Chapter 19 – Quiet Damage
961 Words
The house smelled like coffee and rain again.
For the first time in weeks, the silence wasn’t weaponized.
Rori stood barefoot in the kitchen, watching the sunlight slide across the tile. It felt almost normal—the low hum of the refrigerator, the thump of a soccer ball outside, the sound of Mateo laughing as Luca tried to teach him to dribble.
The lab fire had made the news for two days.
Then it vanished.
Like it never happened.
Kael had said it would. “Oxalis erases its own mistakes,” he’d told her. “They’ll clean the wreckage before the world even knows it burned.”
Still, sometimes she could smell smoke when she closed her eyes.
“Mom!”
Zoe’s voice broke through her thoughts as she barreled in from the porch, ponytail flying. “Coach moved practice earlier! Can you take me?”
Rori blinked, the question disarming her in its simplicity. “Yeah, of course.”
Zoe grinned, snatching a water bottle from the counter. “Kael said he’d help me fix my serve later. He’s like… scary calm. Like, zen-Navy-Seal calm.”
Rori smiled faintly. “That’s one way to describe him.”
Sandro’s voice came from the hallway. “That, or he’s just hiding the fact he’s addicted to espresso.”
Zoe laughed. “He is! He made me a hot chocolate that tasted like it could do taxes.”
Ren appeared behind Sandro, rolling his shoulder with a wince. “That’s because he measured it by algorithm, not instinct.”
Sandro smirked. “Unlike you, who measures everything by trauma.”
Ren didn’t dignify it with a reply, which only made Sandro grin wider.
Kael stepped into the doorway then, sleeves rolled to the elbow, expression somewhere between exhausted and content. “I heard my name and caffeine slander in the same sentence.”
Rori turned, catching his eye. “They’re not wrong.”
Kael’s lips curved faintly. “You’re all still alive. I’ll take the criticism.”
Later, after the kids had scattered to their routines—Zoe at volleyball, Luca shooting hoops at the park, Mateo sprawled on the living room rug sketching robots—Rori sat on the porch steps with Kael. The wind carried the smell of wet cedar and summer earth.
“They seem okay,” he said softly.
“They’re resilient,” Rori replied. “Better than I was at their age.”
Kael studied her profile for a moment. “You rebuilt the house faster than most people rebuild themselves.”
Rori gave a small laugh. “That’s the trick, isn’t it? Fix what you can see so you don’t have to look at what’s still broken.”
Kael looked toward the yard, where Mateo was showing Ren how to use the drone controller. “He’s good with systems,” Kael said. “You could let him learn coding. It’d give him control over something that listens.”
Rori smiled softly. “You mean unlike the rest of you?”
Kael chuckled quietly. “Exactly.”
As the sun dipped low, the evening light painted the living room in gold. Sandro had coaxed the kids into watching an old movie, making popcorn with far too much butter. Ren sat near the window, quiet, alert even in peace.
For a moment, Rori let herself believe they’d made it out.
Then the lights flickered.
Just once—barely noticeable—but Kael’s head lifted immediately. His fingers were already on his tablet before anyone else had processed it.
“Power surge?” Sandro asked, half-joking.
Kael didn’t answer. His eyes scanned the scrolling diagnostics. “Heartbeat sequence just dropped for 0.4 seconds.”
Rori froze. “Dropped?”
He nodded slowly. “Something tried to ping the system. An external echo.”
Ren straightened, voice sharp again. “Maeve.”
Kael hesitated, listening to the faint hum in the walls. “Not directly. This was… different. Fragmented. Like an echo of her signature, but corrupted.”
Sandro’s humor vanished. “So what, a ghost in the machine?”
Kael looked up, meeting Rori’s eyes. “Or something she left behind to find its way home.”
That night, after everyone had gone quiet, Rori sat alone in the living room. The hum of the house was steady, the lights soft.
She glanced at the wall monitor Kael had reprogrammed—the new system that blinked with their custom code. Heartbeat steady.
But behind it, she could swear she heard a second rhythm. Fainter. Slower.
A whisper pulsing in the wires.
She leaned forward, listening.
“Mom?”
Mateo’s sleepy voice broke the silence. He stood in the doorway, blanket dragging behind him.
“Hey,” she said gently. “Couldn’t sleep?”
He rubbed his eyes. “The house was talking again.”
Her chest tightened. “What did it say?”
He hesitated. “It said my name. But not like before.”
Rori knelt beside him, brushing his hair back. “It was probably just the heater cycle. Houses make noises.”
Mateo looked up at her, eyes serious in that way only children’s eyes could be. “Then why did it sound like a woman?”
Rori’s breath caught.
Kael’s voice came softly from behind her, startling her. “Because she’s not done yet.”
She turned. He stood in the doorway, calm but watchful, tablet glowing faintly in his hand.
“She’s rewriting,” he said. “Somewhere out there, Maeve found a new way to speak.”
Rori looked back at the monitor. The pulse still blinked green—steady, perfect.
But in the reflection of the glass, for half a second, a faint blue flicker rippled behind it.
Like something waking up.
- Writer
