The transmission broke apart into sharp bursts of interference.
“—you still there?” she asked, voice thinning and returning in uneven pieces.
“Yeah, I’m here.” A soft crackle followed, like wind scraping across a rough surface.
“Good. The signal keeps dipping every couple seconds.” I sat back in my chair, letting the tension in my shoulders ease for the first time in days. Her voice wasn’t a memory this time. It was real.
“You sound better,” I said.
“I slept for like fourteen hours.”
“That’s—”
“Normal these days.” There was a faint rustle on her end—fabric shifting, maybe her repositioning against a wall. I could almost picture it: dim bunker light, dust in the air, her sitting cross-legged. “What about you?” she asked. “Have you slept?”
I glanced down at my desk. “Defineslept,” I laughed. I made a mental note to stop by the medical bay and get some sleeping pills so everyone would stop being up my ass about it.
“Jude.”
“I closed my eyes.”
A short burst of laughter cracked through the static. “That is not the same thing.”
“I disagree.”
She snorted.
“So what do you do down there all day?” I asked, rubbing a hand over my face to stay present, to stay in this. Although I wasn’t sure I even wanted her answer. She was alone. By. Herself. For. Years.
“Oh, you know. The glamorous post-apocalyptic routine.” A pause, then the faint sound of something clinking—metal maybe, or a tool set down. “But hey! I finally have a microwave.”
“No fucking way.”
She was cackling, holding down the button so I couldn’t even inch in another word. Her laughter filled the lab. “If only my mother could see me now.”
“You lived through nuclear fallout, I think you get a pass on the microwave thing.” Solace’s mom was one of the healthiest women I’d ever met, besides my grandmother. “You know Milo had a microwave and stash of mac-n-cheese cups in his room right?”
Silence.Beep. Beep.“You’re lying!”
“For late gaming nights. I was actually pretty jealous of the setup.”
“...I cannot believe him. What else did he have stashed in there?”
“A mini fridge and some soda. I recall having Twinkies a few times.”
“How did he even—”
“Rupert,” we said at the same time, our voices overlapping through the static.
For a second all you could hear was the sound of laughter and crackling interference.
“He was such a menace,” Solace finally said.
“Yeah, but he was a good friend to Milo.” A warmth settled strangely in my chest at the memory. God. Milo. I leaned back in my chair, staring up at the ceiling. It felt dangerous how easily I’d fallen back into step. Like the seven missing years were evaporating if we just kept talking fast enough.
“You know,” Solace said after a moment, quieter now, “I mostly think about stupid stuff.”
“What do you mean?”
