The shelter was holding its breath.
Or maybe that was just Camille. Her back was pressed against a cold pipe, her thighs numb from crouching for too long, and the air slled like mildew, rust, and mystery trauma. The girl hadn’t moved from the far wall—still hunched, still clutching that Frankenstein’s knife like it was her favorite emotional support weapon.
Camille’s thoughts, however, were sprinting laps.
Okay. We are officially in Crazy Town. Population: Knife Goblin and two tired girls. Beautiful. Fantastic. Peak vacation energy.
The woman’s mismatched eyes tracked their every breath, her chest still rising and falling like she hadn’t realized she could stop running yet.
Alexis slowly raised a hand, palm forward. "We’re not with anyone. We crashed here. Our shuttle—transport—whatever you want to call it—it went down."
She simply stared and tilted her head. Then, in a voice like broken static, she said, "What organization assigned your patterning?"
Camille blinked. "Sorry, our what now?"
"Your patterning," the woman repeated, dead serious. "Sub-division? Behavioral overlay? Sync delay?"
Camille turned her head to Alexis, lips pressed tight together. "You’re hearing this too, right?"
Alexis gave a single nod.
Camille nodded back and whispered, "Just checking I didn’t die on impact and now this is my brain’s last acid trip."
The woman leaned forward. "One’s a healer." She looked at Alexis. "dical-grade. High-level trauma retention. Possibly Tactical Care."
Then she turned to Camille. Her head tilted further.
"You’re...cloth-based. Designer archetype. Fabric-type social enhancent, non-combatant."
Camille’s jaw dropped. "Excuse —what?"
"You operate in high-visibility spheres. Image construction. Scent markers suggest city-grade detergent exposure."
"I—" Camille looked at Alexis again. "Did she just figure out my job from my sll?"
Alexis’s voice was asured but edged with disbelief. "She knew you were a fashion designer. She guessed I’m dical. Without asking."
The woman squinted. "Not guessed."
Alexis frowned. "Then how—"
"You don’t need to worry about that."
She tapped her own forehead with the butt of her knife.
"So...." Camille echoed. "Is it safe to assu that the number on your wrist is who you are?"
There was no response. Instead, she just looked down at her wrist like it had said too much.
Camille mouthed okay, wow to no one in particular and leaned her head against the cold wall behind her.
The woman’s na—or rather, designation—ca out quietly a few minutes later, sowhere between a grunt and a confession.
"Three-eight-three-zero," she said, tapping the digits burnt into her wrist. "I am Subject 3830."
Alexis stiffened. "NovaCore."
Camille glanced at her. "Weren’t the subjects past 3811 those who got job titles?"
Alexis didn’t answer, but her shoulders were tighter now. Her brain was working double-speed behind her eyes.
Subject 3830 tilted her head again. "You don’t know . They always sent ones who knew. Who smiled like they rembered the sa things."
Camille gave a very non-military shrug. "Yeah, sorry. My last big mory was broadcasting a world wide ssage. We’re not from the ’they’ club."
3830 didn’t seem convinced. "Then how did you get past the island paraters?"
Alexis hesitated. "We crash-landed. We didn’t even know this place was a habited island until after the leopard."
Subject 3830 blinked slowly. "The cat still lives?"
"No," Camille said flatly. "The cat got real up close with so driftwood and regrets."
The woman nodded like that made perfect sense. "Predator removal. Delayed, but acceptable."
Camille whispered to Alexis, "She talks like soone’s still grading her."
They both sat down carefully—one eye on the woman, one on the room. The shelter was cramped, the kind of space that felt like it had never been ant for more than ergency crawl-throughs. Soone had done their best to make it ho. Badly.
There were old cans, salvaged wiring hung like laundry lines, and so torn-up patches with half-legible text. One of them, stuffed into a broken air vent, read: NOVA—SECTOR 6—DO NOT REMOVE WHILE ACTIVE.
Camille tugged it free and showed Alexis.
"NovaCore," Alexis said under her breath. "They shut it down years ago."
"Guess soone didn’t get the mo," Camille muttered.
3830 saw the patch and flinched. "They always sent the Sector Six ones. Never Sector Five. They had better silence ratios."
"You keep saying ’they,’" Camille said carefully. "Who exactly are we talking about?"
"The ones who built this," she said, gesturing to the room. "And you. You were ant to retrieve."
Yeah, I have no idea what that ans....Camille thought
"Not unless we’re accidentally really good at playing spy," she proceeded to say out loud.
She held up her hands dramatically. "I’m just a civilian who accidentally learned how to use sewing needles as lockpicks. Alexis is a literal dic with hero issues. We don’t even have snacks."
The woman stared.
Camille leaned forward. "Listen, I’m not judging you for being paranoid. Honestly, if I had to escape to an island after being used as a human experint for years, I’d also be keeping a murder knife under my pillow. But please, stop trying to logic bomb into confessing to sothing I don’t understand."
3830 stared at her for another long mont, then slowly blinked.
"...Fabric-type social enhancent. No threat."
"Thank you?" Camille said. "I think?"
A low chuff of air escaped the woman’s nose. If Camille hadn’t known better, she’d have called it a laugh.
Alexis, ever the diplomat, eased the tension further by holding out a scrap of dried fruit she’d found tucked in one of their side pouches. "Here."
The woman took it cautiously. Bit it. Chewed.
Then said, "Still no vitamin overlay. Efficiency declining."
Camille raised an eyebrow. "Well excuse for not bringing the FDA with ."
The next half hour passed in strange rhythms. Camille alternated between cracking jokes and trying not to imagine this woman stabbing her during a bathroom break. Alexis, ever the anchor, asked simple questions: how long she’d been here ("Since NovaCore was defunded"), what this shelter was ("Leftover machinery. Safe for now"), and whether others had co before them.
Sotis 3830 would answer. Other tis, she’d fall silent and seem to drift—like there was a reel playing in her head that no one else could see.
Camille tried her best to lighten the mood.
"So, no offense, but you’re definitely not local," she said, examining the woman’s nest-hammock. "What were you before all this? I know you were part of NovaCore, but what did they do?"
The woman looked up. "I was activated."
"Oh good," Camille whispered. "She’s using verb tenses like a microwave."
"She’s not crazy," Alexis said gently. "Just... rewired."
Subject 3830 watched them for a long beat.
"You had people on the shore," she said suddenly. "Set up camp. Defensive periter. You knew about this place."
Camille raised both brows. "Girl, we just killed a leopard with teamwork and pettiness. We didn’t even know this existed until your weird concrete shed started wheezing at us."
The woman squinted. "Pattern alignnt suggests otherwise."
Camille rolled her eyes. "Pattern alignnt? You really think we’re so black ops Girl Scouts? What, you think our badges include ’Can hold hands in trauma tunnels’ and ’Built a snare trap once’?"
Subject 3830 didn’t smile. But her knife hand finally lowered completely.
"I ran," she said. "When they got what they wanted, they started getting complacent and that gave us an opportunity. Unfortunately, so of the others... they didn’t run fast enough."
She didn’t elaborate. Didn’t need to.
Camille stared at her. "You’ve been alone this whole ti?"
"Only during the quiet loops."
"What are—" Alexis began.
But the woman didn’t answer. Her eyes drifted to the ceiling. Listening.
Camille let the silence sit for a while. Then said, "We’re gonna need a massive therapy bill after this."
Subject 3830’s lips twitched—just barely.
Camille stood, stretching, and grabbed another strip of dried root. "So what’s next? You let us sleep on the floor and we braid each other’s hair until morning?"
Then she froze mid-chew.
Eyes widened.
She turned to Alexis in horror.
"Oh my God. Reynard thinks we’re dead."
Alexis blinked. "Wait, what?"
"We said we’d be back in two hours! We found the murder forest. We fell into the apocalypse shelter. He’s going to think we’ve been eaten or captured or—"
She clutched her head. "He’s going to Full Profession Sync and die from anxiety."
Alexis stood, her face going pale. "We have to get back."
Subject 3830 tilted her head, confused. "Your handlers?"
"No!" Camille said, flailing toward the sealed hatch. "Our partner! Our very overpowered, very emotionally repressed, extrely paranoid partner!"
Subject 3830 looked at them both for a long mont, then said:
"Oh."
Then she stood.
And walked slowly to the door.
"Follow ," she said. "You’ll get lost without ."
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