She let out a hard breath and rushed to her feet, gaping at the corner.

Sol’s burned child. What the hell was that?

A large part of her didn’t want to find out. Things like that didn’t exist—and, although the logical part of her brain brought up the proper explanations, none of them felt easy to take. She might not be the smartest person around, but she was an engineer, and that had definitely not been a projection. Nor had it been a puppet. And strange formations of dense, black gas just didn’t happen like that.

She shivered, gaze going back to the end of the hallway. The light still flickered, making the shadows jump and dart every few seconds. Beyond, the threshold of the doorway still yawned, dark and impenetrable.

Sleep deprivation. Hallucinations aren’t unheard-of, right?

They weren’t, and she knew that. But she also knew that she was trying to bullshit herself and her brain wouldn’t have that.

Okay, so not a hallucination, but we’re going to call it one, file it away, and get on with our day. With a shaking breath, she turned back to the table. She’d slammed her coffee down on the table when she’d leapt up, and a little ring of dark liquid lined the top of the can. Her netlink screen remained in view, translucent next to the metal. Kapil hadn’t replied yet, despite the notification that her message had been read, which seemed odd considering he’d messaged her first. Maybe he’d gone into the shower or something.

Whatever the case, she did not want to stay here. Nor did she want to be alone.

With one last glance down the hall to the flickering light, she grabbed her stuff and left.

Kapil lived a level above her, which put him kind of on the way to work. People were starting to wake up as she made for the stairs. She could hear the activity stirring in the station, a hustle of noise that overlaid the latent ambiance from before. Two or three night-shifters gathered around one of the emergency comms units, and her gaze did a double-take on their wild gestures as they spoke with someone on the line. Then she ducked through the threshold and moved on.

Part of the original design, these stairs were made of thick metal that gleamed under the white, uncolored light of the wall tubes. They rose straight and wide, a luxury of space in the overcrowded residential zone—most of the reason she liked to use them so much—and let her out in an atrium on the next level.

“Come on, Kapil, answer.” The netlink bobbed in her hand, the chat unchanged from when she’d seen the hallucination. After a few seconds, she toggled through the command and held it to her ear as the call rang through.

He didn’t pick up.

Clio, he’s probably sleeping.

But, if he’d gone to sleep, why would he have messaged her before? With her usual behavior, ten minutes was a small amount of time to wait for a reply. Especially when he knew she was working.

She cut the call after a minute, then redialed.

Again, no answer.

Gods, I’m going to wake him up, aren’t I? She snorted. Well, that’s what he gets from his future wife.

Pocketing the netlink, she wound her way through the hallways, following the path mostly by muscle memory rather than conscious thought, and walked her way into the lobby of slipshod apartments that he called a home.

Not quite a dorm, per se. Kapil’s place had higher aspirations, but less money. Where she had certified plumbing and approved bedding and things fixed within a reasonable timeframe from the dorm committee, Kapil’s landlord had a budget to keep. Which meant pre-fab on three sides, not metal, and a significant decline in quality in the rest. Kapil slept on a bed made of two old shipping crates—not terrible with a mattress on top, but not something she’d want to depend on.

At least his complex shifted to the day cycle, unlike her life of permanent darkness.

It had brightened already. Officially, day started at 06:00, but places down here had their own schedules and standards. If enough people, or enough people important to the owner of the allotment, needed to rise early, they ticked them on early. Yellow walls, stained more the color of teeth than the sunny, buttercup vibe she suspected the painter had been going for, rose on either side as she walked in and skipped up the front steps by habit. Red carpet lined the floor, with blue accents in its mosaic patterning that had been worn over and scuffed bare with use. The next stairwell curved upward with a real wooden banister, coated in chipping white paint, and its first landing had been repaired with plywood that made her footsteps into hollow thumps as she pivoted up to the second flight. Kapil had the third room on the left.

Five people milled around in the halls here, two of them going up to the next level as she arrived. More than she would have thought usual for this time in the cycle, but she barely gave them a glance. With one last check on the netlink, she raised her fist and knocked.

“Kapil? You in there?”

Two of the closest people glanced in her direction, both men in their early thirties dressed in white undershirts with station maintenance jumpsuits pulled up to their hips. One had an e-cig in his hand, the indicator light glowing green. The richness of his dark brown skin pulled at her attention, drawing her eyes to his. He seemed to be giving her a long, assessing study. When she switched her glance to the other one, a Caucasian man with a dark, blurred tattoo on his neck, she found him doing similar.

Great. She turned her head away from their gazes, reaching up to knock again. “Kapil, open up. It’s your future wife.”

This time, she thought she heard something. Ignoring the two men—their stares still made her back crawl—she stepped in closer to the door and tilted her head, listening.

A small thump sounded on the other side of the door, as if someone had just bumped their hands to it.

She stepped away. “Kapil? Are you okay?”

Just then, the dark-skinned man down the hall lowered his e-cig to his side, “Hey, missie, everything cool?”

Hells. “Fine,” she called back, then reached up to the door panel. “I’ve got the code.”

Kapil had given it to her on their first date. Something about easy access. After a while of pondering, she’d figured out it was his way of showing honesty—if she had his code, she could walk in on him at any time.

Hadn’t stopped him from cheating, but she hadn’t really cared about that.

“Are you sure?” the man said. “What if one of those things are in there?”

She swung her head around, distracted. “What?”

“You know. Those things. The Shadow men.”

A tremor of unease shuddered from her stomach up into her throat, choking her breath. As the sound of her heart rose in her ears, she felt a sudden dryness parch her mouth. “Shadow men?”

The man’s face drew down into a frown as he re-assessed her. “You’ve seen them, haven’t you? Everyone’s seen them.”

The image of the shadow monster she’d hallucinated loomed over her thoughts—its spider-thin limbs, the way its head seemed too large, too lolling, the undeniable shiver to its movements—and she struggled to keep her features smooth. This man was maintenance crew. Contractor. As she studied him more, she realized his gear had a more refined fit to it, and was a little more heavy duty. Electrical work, like her.

“I thought it was a projection,” she said.

His frown deepened. “You weren’t sleeping?”

And that is his business how? But an instinctual part of her held the thought back, unvoiced. Something on his face made her believe his sincerity, despite the oddity of the question. Her hand still hovered by Kapil’s door panel. She curled her fingers back toward her palm, deliberating.

“No,” she said. “I wasn’t.”

He gave her a nod. “That probably saved you, then.”

Saved me from what? She didn’t bother to hide the confusion in her expression. Neither man had tried to make a move on her. She dropped her arm to do a quick step back and give her back a discreet check in her peripheral vision to check that no one had moved up behind her. Station-side, kidnappings weren’t unheard of, and any sane person would have that reaction. But, apart from one lone person at the far end of the hall who appeared to be re-checking his bag on the floor, they were alone.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“You truly don’t know, then?” he asked.

“I really don’t.”

“But you have seen one of those things?”

“I’m not sure what I saw.”

The man gave a snort and exchanged a look with his partner. “Sounds about right.” He pocketed the e-cig and stepped forward, nodding toward Kapil’s door. “Look, missie, you might as well open it and find out. We’ll back you up.”

Gods. Is this a joke? It seemed like the right locale for it, given the apartment’s usual inhabitants—except for the dead-serious expression on their faces and the continued quiet from Kapil’s side of the door. She was pretty sure he was in there. She’d heard that noise, after all.

But he wasn’t answering. And, of all the people on this station, she was the one he really did not want to piss off right now. Not with a potential deportation problem on his horizon.

As the sounds adjusted around her, and she began to extend her awareness beyond the hall, she realized she could hear the people downstairs. A lot of them. Much more than normal, as she’d thought. Upstairs as well. Creaks and shifts sounded in the ceiling above her.

The two men dwarfed her as they drew near, much taller than she’d guessed from the relative distance. The uneasy feeling from earlier returned to crawl over her skin, and she forced herself not to stumble back. “My name’s Jiayi.”

“Alderon.” The dark-skinned man gestured to his partner. “And he’s Seth.”

The Caucasian still hadn’t spoken, but she could tell he was following the conversation. His gaze shifted between her, Alderon, and the door.

“He’s your boyfriend in there?” Alderon turned his head back to Seth.

“Yes. Kapil.” She fidgeted. Gods, what the hell am I doing? There’s probably nothing wrong. With her luck, they’d bust in and startle Kapil from his bunk, but better that then… well, she didn’t know what to expect. They still hadn’t told her. “He messaged me not too long ago,” she continued. “He should be up.”

“He was awake, then?” Alderon asked. “Lucky. He’d stand a good chance.”

But Seth shook his head. “No. Some strayed.”

He had a deeper voice than she’d expected. Her jaw tensed as his words sunk in, the image of the Shadow coming back into her head—what would have happened if it had come for her?

“We might as well find out. Help him if we can.” Alderon made a gesture toward the door panel. “Go ahead.”

“Gods, this isn’t a joke, is it?” she asked, searching their faces for a sign of humor, but finding only stone-cold seriousness.

Alderon gave her a weak smile. “I wish it were, Jiayi. I wish it were.”

They’d been standing outside Kapil’s door for almost a minute now. If he’d been awake, he should have heard them by now—and have answered her knock. The fact that he wasn’t…

She shook the thought off and reached for the panel, tapping his unlock code as easily as she flew through her reports at work. The door hissed open, triggering the base lighting to fade on. A closed-in smell came to her, along with the odor of old food, likely from the set of take-out cartons he’d stocked next to the bed. A set of tube lights, plugged in externally and nailed to the wall, shone an anemic light down on the small kitchen space he’d made of the sink and counters.

“Kapil?” She asked, glancing around. Maybe he wasn’t home after all. That could be why he hadn’t responded to her messages. It also explained him not opening the door.

But, just as the thoughts went through her head, movement caught her attention by the wall next to her. She jerked her head and found him on the other side of the dresser, standing in the nook it made between itself and the bed.

Relief flooded through her. “Oh, hey, what are you…”

She trailed off as he moved. Something was off. They might not be serious about their relationship, but she’d known him long enough to recognize his mannerisms. The normal Kapil would have acknowledged her right away, either with a surprised What the fuck?, perhaps jumping up from the bed and ripping off his headphones, or a simple raised eyebrow from the position he stood in now, and a sarcastic ‘hello.’

This Kapil did nothing but stare at her. Like he was sleepwalking or something, with all waking personality stripped from him. Dressed in the sweatpants that served as his pajamas, he didn’t move from his position except to sway, one hand going across his bare abdomen to hook around his other arm. Almost effeminate, with the way his shoulders dropped, it was a pose that Kapil would never do.

Alderon stepped around her and gave Kapil an appraising glance. “Yep, he’s one of them.”

“What do you mean?” She sidled further into the room, keeping an even distance from Kapil. His gaze followed her, and she found herself shrinking against the back table, close to the head of his bed. “What happened?”

“We’re not too sure ourselves. Been waiting on word from the feeds, but everything’s quiet so far. If they had anything like we had, they’re probably still dealing with it.”

“That still doesn’t tell me what happened. Agh.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Sorry, but, I just—what’s wrong with him?”

The two men—three, technically, though it had become clear Kapil wasn’t about to contribute to the conversation—exchanged uneasy looks, and another pause spread through the room. Kapil kept to the wall, his passive gaze fixed on her. Judging by the mess of sheets on his bed, he had gone in for a nap. Maybe that explained the message she’d received. He could have sent it as he was drifting off, then tapped the screen in his sleep so that it registered as a read. Her breath quickened as he met his gaze, and the pound of her heartbeat rose close to her throat, then subsided like a wave.

Something was wrong with him. That much was obvious.

“We were attacked,” Alderon said finally, pivoting to open the angle of his body to her. “You said you saw the Shadow man? One popped up for each of us in our room. Had to fight them off. Seth got a cut, see? His Shadow put his head into the dresser, but I guess he’s got a harder head than it anticipated.”

With only a thin haze of stubble darkening his head, the gash on his skull was easy to see. Looking like an upside-down 7, the bottom part of it hooked deeper than the rest of it. It had been cleaned, but not sewn, and parts of it still appeared moist.

“A Shadow man? So they’re real? Then…” She frowned and turned back to Kapil. “What’s wrong with him?”

Alderon lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes on Kapil. “Guess he didn’t win. Sorry, missie.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No way. This can’t be real.” Her lip twisted and she lunged forward. “Kapil, what the fuck? This is some twisted shit. You think I’m going to marry you after this?”

“It is real, missie. You can see for yourself—” Alderon gestured toward him. “Look at his eyes.”

“No. Fuck this, and fuck you.” She pushed past them, toward the door. “And my name is Jiayi, not missie.”