Rem surfaced from darkness – his mouth dry. His body hummed with warmth, as though something foreign had been poured into him and left to burn slowly.

  Air filled his lungs in measured pushes, each breath delivered through the mask strapped across his face. A metallic tang clung to the back of his tongue. He blinked until the haze thinned. Sunlight filtered through tall windows cluttered with climbing vines. Leaves shifted in the regulated breeze, shadows crawling across pale walls in shapes that looked almost like words. He stared at them too long, as though they might say something only he could understand.

  Something tugged at his arm. Another pull lower, sharper. Tubes. Lines. A catheter’s insistent pressure made his stomach twist.

  “Remain calm.” Pause. “You are… stable.”

  The voice was flat, polished. A proxy leaned over him, its android frame sculpted in soft human contours, matte surface tuned to feel warm without quite being human. Its movements were exact, unhurried, ritualistic. Another proxy swept a scanner across his chest, glow brushing against his skin.

  “Rem?”

  Her voice cracked. Saskia. She was already at his side, clutching his hand like she was afraid he’d disappear again. Her cropped hair was uneven, hacked short in impatient cuts. Her cheeks were streaked with tears. “You’re alive.” She punched his arm, more a tap than a hit, then collapsed to her knees beside the bed.

  At the foot of the bed, his mother knelt. She sagged against the mattress, her elbows holding her up, her hand locked tight. He watched as her mouth moved in silent words, her long blonde hair falling on the bedding as she bowed silently in prayer.

  The room was carved with waiting. His mother’s knitting bag had spilled across a chair, yarn tangled and abandoned. Saskia’s books towered on the sill, half-open, half-forgotten. On the table, a cup of broth was steaming – a meal now abandoned. He looked around for any signs of his father but there were none.

  Rem tried to speak. The mask smothered the sound into noise.

  “You crashed,” Saskia said quickly, filling the silence. Her grip tightened. “You’ve been out for weeks.”

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  The word landed heavier than memory. Weeks. He chased it backward: speed, wind, a blur of world flipping over. Then nothing. The emptiness was worse than the fall.

  “His essence levels,” his mother’s voice cut through the moment. Her whisper was tight, controlled.

  The proxy’s head tilted. Data flickered across its gaze. “Elevated. Fluctuating. Declining toward stabilization.” The scanner swept him again. “Subject remains viable.”

  “That was close.” The second proxy’s display pulsed a calm smile. “Statistical loss probability exceeded 0.74 during collapse.”

  His mother made the sign of the cross, lips trembling. She muttered praises as she looked at him with relief.

  Saskia pressed her sleeve to her eyes.

  Essence levels. The phrase echoed. It sounded like a metric on a test he hadn’t studied for. Survival as a score he’d probably fail. That old thought gnawed at him: daydreamer, middling, lazy. Even now, his body’s stubborn sleep had done the hard work while he did nothing at all.

  He chased fragments of legal prompts—something about essence—but they slipped away like dreams, growing fainter the harder he reached.

  Rem clawed at the mask. The proxy tilted its head. “Request registered: discontinue oxygen support?” At the attending unit’s nod, the straps came free. Cool air filled his lungs, sharp and alive. His jaw ached from stillness. The warmth beneath his skin surged at the motion, then eased.

  “Water,” he rasped. The nurse proxy moved with unhurried compliance.

  Saskia’s mouth bent into a thin smile. “Tomas is going to be furious. He’s been grinding a healer build all month. Now you don’t even need it.”

  Rem sipped slowly. His throat burned. The water was clean, but his body screamed hunger. The catheter pressed; the warmth stirred beneath his skin like something restless, waiting.

  “You’re back,” his mother said, standing and stepping closer, her hand firm on Rem’s shoulder. “The world has changed while you slept son, but you are here, and that is enough.”

  Has it? The thought slipped in and stayed, heavy and unspoken.

  “Essence levels stabilizing,” the proxy intoned, turning from its monitor. “Recommendation: complete induction within one planetary cycle.”

  Induction. Build. Words with no weight for him, yet no one questioned them. Relief was thick in the room, filling every gap where doubt might have lived.

  “If privacy is desired,” said the nurse proxy, voice flat but calm, “lines will be removed and transport prepared.”

  Saskia looped her arms through her mother’s, guiding her toward the door with dutiful patience. At the threshold she glanced back, tossed him a wink—and, with a wicked little flourish, mimed yanking something from between her legs.

  The proxy’s placid expression didn’t so much as twitch.

  Rem’s stomach dropped. He followed her invisible cue, gaze sinking to the clear line running from his body. The earlier twinge he’d ignored came roaring into focus.

  Heat climbed his neck. He wanted to vanish into the sheets.

  The nurse droid peeled the bedding away, fingers already undoing his gown—precise, unfeeling, efficient.