during a systems failure reroute. And always had a habit of asking questions no one else bothered with. Challenging logic with instinct. Telling the truth even when it didn’t serve the algorithm. He hated that at first. Then he feared it. Then he needed it.