When the path finally turned to shale and brush—terrain even Coldstart couldn’t power through without risking a shattered axle—Katra eased the car to a stop beneath a sloped ridge. The landscape beyond was too narrow, too steep. They’d have to walk, but not for long. Just to scout ahead.

  She popped the hood before grabbing her pack.

  “You cool down,” she muttered, patting the fender like it was flesh. “I’ll be back.”

  She gave it a once-over, quick and practiced. No surprises. Not yet.

  Tock waited nearby, watching her without staring. He never asked what she was looking for under there, but part of her wondered if he already understood.

  Katra slung the tool pack over her shoulder. Even out here, she carried it like armor.

  The garage had been her anchor—four walls that didn’t ask questions. Here, there was only open sky. And she hated how much of it there was.

  Tock followed.

  He didn’t know where the path led. Didn’t know why the ground changed beneath their feet or why the air here felt sharper, like it was holding its breath. He just knew that Katra moved forward—and so he did too.

  He had no name for what he was feeling. Not yet. But there were patterns.

  She looked back once, toward the car. Coldstart. The machine she still understood. Her hands had spoken fluently with it—movements that were sure, small, complete.

  She didn’t look at him that way.

  Tock didn’t resent that. But he noticed.

  He remembered the garage.

  The dust in the corners. The copper scent of old oil and skin. The light that came in through the side window at a slant so precise it cut across her workbench like a blade. He remembered the moment before—before his hands had shape, before his thoughts had weight. When all he was... was waiting.

  And then her voice.

  “Tock.”

  A name. The first boundary.

  The second had been breath—sudden and strange and real, even though he didn’t need it. Even though the world had none to give.

  Since then, everything had felt... too sharp.

  Not painful—just loud in a way the world wasn’t.

  Like the hum of wires in the walls or the way she said his name when she wasn’t thinking.

  It made him curious.

  Everything did.

  The shape of her tools.

  The movement of her fingers.

  The subtle shift in her breath when she saw a drone pass overhead.

  He noticed things.

  Not just with his eyes.

  With whatever part of him she had awakened.

  And underneath all of it—something else. A weight without words.

  He didn’t know what it meant to be dangerous, not really. But he knew the world looked at him like it didn’t want him to be here. Not just the people. The air itself. The silence.

  The Ignitors. The women in white. The ones Katra avoided.

  Their stillness felt... deliberate. Heavy. Not peace. Not holiness.

  Something more like fear, painted over with devotion.

  He wanted to understand them.

  But more than that, he wanted to understand why they might fear him.

  Why his chest ticked in a world without time.

  Why Katra had given up her safety for him.

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  She had given him everything. A name. A shape. A reason to move.

  She could have turned away.

  She didn’t.

  And so he stayed close. Always.

  Not because he was told to.

  Because something in him leaned toward her like light toward warmth.

  He didn’t understand the shape of that feeling.

  Only that it pulled.

  Quiet and constant.

  Like the tick in his chest.

  Even without knowing the cost,

  he knew this:

  If she was moving forward, then he wanted to be where she was.

  Katra leaned against the church’s outer wall, arms crossed, pack at her feet.

  From here, she could see most of the cemetery—rows of stone, flowers that never wilted, symbols worn soft by hands that hadn’t touched them in half a century. The air was still. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath in places like this.

  She had only seen a few cemeteries in her life. This one was the smallest. The quietest.

  She wondered, not for the first time, how long memory could last when you had eternity to forget.

  She’d watched women unravel over the years—strong ones, careful ones. They held on to names and faces at first. Kept altars, whispered prayers, lit candles in places no one else could see. But memory didn't age here. Grief didn't pass. The people they mourned remained untouched—death echoes repeating their last breath over and over, frozen in the corners of abandoned cities.

  Eventually, the remembering just… wore out.

  They stopped talking about them. Stopped saying their names. Like peeling away paint that never fully dried.

  Katra exhaled slowly and looked away.

  She didn’t have anyone to remember.

  She had been born into this world. Raised in its stillness. Everyone she knew was still here—still exactly as she remembered them. Still young. Still unchanging. The people who raised her. The ones who taught her to keep her hands busy. All of them untouched by time.

  There were no grave markers for people who never left.

  Only silence.

  Her thoughts pressed too close to something she didn’t want to feel, so she shifted her focus.

  Her thoughts pressed in—too close, too sharp.

  She let them go.

  Tock was moving through the stones, slow and deliberate. He didn’t touch them this time. Just walked. Eyes tracing the carvings, the tokens, the places where someone’s love had been left behind.

  He paused by a marker shaped like a toy wagon. Tilted his head. Studied it like it might explain itself if he stared long enough.

  There was something in his face—stillness, but not emptiness. Like he was listening for something the rest of the world had forgotten.

  Katra watched him, arms folded, the weight of her tools pressing into her back.

  She didn’t call to him. Didn’t interrupt. Just stood there for a while,

  Tock lingered near the last row of stones, gaze steady, unreadable.

  Then he turned and followed her up the short steps.

  The church door gave a soft creak as Katra pushed it open. Inside, the air was cool and still. Dust drifted in the beams of fading light, untouched.

  She set her pack down near the back pew and sat with a long, quiet exhale. The kind you let out only when there’s no one left to hear it.

  Tock entered a few steps behind her, moving carefully through the narrow aisle. He studied the space without speaking—pews, rafters, a crooked pulpit at the front. Nothing moved. Nothing had changed in years.

  He sat across from her.

  “You never told me why we left,” he said, voice quiet but clear. Almost as if he knew why, but wanted her to tell him anyway.

  Katra didn’t answer right away. Her hands were clasped loosely between her knees, knuckles stained with old grease.

  “Didn’t know how,” she said. “Didn’t know where to start.”

  “You broke the order,” she said. “That’s all I know.”

  A beat passed between them—heavy, but not cold.

  “You’re not tethered. You’re not a machine. You’re not supposed to be anything at all... but you are.”

  She met his eyes.

  “And that scares people.”

  Tock didn’t look away.

  “Does it scare you?”

  Katra didn’t answer right away. Her fingers tensed against the edge of the bench.

  “No,” she said. “It... changes me. That’s worse, to them.”

  He leaned forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees.

  “But not to you?”

  “No,” she said. “Not to me.”

  For a while, the only sound was the soft shift of his boots on the wood as he stood, crossing the small space between them. He didn’t reach out. Didn’t try to close the distance further.

  But he stood close enough that she could feel his presence—not threatening, not demanding. Just there. Solid. Real.

  “I didn’t ask to be made,” he said.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “But I’m glad I was.”

  This time, she didn’t look away.

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “Me too.”

  Not as permission. Not as comfort.

  As truth.

  In a world where nothing ages and nothing fades, memory becomes both a blessing and a burden. This chapter explores that tension—how grief lingers too long, how stillness distorts what it means to remember, and how something new can feel dangerous simply because it changes things.

  Katra doesn’t fully understand what Tock is. Tock doesn’t fully understand what he feels. But together, they represent something the world has forgotten: forward motion. Not in time, but in connection.

  Sometimes it isn’t the loud moments that define us. It’s the quiet ones. The ones we aren’t sure we’re ready for—but walk into anyway.