“I’m guessing that won’t be the case for long,” Hayden said. “Fairwell just finished construction on a new fleet of hover ships.”
“Oh,” I murmured. “I see.”
They really were serious about these outreach efforts.The scope of it all felt suddenly larger, more deliberate.
He leaned back slightly, eyes catching mine. “I’ve got a rough idea of where you came from. You strike me as the hands-on type.”
“I am,” I replied, a bit more firmly than intended. “Though I haven’t done much formal construction. Mostly just repairs. Back home.”
Home.The word twisted in my chest like something sharp.
“That’s enough,” Hayden replied. “These structures aren’t complicated, and you’ll be under a construction lead anyway.”
He glanced down at his tablet, thumb flicking over the screen, but not really reading it. A crease formed between his brows. After a beat, he added, “Yeah. Shit situation. Losing your place.”
The words were rough, unsmoothed, like he wasn’t exactly offering comfort, or was trying to in his own way.
There was no softness in his tone, no careful phrasing—just something blunt, quiet, and unexpectedly personal.
Then he cleared his throat and tapped the screen again, as if the moment hadn’t happened.
“So are you a settler here too?” I asked, unable to hold the question back.
He gave a short nod, jaw tightening slightly. “About three months now.”
“Oh. Only three months. Wh-Where did you call home before?”
For a second, something flickered in his eyes—pain, maybe, or something close to it—but it passed too quickly to be sure. Whatever he’d left behind, it hadn’t settled in the past yet.
“I moved around,” he said, voice low. He dragged a hand across his jaw, rough with dark stubble, more out of habit than thought. “Grew up on the water. With others like me.”
There was more to it, but he didn’t offer it, and I didn’t press.
His eyes flicked to the bronze ring on his thumb, just for a second. Something passed through his expression—bitterness, maybe—but it vanished as quickly as it came. He turned back to his tablet, jaw set.
“Do you know how to use a pad—tablet, I mean?” he asked. “You’ll need it to access and reserve job slots.”
“No. Mike showed me how to use the phone, but not the tablet.”
“Figures,” he muttered. “Alright. I’ll show you. Or try to, anyway.” He gave the device a look like it had insulted him in another life.
He glanced toward the large screen mounted on the wall opposite the sofa, then crouched by the low table. A drawer slid open—one I hadn’t even noticed—and he pulled out a slim white box.
“Watch this,” he said, aiming it at the screen like a weapon. He pressed a button. A faint blink of light appeared at the base, then the whole display powered on.
The same list of job postings appeared, identical to the one on my tablet. I frowned.
He saw my expression and gave a dry shrug. “Yeah. It syncs. Whether you want it to or not.”
“That’s what the screen’s for? Job monitoring?” I’d half assumed it was some kind of television—I’d read about those in the old novels from our library—or maybe an entertainment console. But apparently not.
Hayden returned to his seat and dropped into it with a creak. “You have to claim a new job slot every day, as Fairwell’s employment board shuffles people around and tries to fit everyone in. So yeah, I guess the screen’s just a way totrack openings from your couch. Real thrilling stuff,” he added, voice dry as sunbaked stone.
“Wait… I’m going to be doing a different job every day?”
He shook his head. “Not necessarily. If you scroll through, you’ll see 95 percent of the listings are for the same thing: material assembly, all on Isle H. Once you’re assigned to a manager there, chances are they’ll just keep routing you back to the same location, even if the actual tasks shift a little. Consistency isn’t the system’s strong suit, but it’s not total chaos either.”
He leaned back, stretching one arm over the side of the chair. “Construction’s not complicated here. The buildings come prefabricated, most of the heavy lifting’s done by machines. They just need teams to monitor the process and keep things from falling apart.”
