“Goodbye.”
Then she’s gone, shoes whispering over polished flooring, shoulders straight, pace quickening the farther she gets from me.
I stand there in the corridor like an idiot and watch her disappear around the corner into restricted family access.
Huh.
I should go shower. Eat something with actual salt in it. Lie down and be grateful I still possess all my limbs. Instead I find myself staring at the junction with a slow, creeping itch under my skin.
Family access.
Now, I know contestants with dependents get visitation windows. I’ve heard people mention it. Seen strollers once ortwice in the farther lounge areas. GXC loves its human-interest packaging almost as much as it loves avoidable danger. Families soften the product. Make suffering marketable. Put a child in a frame and suddenly the stakes feel righteous.
I’d never thought much about it because, one, I don’t generally spend my free time loitering near daycare facilities like a man one conversation away from a security report, and two, none of it was my business.
But Tilda walking into that corridor with that look on her face?—
That is very much my business.
Or, at minimum, it feels like the kind of thing I can make into my business with enough bad judgment.
I wait a respectable four minutes.
Then I head that way.
The family visitation area sits in a quieter wing of the compound, insulated from the main chaos by thick glass partitions, security checkpoints, and lighting that seems designed to calm adults who have recently risked death for sponsorship bonuses. The air changes as soon as I step inside: less metal, more warm fabric and sanitizer, with a faint sweet smell of fruit packs and powdered formula. Softer sounds too. Less shouting. More little voices. Toy chimes. A laugh that rings out high and clear and vanishes.
It hits me strangely, that sound.
The whole place feels like an artificial pocket of mercy somebody bolted onto the side of a circus.
A bored security tech glances at my badge when I drift past the first lounge threshold. “Contestant access only in public family commons unless invited farther in.”
I flash him my most harmless smile. “Public family commons. Got it. I’m not here to kidnap a toddler.”
He doesn’t smile. Tough room.
Inside, there are clusters of seating, low tables, padded play zones, a refreshment alcove, and several partitioned visitation nooks screened by frosted smartglass. Everything is cleaner than the rest of the compound. Brighter. Gentler. It makes me feel enormous and somehow more disreputable than usual.
A little girl with violet braids runs past chasing a floating foam ring. A harried man in a sponsor jacket trails after her saying, “No running, baby, please—absolutely not toward the fountain?—”
I wander farther in, trying to look like I belong anywhere in the vicinity of structured tenderness.
Why am I here?
Curiosity, obviously.
Suspicion, if I’m being uglier about it.
Something else too, though. Something I don’t want to name because naming it might make it real.
I slow near a row of viewing windows overlooking an enclosed outdoor courtyard. Artificial sunlight pours across climbing structures and soft turf. A few children are out there with caretakers. One toddles after bubbles with all the solemn determination of a future emperor. Two older boys are building something doomed out of foam blocks.
Then I hear her laugh.
Tilda’s laugh.
Not the dry little huff she gives me when I’m being a jackass. Not the startled sound from the course earlier. This is fuller. Lower. Warm all the way through.
