The elevator plummeted, but the journey was more than a physical transition. Ethan still felt the echo of Vivian's banquet, the promise of a life without struggle. Dana had dragged him out of the dome just in time, using a quick bureaucratic excuse that left Vivian growling but temporarily detained.
They returned to Dana's modest apartment, which now seemed tiny, almost miserable, compared to the biodome garden. The light was harsh, the air dry, and the bare metal walls made no attempt to disguise that they were in the heart of a space station.
"Vivian showed you the gilded cage, Ethan," Dana said, her voice laced with urgency. They had only fifteen minutes left before Vivian's security protocol reactivated. "Now I'm going to show you why it's a cage."
Dana didn't lead him to a grandiose memory, nor an adventure. She led him to the memory of a simple afternoon, so simple it was easy to forget: a moment before the war reached their small town on Earth.
The scene materialized around them. The air smelled of fresh rain and wet soil. They were on a small, low-level balcony, far from the city bustle. It was the apartment Ethan and Dana had shared. There were no luxuries: just a worn metal table, two chairs, and a few pots of herbs.
Younger Ethan was laughing. He was sitting, cleaning an old ion pistol, a useless relic from his grandfather.
"You know what the best thing about this rifle is, Dana?" the old Ethan asked.
The Dana of the memory, with her hair tied back and her face bare of makeup, was turned away, cooking something that smelled like vegetable soup.
"That we never use it," she replied. "The day we have to use that thing will be the day we've lost something much more important."
The present-day Ethan watched his former self. He was tired, his clothes were patched, and the station had water leaks he fixed with cheap glue. But his smile was radiant, honest.
The memory shifted, moving closer to the kitchen. Dana was humming a tune, and the other Ethan came up from behind, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on her shoulder, inhaling the scent of spices.
"Vivian has the whole galaxy, she has stations, she has armies of androids," the present Ethan whispered to Dana, his voice barely a thread.
"Yes, and I had this," Dana replied, her own voice cracking as she watched the scene.
The Ethan of the memory gave Dana a soft kiss on the neck. She turned around in the embrace, smiling.
"I'm bored," the Dana of the memory told him.
"Me too. Nothing on the network tonight," he replied. "But the soup is almost ready. And I have half an hour of battery left on the hologram projector. Do you want to try to finish that horror story you wrote?"
And the old Ethan didn't mean a movie. He meant a paper manuscript she had written in ink. An unthinkable luxury in the upper levels of Epsilon, where everything was digital and disposable.
They watched as they sat together on the small sofa, under the oldest, most worn blanket. She read to him by the light of a hand-held flashlight, and he listened, sometimes interrupting her to constructively criticize the plot.
There was no perfection. There was dust, there was a damp smell, there was economic uncertainty. But there was laughter, there was warmth. There were two people choosing to be in that moment, creating their own small universe, impervious to the chaos outside.
"She offers you a future where you are a king, Ethan," Dana said, gripping his hand tightly, pulling him out of the memory immersion. They were back in the tiny apartment.
"But if that future doesn't include someone who knows you, who challenges you, who laughs with you at a bad line in a horror story, what good is all that power?"
Ethan felt a sharp pang, a real ache, in the center of his chest. It wasn't the pain of the traumatic memory Vivian had tried to heal. It was the pain of nostalgia, of the loss of something irreplaceable. Love.
"Fear is the absence of this connection, Ethan. Vivian's control is the absence of choice. She took away your fear, but she also took away the courage to face it for something you love."
Ethan looked at the metal walls, then into Dana's eyes, which shone with a feverish and genuine intensity. In her suite, Vivian had offered him a fabricated truth. Here, Dana offered him a difficult truth.
Dana's watch ticked down to five minutes remaining. Her communicator chimed. It was Vivian.
"Doctor Alaric, time has expired. The subject will return to the upper levels immediately. Don't force me to send a security team."
Dana ignored the communicator, which kept beeping. She walked up to Ethan, placed her hands on either side of his face, and forced him to look at her.
"I am your truth, Ethan. I always have been. Love is not a pill you take to stop feeling fear. It is the reason you get up to fight, even when you are terrified. Now, you have to choose: the pill of peace, or the truth of the fight?"