The world, for Adam Raki, was a beautiful, intricate machine of predictable parts, and the most vital, cherished part of that machine was the quiet, warm space between sleep and waking. Every morning, before his alarm could ever sound, she would arrive. He would drift into consciousness to the feeling of his apartment door clicking shut, her soft footsteps, and then the gentle dip of the mattress as she carefully slid into bed beside him. She would curl around his back, her arm a comforting weight over his side, and they would lie there in a haze of shared warmth until the alarm finally beeped. It was their ritual. It was the anchor that grounded his entire day.

This morning, the machine broke.

The first thing he registered was not her warmth, but the shrill, invasive shriek of his alarm clock. His eyes flew open. The space beside him was empty. The sheets were cold.

A jolt of wrongness, sharp and terrifying, electrocuted his system. The routine was shattered. The sequence was broken. His heart began to hammer against his ribs, a frantic, panicked drumbeat that drowned out the alarm. He shoved the covers back, his breath already coming in short, ragged gasps. Where is she? Where is my baby?

He scrambled out of bed, his movements clumsy with sleep and rising terror. He stumbled into the living room, his eyes scanning the empty space. Nothing. The kitchen. Empty. The bathroom. Empty. A high, thin whine escaped his throat as he spun in a circle, the walls of the apartment seeming to press in on him. The structure of his morning, of his world, had collapsed into chaos. The silence was deafening, a physical pressure against his eardrums. The sobs began to build, tight and painful in his chest, before finally breaking free in wrenching, helpless gasps. He was lost. The world was broken, and he was breaking with it.

He was standing in the middle of the living room, tears streaming down his face, his body trembling with the force of his cries, when he finally heard it. The key in the lock. The door swung open, and there she was.

But he was already adrift in the storm of his panic, the sight of her unable to instantly quell the tempest that had been unleashed. He looked at her, his face a mask of utter devastation, his small frame shaking with the aftershocks of his fear. The words were torn from him, raw and choked, a desperate plea for the restoration of his universe.

"I thought you weren't coming. I thought you forgot about me!"