Chapter 12: Shadows of the Past

Ava stood inside the transport’s open loading hatch while the crew checked a landing pad below. Cold reached beneath her borrowed coat. Beyond the safety rail, snow filled the streets of a settlement she would never have known how to find.

Jenna had cleared her to move through the staff compartments. The hatch was as far as she could go. Ava put one hand around the rail and felt the difference between a boundary she could see over and a locked door.

Plants grew behind the settlement’s only lit windows. She could see trays raised on blocks to keep them off the cold floor, a reflector pieced together from dull metal. Someone moved between the leaves carrying a jug. Ava followed that figure until it disappeared behind a curtain. She wanted to know what they were growing. The wish came before she remembered she could not go down and ask.

Gabriel waited a few paces away. He had been quiet since they arrived. Whenever she looked toward him, he found something on the landing pad to inspect.

She turned to him, the wind tugging at her silver-threaded hair. “It’s… quiet out here,” she said softly.

“It is,” Gabriel replied, stepping closer. “You don’t get much peace like this anymore. Not with what’s out there.”

“What do they call this place?”

“This settlement? I’d have to check the landing log. The maps put all of this in the Frozen North.”

All of this. She had once written the position of a single tree carefully enough to find it again. Now she had a name that covered an unknown expanse of snow.

“And people live here by choice?”

“Some. Some stay wherever the transport can put them down.” He pointed to a patched roof beyond the growing room. “Hard to leave once you’ve made a place warm.”

Ava looked at the lit windows again. From the hatch the settlement had seemed empty. Someone had carried water through that cold, kept the lamp working, hung a curtain for the night. She had mistaken a life she did not recognize for an absence of life.

Ava nodded, her gaze drifting back to the horizon. But her mind wasn’t on the present—it was on fragments of something else, something buried deep in her memory.

Flashes of sterile white rooms. Needles piercing her skin. The hum of machines and the cold, unfeeling voices of scientists.

Her chest tightened, and she wrapped her arms around herself, trying to shake off the images.

“You okay?” Gabriel’s words cut through her thoughts, gentle but laced with concern.

Ava blinked, realizing she had started trembling. “I… I think I’m remembering things,” she said hesitantly.

Gabriel’s brow furrowed, and he stepped closer, his presence grounding. “What kind of things?”

Ava hesitated. “Bad things,” she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper.

Before the white rooms, there had been a greenhouse. She remembered a row of plants turned toward the sun, her own handwriting on their labels. She had known what each needed.

Then the hospital: a folder closing, her clothes in a bag beneath the bed. Someone holding her wrist away from the call button. She had tried to keep that detail out. Now she could feel the thumb pressing into the bone.

“They took me from a hospital,” she said.

Gabriel said nothing.

“The doctor said I was dying. Then people came at night. I thought—” She stopped. For a moment she had hoped they were taking her somewhere that could help. She hated remembering that hope.

“I thought they were saving me.” Her voice broke on the last word. “God, Gabriel, I went with them in my head. I was relieved.”

In the laboratory they had called her a subject. Her name had made no difference. Neither had saying no.

Ava clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms.

Gabriel noticed her distress and moved closer, his voice gentle. “You don’t have to talk about it if you’re not ready.”

“I don’t want to remember,” Ava said, her voice cracking.

It was only partly true. She wanted the person who had walked into the hospital. She wanted to hear herself complain about waiting, remember the last thing she had eaten, know whether she had left a light on at home. Instead her mind offered the pressure of a thumb against her wrist with terrible precision.

She could not bear the thought that the men who took her might remain clearer than anyone who had loved her. She held the rail until the cold hurt and tried again for the greenhouse labels. For a moment she could see the tilt of her own writing. She stayed with it as long as she could.

I want my mother.

The thought came without a face to answer it. Ava bent over the rail and sobbed once, hard enough to hurt, then again.

Gabriel placed a hand on her shoulder, careful not to startle her. “It’s okay to feel that way. Whatever happened to you, it wasn’t fair. You didn’t deserve it.”

Ava’s amber eyes met his through tears. “They… treated me like I wasn’t human. Like I didn’t matter.”

Gabriel gripped the railing until the leather of his glove creaked. “You do matter,” he said firmly. “More than they ever realized.”

Ava looked away, the wind tugging at her hair. “I don’t even know who I am anymore. I was a botanist before all of this. I loved plants… creating life. Now, I feel like everything I touch just… destroys.”

Gabriel moved beside her, leaving the view of the snow open. “You saved us, Ava. You’re not a destroyer. You’re a survivor. And that’s not something to be ashamed of.”

She didn’t respond, but the tension in her shoulders eased slightly.

On the way back inside, Ava saw a route display beside the hatch: one day to the checkpoint. Gabriel paused before it, then walked on without explaining the red quarantine symbol beside their destination.

“You’re quiet,” Ava said, breaking the silence as they walked through the ship’s narrow corridors.

Gabriel glanced at her, his expression conflicted. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

He stopped beside the route display. “About you. And what’s going to happen when we reach the checkpoint.”

Ava’s steps faltered, and she looked down at the floor. “They’re going to lock me up again, aren’t they?”

Gabriel didn’t answer right away. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I won’t let them hurt you.”

She looked at him, her amber eyes searching his. “Why do you care so much?”

“Because you deserve someone who does,” he said simply.

For a moment, Ava didn’t say anything. Then, slowly, she nodded.

That night, Ava lay awake listening to the transport change speed. One day, the display had said. She counted each passage of boots outside her door, waiting for the pair she recognized.