Glass memory

I wake before the others. The tunnel around us hums with a mechanical silence—too quiet, too heavy. My back aches from the cracked stone floor. I stretch, turn over, and freeze.

Ajay's bedroll is empty.

The torchlight from our last camp is still faintly glowing, casting long shadows against the curve of the wall. Everyone else is here. Even Aerith. But not Ajay.

He didn't take his bag.

My stomach knots.

I nudge Venu awake. He blinks, groggy. "Where's—"

"Ajay's gone."

That wakes him up fast.

Sira stirs next. Maika rises last, slow, watching all of us.

"I'll check the west branch," I say. "Sira, cover the opposite tunnel. Venu, take the ledge path."

Maika shrugs on her jacket. "I'll come with you."

I almost say no.

But I nod.

The tunnel walls twist into each other like vines trying to strangle light. Every step echoes with that awful feeling of maybe too late.

I spot Ajay twenty minutes in, crouched near a broken console that leads nowhere. Just an old control relay that sparks occasionally, like it's trying to remember something.

He hears us and doesn't move.

"You okay?" I ask.

He nods.

Maika crosses her arms. "You left without telling anyone."

"I needed space."

"Space from what?" I ask.

He stands. Doesn't face us.

"From everything. From deciding which voice to follow. From pretending I still know why we're doing this."

My throat dries. "We're finding the memory bottle. That's how we fix what broke."

He turns now, slowly. "I thought we left to bring our families back together. Now we're underground, chasing a stranger's vision."

"He's not—"

Ajay cuts in. "He's not us, Kaia. And you're not even listening anymore. You're reacting. Leading like the world's on fire and we're already ashes."

Maika shifts uncomfortably beside me. But she says nothing.

I want to scream. Or cry. Or explain every choice I've made since the night we ran. But none of that will work here.

"Maybe I am reacting," I say. "Because the longer we wait, the more broken the world gets. If Aerith's right, if there's even a chance we can wake people up—"

"That's not our job," Ajay says quietly. "Our job was us."

He walks past us and doesn't stop.

Back at camp, the air is worse than silence. No one speaks unless they have to.

Ajay lies down on the far side, close enough to count as "here," but that's it.

Maika breaks the tension later with a cold jab. "Nice of our fearless runner to check back in."

Ajay doesn't respond.

Sira finally speaks. "We're falling apart."

Venu scoffs. "We haven't even begun to."

I rub my temples.

"Enough," I say. "We keep moving tomorrow. East branch leads to another relay station. We'll get water. Maybe signal strength."

"And then what?" Ajay asks from the corner. "Find the bottle? Hand it to Aerith like good little helpers?"

I stare at him. "You think I'm doing this for him?"

"I think you're doing it for something that's not us anymore."

His words sit between us like a dead weight.

And maybe he's not wrong.

That night, I catch Aerith staring at me across the fire. His expression unreadable.

I don't speak to him.

I lie awake thinking about Ajay's words. About how long it's been since I asked what anyone else wanted.

And how much it scares me that I might be exactly what I ran from.