Location:Ashford Crossing — Cade Residence, New Housing Unit, Construction Site
Date/Time:TC1855.06.19
Bess woke at five.
The unit was quiet. Lily slept on the narrow bed against the wall, curled around her cloth doll, her breathing the slow, even rhythm of a child who hadn't learned to sleep lightly yet. The formation lights in the walls held their nighttime amber — the warm, low glow that the living architecture produced between dusk and dawn, adjusting to the human rhythm of the people inside.
From the other side of the partition, the sound of breathing. Even. Measured. The precise, regular cadence that Bess had lain awake listening to for months — the breathing of something that slept the way it did everything else, correctly, without the small imperfections that made real sleep sound like a person instead of a bellows.
This was the last morning she would hear it.
