CHAPTER 123: ALMOST MORNING

Morning arrived like the camp had hit a snooze button and regretted it.

Heaters hummed low. Steam curled from a kettle and went nowhere in particular. Snow hissed on tarps with the soft, steady persistence of someone sweeping the same floor twice.

Feris had looped a belt around her waist and tied herself to a center pole so she could "stand." It made her hover in place like a very determined balloon that refused to drift.

She was trying to make coffee with one hand and a lot of opinions about physics.

"This pot is judging me..." she announced, poking the burner with a ladle. The pot bobbed as if agreeing. "Don’t look at me like that."

"You’re looking at a pot" Obi said, stumbling out of his tent with hair that had made enemies overnight. "It has no eyes, which is also how I feel."

Arashi sat on a crate, shirt off, jaw tight, while Raizen retied the bandage on his forearm. The cut was clean now, wrapped in a fresh strip of white. Arashi held still because he thought that made him brave, which it did, but didn’t make it hurt less.

"Don’t flex" Raizen said.

"I’m not flexing" Arashi lied, immediately flexing. He hissed, smiling. "Ow."

Lynea knelt beside a low table, cleaning her fragments with the focus of someone sorting thoughts by hand. Each sliver of pale edge lifted, turned, and slid into a little pocket sewn inside her sleeve. One piece refused to go in all the way, hanging out like a cat’s paw off a ledge.

Hikari sat near the mouth of the tent with a blanket around her shoulders and a notebook balanced on her knees. She wrote short lines, paused, then looked out at the pale ridge and the darker line of trees, as if trying to measure the quiet against the page.

The generator coughed once and decided not to be dramatic. The world took a breath that wasn’t quite a sigh.

Alteea’s voice arrived in all their ears like a hand tapping the table. "Good morning, Team Three."

Feris brightened. "Define good."

"I’m pretending" Alteea said. Keys clicked under her words, a quiet cascade. "Signal interference is behaving badly again. Not steady. Spikes. The valley, the ridge, the sealed shaft. Nothing consistent, which is my least favorite kind of nothing."

"Glitch?" Obi asked hopefully.

"Maybe" Alteea said in a tone that meant no. "I’m seeing loopbacks in the logs. Partial strings repeating. Like echoes that forgot how to be echoes. Please keep comms open today."

Kori cut in on the line, a steel cable of a voice. "If the mountain wants to talk, it can wait till breakfast."

"Copy" Alteea said, too polite to be amused, too efficient to stop. "But keep your toys on. If the quiet stops being polite, I want to hear the exact second it does. And until then... You’re free."

Raizen taped the last inch of Arashi’s wrap. "Done. Do not punch anything with that hand."

"Wasn’t going to" Arashi said. He tested a careful fist with his other hand. "Going to shoot with this one instead."

"Better" Lynea said. She nudged the stubborn fragment. It slid in at last with wounded dignity. "Posture: less heroic. Save that for the part where we have to run."

Feris poured tea as if it had to be coaxed into being. The pot resisted gravity by half a second, then surrendered. "Breakfast" she declared, and passed around tin cups with the ceremonious care of someone ladling out hot courage.

Hikari accepted hers, wrapped in both hands. She took one sip, made a face at the bitterness, then kept drinking anyway.

The camp stretched into its morning. Wardens reset guy lines and knocked ice off tent seams. A supply drone descended like someone piloting courtesy, set down a crate with a sigh, and lifted again, halo of snow glittering under its rotors. A pair of miners trudged past the perimeter, nodding the way people nod to other people who also didn’t die yesterday.

Laughter happened in small, cautious pieces. It was the real kind, not the kind you build to keep the dark out. Someone told a story about a cook in a different camp who had boiled snow because the water supply was interrupted, and another one that cooked roots.

Raizen drank his coffee, which tasted like burnt patience, and watched how the morning fit around his people. Hikari’s shoulder had color again. Arashi’s face had that stubborn line of someone who would absolutely get into trouble if not actively sat on. Lynea’s calm had teeth. Obi’s grin landed and stayed. Feris hovered, literally and emotionally, pretending she hated it, possibly liking it a little.

The ridge above them wore cloud like a shawl. Somewhere behind that stone was a room that had decided to be beautiful in color and quiet in voice. He tried not to think about it. He failed, but softly.

"Team Three" Alteea said, not intrusive, just present. "Status ping."

Raizen clicked his comm. "Five alright, one hovering."

"Rude" Feris said.

"Understood" Alteea went on. "I’m setting you to notify if your local noise changes. That includes dramatic sighs."

Kori cut in. "And no unsupervised field trips. If I find "recon lap" on my log, I will make you polish the inside of my coffee pot with your toothbrush."

"Still impossible" Obi said.

"Noted" Raizen said.

They ate. Not because they were hungry - some were, some weren’t - but because eating was an argument with fear that often worked. The sun never fully showed, but light pooled anyway, the way it sometimes does when the day is doing its best.

A Warden team rolled a small platform past, the cart wheels whispering over frozen ground. The driver raised two fingers. "Resupply. Anyone need bandage tape or gossip?"

"Yes" Lynea said.

"The tape or the gossip?"

"Yes." Now less friendlier.

The Warden grinned. "Tape we’ve got. Gossip says the east ridge lit up last night - only for a breath. Same shimmer the miners keep reporting. Could be dust. Could be weather. Could be the mountain practicing its party tricks."

"Everything is dust glare until it starts talking in full sentences" Arashi said.

"Spoken like a man who will definitely ignore a sign" the Warden said, affectionately, and moved on.

Hikari set her notebook aside and stood slowly, testing her balance. The world didn’t tip. She breathed like someone trying on a dress and finding it fit.

"You staying warm?" Raizen asked softly.

"I intend to" Hikari said. "Which is new for me." She lifted her cup in a little salute. "This tea tastes like tree roots and despair."

"It’s my favorite flavor" Obi said. "Second only to dignity."

"Dignity’s seasonal" Feris said. "Out of stock until spring."

"Good" Lynea murmured. "We don’t need it."

For a time, the camp resembled the idea of a small town. People repaired things. People compared bruises. Someone - probably Esen, by the style - had propped a sloppily hand-lettered "TURN BACK" sign near the entrance to the mess tent as a joke. It made three people laugh and one person superstitious; both were correct.

Midday almost happened. Then the sky remembered it didn’t want to be helpful.

The wind changed direction without speeding up. The air tasted cleaner for a heartbeat, then like dust again.

Then, strange things started small.