The Weightless

“He’s doing well,” Kamilio said quietly, but his voice was wrong. Hollow. The same tone he used when filing paperwork, he knew would go nowhere.

The juggling balls rose and fell in perfect arcs. Rafael’s mouth moved in silence, the muted screen swallowing whatever joke he was telling. His eyes were the worst part – looking directly at the camera but not seeing anything. Not the children, not the studio, not whatever life he’d lived before they’d turned him into content.

“Children’s programming now,” Kamilio continued. “Comedy shows on weekends. He sends letters sometimes. Always cheerful. Always funny. Always…” He trailed off.

“Always performing,” Cristian finished.

Maria’s teacup rattled in her hands. She set it down too hard, liquid sloshing over the rim. “He used to be real.”

The past tense hung in the air. Rafael was still alive, still visible, still broadcasting three times a week to every district under the Dome. But the person who’d existed before – the one who’d told jokes to mask despair, who’d written letters mixing humor and bleakness, who’d said “If I stop making noise, I start thinking about tomorrow” – that Rafael was gone. The SYSTEM had taken him and given back this: painted smile, rehearsed movements, perfect emptiness.

Gabriel finished first, asked for seconds. Maria served him the rest of her portion. Cristian said nothing.

Kamilio caught his look. Changed the subject. “How many in your building now?” Kamilio asked, not looking at Cristian. The question sounded casual but wasn’t.

“How many what?”

“Children. Babies.”

Cristian thought about it. Their floor: none. The floor below: one, maybe two. The whole building? “Six. Maybe seven.”

“Used to be more.”

“People leave.”

“No,” Kamilio said, still not looking. “People don’t leave. They just stop… arriving.” His hand moved unconsciously to his stomach, then stopped. “I had a medical screening eight years ago. Routine, they said. Everyone in the administrative sector got one. Free. Mandatory.” His voice was flat, reciting facts.

Maria stood, began clearing plates that weren’t empty yet. Her hands shook.

“So many couples without children now,” Kamilio continued. “Strange, isn’t it? Ten years ago, this building was loud. Crying, playing. Now it’s just… quiet.”

The hum filled the silence. Always there. Always watching.

“You’ll stay for tea?”

“Gabriel has classes tomorrow.”

“It’s Saturday.”

Cristian had lost track. Days blurred. Train shifts, sleep, Gabriel’s routines, repeat. “Sorry. I thought – ”

“Stay,” Maria said. Not quite a question.

So, they stayed. Kamilio talked about work – processing delays, new permit requirements, quotas that made no sense. He didn’t explain what he processed, what the files stacked around them actually contained. His hands moved when he talked, the old animation surfacing briefly before exhaustion drowned it. He’d been broad-shouldered as a teenager, the one who’d lift them over fences, carry water buckets when the younger kids tired. Now the shoulders curved inward, bureaucracy bowing him slowly.

“You should come for dinner next week,” Maria said. “A real dinner. I’ll make – » She stopped. Recalculated. “Something good.”

Cristian counted the cost of something good. Whatever it was, they couldn’t afford it. And if they came to his place – Gabriel would need warning, preparation. He’d need to buy actual food. Enough for four. He couldn’t.

“I’ll try,” he said.

Maria nodded. Turned back to the dishes. She knew what I’ll try meant. If they came to his place instead – he’d need to buy real food. Enough for four. He had nine credits left this week.

Gabriel had found a drawer of trinkets – old buttons, broken watch parts, a compass without its glass. He arranged them in rows on the floor, humming. Kamilio watched him with an expression Cristian recognized but couldn’t name. Something between tenderness and grief.

“He’s good,” Kamilio said. “You take good care of him.”

“He takes care of himself mostly.”

“Still.” The shoulder pat again, heavier this time. “You’re doing it right. Being there. That’s what matters.”

Cristian looked at the baby clothes, thought of the credits he counted, the meals he skipped, the nights Gabriel asked questions he couldn’t answer. Being there wasn’t enough. Being there was barely anything. But Kamilio’s face held something that looked like envy, like watching through glass at a life he couldn’t access.

“We should go,” Cristian said.

Maria walked them to the door. Didn’t argue. Kamilio’s hand landed on Cristian’s shoulder one more time.

They left before the tea was finished.

* * *

The streets were darker now. Patrols had increased. More checkpoints. Earlier curfews. The border wasn’t just at the city’s edge anymore – it was metastasizing inward, checkpoint by checkpoint, restriction by restriction, until every street would require a permit, every door a password.

Two officers stood at the corner checking IDs. Bored. Efficient. Radio crackled in the distance. Cristian caught fragments: "…new quotas from central administration…” "…clan activity sector seven…” Cristian heard only static and steered Gabriel in the other direction. Longer route, but less scrutiny.

Propaganda screens lit their path. Factory workers. Children.

Gabriel stopped.

The poster – printed on actual paper, pasted to a transit shelter wall. Rafael mid-performance, microphone in hand, face caught in exaggerated surprise. The text read: Rafael Mendoza – Comedy For All Ages – Fridays 8Pm – Sector 7 Community Center – Free Admission (Ration Card Required).

“He’s funny looking,” Gabriel said.

“It’s makeup.”

“Why?”

“For the show.”

Gabriel stared longer. Cristian waited. Cold seeped through his coat – the patched one, third winter now, threads holding but barely.

“Do you know him?” Gabriel asked.

The question was simple. The answer wasn’t.

“We worked together,” Cristian said. “Long time ago.”

Gabriel nodded, satisfied, turned away from the poster. They walked. Cristian looked back once. Rafael’s face beamed at nothing. Permanent. Bright. Too bright for real smiling. The paint around his mouth was too thick. It cracked at the edges – small fractures in the smile.

A patrol vehicle passed. They pressed against the wall, waited for it to turn the corner. The sirens were distant but constant now, a nightly texture. The city’s soundtrack: hum and sirens and propaganda and the grinding of trains beneath everything.

Gabriel walked closer to Cristian. Didn’t take his hand – too old for that now – but stayed within arm’s reach.

They kept walking. Six more blocks. Gabriel’s breath was visible in the cold. The sirens never stopped.

Old Loyalty

The screens were everywhere now. They multiplied like mold.

Smiling children filled the display – too many teeth, too clean. They were walking home from Kamilio’s. Six blocks. Gabriel had already asked twice if they could stop. A woman in white held a baby like it was made of glass, like it mattered.

“Why are they so happy?” Gabriel asked.

Cristian didn’t answer. The hum underneath the broadcast made his jaw ache.

Gabriel stopped at the corner screen, the largest one. His reflection ghosted across the surface, superimposed over the propaganda. The real Gabriel – patched jacket, unwashed hair, face thinner than it should be – overlaying the false children with their round cheeks and bright eyes.

“It’s just noise, Gabe.”

“But they look – ”

“It’s just noise.”

He tugged his brother’s sleeve. Gabriel followed but kept glancing back, drawn to the colors the way he was drawn to anything bright in this gray place.

“Kamilio and Maria are sad.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Gabriel knew sadness when he saw it. Couldn’t understand why.

“They want something they can’t have,” Cristian said.

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Gabriel accepted this. Turned toward the apartment entrance. Stopped again. “Are we sad too?”

The propaganda screen across the street shifted to new content. Factory production statistics. Smiling workers. Cristian felt the weight of Kamilio’s shoulder pat still, the shape of Rafael’s fractured smile burned into his vision, the baby clothes folded on their shelf like origami birds that would never fly.

“Yes,” he said.

The building’s entrance smelled like rust and old cigarettes. Someone’s door was open on the second floor – voices drifted out, urgent and low. Cristian kept Gabriel moving, didn’t look. Knowing things was dangerous. The less you saw, the safer you were.

Their floor was quiet. Too quiet. Cristian’s hand found the key in his pocket before he realized something was wrong. The silence felt deliberate. Wrong.

Adrian leaned against their door.

For a moment Cristian thought he was hallucinating. Stress did that sometimes – produced figures that weren’t there. But Adrian shifted, the motion too real, too specific. He was thinner than Cristian remembered. Harder.

“Inside,” Adrian said. Not a greeting. A command.

Cristian’s hand was already turning the key. Old reflexes. When Adrian says move, you move. It had been true since they were fourteen and Adrian pulled him from under a collapsed irrigation tower, his voice sharp and certain: Don’t stop. If you stop, you’re done.

The apartment’s darkness felt safer than the hallway. Gabriel went immediately to his corner, to his collection of trinkets arranged on the windowsill. He’d always known when to disappear.

Adrian didn’t sit. He paced the small room in three steps, turned, paced back. His breathing wasn’t right – too controlled, like he was manually regulating something that should be automatic. And his hands: the right one stayed near his jacket pocket, but the left kept flexing, opening and closing around nothing. Cristian had seen it before, years ago, right after Adrian came back from deployment. The phantom weapon grip. Reaching for a gun that wasn’t there, muscle memory searching for steel and finding only air. It had stopped eventually – or Cristian had thought it stopped. Now it was back, worse than before, the hand opening and closing in rhythms that matched nothing except whatever combat scenario was playing behind his eyes.

Adrian’s operating mode hadn’t changed – just intensified. Concentrated. Cristian could feel it from across the room – that readiness, like static before lightning.

“You still working the same route?” Adrian asked.

“Yes.”

“Same shift times?”

“Yes.”

Adrian nodded. His boots were good – too good for this district. Military issue or close to it. Cristian didn’t ask where he got them.

“I need you to come somewhere tonight.”

The dread hit immediately, familiar as hunger. Social interaction felt like lifting weight he didn’t have strength for. The thought of leaving the apartment, of navigating noise and people and unpredictability—

“Can’t,” Cristian said.

“Yes, you can.”

“I have a shift – ”

“Not until tomorrow. I checked.”

Of course he checked. Adrian always knew more than he should, always planned ahead. It was how he survived when others didn’t. Cristian felt the old dynamic reasserting itself – Adrian pushing, Cristian yielding, the worn groove of their friendship still there under years of absence.

“Where?” Cristian asked, and knew he’d already agreed.

“A club. Downtown. Won’t take long.”

“What club?”

“You’ll see when we get there.” Adrian stopped pacing, looked at him directly for the first time. His eyes were wrong. Too alert. Too fast. Like he’s seeing threats that aren’t there or seeing ones Cristian can’t. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

Important to who, Cristian wanted to ask, but didn’t. Important to Adrian was reason enough, apparently. Had always been reason enough, even now, even after years of nothing, no contact, no letters like Rafael sent. Adrian just appeared, made demands, and Cristian followed because something in him still remembered being fifteen and helpless and protected.

“When?” he asked instead.

“Two hours. I’ll come back.”

Adrian was already at the door. He paused there, hand on the knob, scanning the hallway through the crack. Checking. Always checking. Whatever happened to him in the war – it didn’t end when the fighting stopped.

“Adrian.”

He turned back.

“What is this about?”

Adrian’s mouth moved. Not quite a smile.

“Old times.”

Then he was gone, boots quick on the stairs. Cristian stood in the doorway listening to him descend, the sound fading into the building’s permanent background noise – pipes groaning, someone’s television through thin walls, the hum.

Gabriel appeared beside him. “He’s different.”

“Everyone’s different.”

“Not like that.” Gabriel rocked slightly, a motion that meant he was processing, trying to fit new information into patterns he understood. “He feels like before the loud noises.”

Before the war, he meant. Gabriel didn’t say war. Called it loud noises, like it was just sound, just temporary volume. Cristian never corrected him.

“He’ll be fine,” Cristian said, and didn’t believe it.

Cristian watched the clock. Didn’t register the minutes passing, but suddenly it had been an hour. Then another. Cristian tried to rest but his mind wouldn’t settle. How did Adrian know he’d be home? How did he even know where Cristian lived now? Calculations ran automatically: if he was out late, he’d need extra sleep tomorrow. He needed to be at the office for permit renewal on time.

He should refuse. Should stay here where it was safe and predictable and small.

But Adrian asked.

Gabriel made tea without being asked, set the cup beside Cristian’s chair. The liquid was too hot, bitter from reused leaves, but Cristian drank it anyway. Counted the credits it cost. Added them to the running total that lived behind his eyes. Never enough. Never would be.

The propaganda screen on the corner was still visible through their window, its glow painting the fog-thick street in sickly blue. A man in worker’s coveralls, clean and proud, operating machinery. Text scrolled beneath: Unity For Security. For The Children’s Future.

Gabriel watched it, face pressed to the glass.

“They’re lying,” Cristian said.

“How do you know?”

“Because no one’s that happy here.”

Gabriel considered this. His breath fogged the window. “Maybe somewhere they are.”

“Not anywhere we can go.”

“How do you know?”

Cristian didn’t answer. Because the borders were closed. Permits cost more than he’d earn in five years. The world beyond the Dome was contaminated – the SYSTEM said so. Diseases. Clans. Collapsed infrastructure. And the SYSTEM controlled everything. Trains. Wages. Propaganda. Permits. The air itself.

He’d counted every possible path. They all ended here. In this gray place, in this small room, until Gabriel or he died and the other one followed soon after.

The knock came exactly two hours later. Cristian rose, pulled on his better jacket – still patched, still worn, but cleaner. Gabriel was already at the door, holding it open.

Adrian stood in the hallway, that same restless energy. He nodded to Gabriel. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Gabriel rocked on his heels. “Are you taking Cristian somewhere dangerous?”

“No.”

“He’s lying,” Gabriel said to Cristian. Not upset. Just factual.

Adrian’s face did something complicated. Almost a smile. Almost regret. “Yeah. Sorry, kid.”

“Be safe,” Gabriel said. To both of them but looking at Cristian. Gabriel’s eyes were doing that thing – focusing intently on Cristian’s face, reading micro-expressions the way he couldn’t read social cues.

“You’re scared,” he said. Not a question. An observation.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re scared of him.” Gabriel glanced at Adrian, then back. “But you’re going anyway. Because he’s old friend. Like Kamilio.”

“Something like that.”

“Old friends make you do things you don’t want to do.”

Cristian couldn’t argue with that. Gabriel had a way of cutting through complexity, reducing everything to its simplest truth. Old friends were obligations. Obligations were debts. Debts got paid even when you couldn’t afford them.

“I’ll be back before morning,” Cristian said.

Gabriel nodded, already turning back toward his trinkets, arranging them in patterns only he understood. He’d learned not to ask when Cristian would return. Learned that promises about time were unreliable, that adults disappeared and sometimes came back changed. He wouldn’t stop Cristian from leaving, but he’d remember. Store this absence with all the others, adding it to the arithmetic of abandonment that governed his world.

Then Cristian was in the hallway and the door was closing and Gabriel was a silhouette against the apartment’s dim light, small and vulnerable and alone.

“Be safe!” The call followed them down the stairs, echoing in the concrete shaft.

Adrian didn’t acknowledge it. Already moving, already three steps ahead, his boots hitting the stairs in a rhythm that felt military, practiced. Cristian matched the pace automatically, his own steps falling into sync.

The building’s entrance opened onto night streets. The fog was thicker now, streetlights glowed like drowned moons. Somewhere distant, a siren rose and fell. The propaganda screens cast their blue light into the murk, creating halos that revealed nothing.

Adrian moved fast, purposeful. He knew where he was going. Had walked this route before, probably multiple times, memorizing it the way he memorized everything – exits, angles, threat vectors. Cristian followed, already regretting this, already unable to turn back.

Old loyalty is stronger than reason. Stronger than self-preservation. It’s a bond forged when they were children, when protection mattered more than survival, when Adrian’s certainty was the only solid thing in a collapsing world.

Adrian glanced back once, checking that Cristian was still there. Their eyes met. Something passed between them. Recognition maybe. Or warning. Then Adrian turned forward again, and they were moving deeper into the city’s dark heart, toward whatever Adrian wouldn’t name, toward noise and people and danger that Cristian could feel approaching like weather, inevitable and vast.

Insurance

Adrian talked while walking. The fog swallowed his words before they reached far.

“Getting married,” he said. Casual. Like stating a train schedule. “Two weeks. You’re Best Man.”

Cristian’s stomach dropped. Not a question. Never was with Adrian.

“I – ”

“Don’t.” Adrian’s pace didn’t slow. “You’ll say you’re not good at that shit. You’ll say Kamilio’s better. You’ll say something about Gabriel needing you.” He glanced sideways, face half-shadow. “But you’re doing it. Lilia wants the five of us there. What’s left, anyway.”

Five. Rafael. Kamilio. Esteban. Them. Scattered across the city, across years. The wedding would gather them into one space, all that history compressed. The thought made Cristian’s chest tight.

“When did you – ”

“Two years dating. You’d know if we’d stayed in touch.” Adrian pulled a flask from his jacket, drank without breaking stride. The smell cut through the fog – something cheap, burning. “Lilia works archives. SYSTEM records. Keeps her head down. Good at that.”

Cristian’s boots scraped concrete. Counting steps. Anything to ground himself. Forty-three. Forty-four. Adrian was asking him to stand witness to hope, to futures, to vows about permanence. Him. Wrong person. He was barely keeping himself standing.

“Okay,” he said instead.

Adrian stopped. Turned. Eyes narrowed, searching Cristian’s face for the lie. Finding something worse – resignation.

“Okay,” Adrian repeated. Flat. Then something shifted. He gripped Cristian’s shoulder, too tight. “Don’t stop. If you stop, you’re done. You remember?”

Cristian nodded. Old phrase. Adrian used it in the camps when the heat made you want to collapse mid-row. Don’t stop. Simple arithmetic. Motion equals survival.

“I remember.”

Adrian released him. Drank again. They walked.

The streets narrowed. Fewer lights. Propaganda screens here flickered, half-broken, the smiling children’s faces distorted by static. The hum deepened – they were descending. Cristian recognized nothing. Not his route to the depot. Not Kamilio’s neighbourhood. Somewhere else entirely. Adrian navigated by instinct, turning at unmarked corners, past buildings that looked abandoned but weren’t – Cristian saw movement behind broken windows, the orange glow of barrel fires.

“Here,” Adrian said.

The door was metal, rust-streaked, no sign. Could be storage. Could be nothing. Adrian knocked – pattern, not random. Three fast, pause, two slow. Waited.

A slot opened at eye level. Someone looked through. Said nothing.

“Tributary,” Adrian said.

The slot closed. Locks tumbled. The door opened inward, and a man blocked the threshold – broad, scarred, holding the door like it was part of him. He looked Adrian up and down. Looked at Cristian longer.

“Five minutes,” the man said. “Clock starts when you sit. Anyone stays longer, we clear the room. Understand?”

Adrian nodded. Cristian followed him inside.

The air changed. Warmth first – bodies, burning candles, something cooking somewhere deep. Then smoke. Cigarettes, something sweeter underneath. The corridor was narrow, low-ceilinged. Bulbs strung overhead, mismatched, casting everything in amber. Voices ahead, music bleeding through walls.

They emerged into the main room.

It was larger than the entrance suggested. Tables scattered, most occupied. People leaned close, talking in hushed urgency. No one looked up when they entered. Everyone here knew not to. The bar ran along one wall, bottles backlit by red neon. A small stage occupied the far corner, barely raised, draped in fabric that might’ve been elegant once. On it, a woman sang.

She wore red. Only color in the room that didn’t look faded. The dress clung, moved with her like water. Her face stayed shadowed despite the spotlight – angle, or intent. She held the microphone like she was steadying herself against a wind only she felt. The song was slow, mournful. Trumpet somewhere, muted, following her voice’s curves. Her eyes were closed.

Adrian stopped moving. Stared.

Cristian watched him watch her. Adrian’s jaw worked, tension coiling through his shoulders. His hand drifted to his jacket – not the flask. Something else. Then dropped.

“Here,” Adrian muttered. They wove between tables. Found one near the wall, good view of the stage and both exits. Adrian sat facing the door. Old habit. Cristian took the other chair, back exposed, trusting Adrian’s sight lines more than his own.

A server appeared – thin woman, tired eyes, apron stained. “Drinking?”

“Whiskey,” Adrian said. “Two.”

She vanished. Cristian didn’t correct him. The song continued. The woman’s voice caught on a note, held it, released. Something in Cristian’s chest responded, unwanted. He looked away. Counted tables. Fourteen occupied. Maybe forty people total. Everyone tense. Conversations stopped and started. Hands gripped glasses too tight.

The server returned. Two glasses, amber liquid, no ice. Adrian paid in credits, exact amount. She took them and moved on.

Adrian drank half in one swallow. Didn’t react. His eyes tracked the woman in red, who’d opened hers now, scanning the crowd while singing. She didn’t meet his gaze. Deliberate avoidance, or hadn’t seen him yet.

“You lied,” Cristian said. Quiet.

Adrian’s attention snapped back. “What?”

“We’re not here for the wedding talk.”

Adrian’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. “Observant.” Like it was a compliment. Like noticing things ever helped anyone. He drank the rest. Set the glass down with care. “Needed you here. Insurance.”

“Against what?”

“In case I’m wrong about her.”

Cristian followed Adrian’s gaze back to the stage. The woman in red finished the song. Scant applause – people didn’t want to draw attention. She nodded, stepped back into shadow. The trumpet player took over, instrumental now, filling the silence she left.

“Who is she?” Cristian asked.

“Singer,” Adrian said. Useless answer. Then, after a pause: “Contact. Maybe. If she knows what I think she knows.”