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Chapter 5 — The Weight of Moving
> Leaving a place is easy when it has already decided to kill you.
Moving together is harder. Every step carries someone else's balance.
They did not leave all at once.
Lira insisted on a staggered exit—Dorn first, then Kevin with Astra, then Jax last. She framed it as efficiency, but Kevin recognized the instinct beneath it: trust built in layers, not leaps.
The vault opened a fraction, just enough to taste the corridor. Cold air rushed in, sharp with ozone and burned insulation. Dorn slipped through without a word, rifle raised, body low. His boots made no sound. Kevin waited, counting heartbeats again. Old habits returning.
"Clear," Dorn murmured over the short-range link.
Kevin moved.
The corridor beyond had changed. What had once been straight now sagged inward, walls bowed under uneven pressure. Gravity wavered, tugging at Astra's injured limb. Kevin adjusted his grip, shifting her weight against his chest. Pain flared instantly—deep, insistent—but he did not slow.
Jax followed close, eyes darting. "Maps didn't show this distortion."
"They're old," Lira said quietly. "Delta-9 isn't."
They advanced in silence broken only by the habitat's complaints. Each groan felt closer than the last. Kevin felt the imprint again—a faint echo where his energy had been forced beyond its limits earlier. Not active. Not usable. Just… there. Like a bruise you only notice when you lean the wrong way.
They reached the junction where Corridor F-12 split into maintenance access and research ring transit. Lira stopped.
"We planned left," she said. "But the pressure gradient's shifted. Right might hold longer."
Dorn frowned. "Right runs closer to the inner ring."
"Which is already collapsing," Jax said. "Meaning less traffic."
Kevin listened. He did not lead the discussion. He watched Astra's breathing, the stabilizer's rhythm, the micro-fractures crawling along the ceiling.
"Right," Kevin said.
Lira glanced at him. "You sure?"
"No," he replied. "But left kills us slower. That's worse."
No one argued.
They turned right.
The passage narrowed quickly, forcing single-file movement. Dorn took point again. Kevin followed, Astra's weight pulling at his spine, his reserves dipping with every correction. Jax stayed close enough that Kevin could hear his breathing accelerate.
Then the floor lurched.
Not a collapse. A shift.
The habitat rebalanced abruptly, gravity spiking hard enough to slam them downward. Dorn caught himself on a railing. Kevin went to one knee, Astra slipping from his grasp for a terrifying half-second before he locked his arm around her.
Jax cried out.
A support strut tore free from the ceiling, crashing where Jax had been standing moments before. Lira yanked him back just in time.
Silence followed. Thick. Shaking.
Kevin's vision blurred at the edges. The imprint flared painfully, reacting to stress like an exposed nerve.
"I can't keep this up," he said, breathless. Not as a complaint. As information.
Lira nodded once. "We'll rotate."
She stepped in, shouldering Astra's weight without hesitation. Kevin protested instinctively, then stopped. Trust, he reminded himself, was also a form of staying.
They moved again.
Minutes later, they reached a temporary stabilization node—an emergency brace designed to slow structural failure. It hummed weakly but held. They collapsed against the walls, breathing hard.
Jax laughed once, sharp and disbelieving. "We almost died."
Dorn snorted. "We're not done."
Kevin checked Astra. Stable. Alive. The stabilizer's output had evened, responding well to the earlier repairs.
"Next node?" Kevin asked.
Lira brought up her console. "If the research ring hasn't sealed itself, we can cut through. If it has…" She trailed off.
Kevin already knew the answer.
"Then we improvise," he said.
Something shifted in the group at that—not obedience, not loyalty. Alignment.
Far beneath them, Delta-9 adjusted again, shedding mass, rerouting systems with blind persistence.
And somewhere far beyond the habitat, a quiet process updated once more.
Anomaly cluster sustained.
Movement under load detected.
Priority unchanged.
For now.
Kevin closed his eyes for a single breath, feeling the weight of Astra, of the group, of the choice he kept making without ceremony.
Then he stood.
They moved on.