“Focus on your breath, Cruz.” Nita kept her eyes focused on her patient, his knuckles white as he gripped the fabric of his shirt. Fans whirred while lines of data flooded my screen. Behind the desk, the helmet perched atop its pedestal began to hum, lights flashing from behind the visor. Commander Cruz Flores’s breath picked up, each gasp growing more rapid over the rising hiss of machinery.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, adjusting the snaked wires attached to the port before firing off commands to isolate the sensory feeds. “It’s a loud one.”

Nita leaned forward, letting out a low hush as the mechanical screams quieted, and Flores slowly released his grasp.

“November 4th,” she continued as the commander’s calloused hands settled again onto his chest. “Where are you?”

“Tunnels,” Flores responded. “Along the perimeter.”

“Are you alone?”

He shook his head. “Jinnie was with me.” Then he cleared his throat. “Officer Reeves.”

Nita nodded, her long fingers tapping the screen of a small tablet in her lap. “The AIMU Officer.”

Flores’s hands had started shaking again, and he interwove his fingers to keep them still, then dropped his head into a nod.

“The area was cleared, but we still had blind spots in the system. She came to get the sensors back online.”

As the data flowed, I fought to isolate the visual renderings, but the sensory inputs kept clawing at the feed.

“We heard drilling,” he continued. Vibratory indicators fragmented the data flooding through the layers as the visor of the helmet flashed brighter ahead of me. The memory heard it, felt it, and the visual field wavered. “I took the lead and moved out of the tunnel to clear out the Harvester.”

“That’s perfect, Cruz. Can you tell me what you saw? Try to focus on the details.”

“Right. The harvester was maybe eight feet tall with rollers. Red and black. By the time I reached the surface, it was already drilling, so I put the seismic scrambler a couple of yards away. I was waiting to move in so I could dismantle the Harvester once it froze. But this time—”

His breath caught. Flores began to gasp, drawing in quick, successive breaths. His hands were off his chest now—fingers digging into the fabric of the recliner.

“Deep breath, Cruz. What did you see?” Nita’s voice was calm, but I could hear the urgency at its edges.

The commander’s voice stuttered, mouth opening in staggered gasps, but he didn’t speak. Nita swiveled around to face me, lifting her hands in question.

“Record shows pain. Blunt force, right flank. Loss of balance, sideways acceleration. He was knocked to the ground,” I said, scanning the feed.

“What knocked you down, Cruz?”

The data rendered on the screen, code spilling out the words the commander couldn’t find. Peripheral vision spiked, blurred shadows, and a darkness that stretched in eight separate directions. Finally, I caught something buried in the metadata. A flash. Maybe a reflection.

“Some details in the feed are consistent with metal. Hard to tell,” I murmured. The output was struggling to categorize whatever it was that Flores had seen. Nita sat up straighter, her voice finding its soothing confidence again.

“Stay with me, Cruz. Can you tell me, was it made of metal?”

“I DON’T KNOW!” Flores bolted upright, forehead glistening with sweat, nearly knocking Nita off her chair. His hands were balled into fists as he shot a glare at me, his dark eyes cold and piercing as he stabbed a thick finger toward the CARRY helmet on its perch. “Isn’t that what that THING is for?”

“Cruz, please.” Nita stood up to put her body between Commander Flores and me, hands raised. “The CARRY unit only recorded your experience. No more, no less.” Then she gestured toward the seat. “Can we try again?”

“This is ridiculous. I didn’t see shit,” Flores growled, leaning over Nita as she stumbled back against her desk. My chest surged with adrenaline, and I jumped out of my seat, but Nita shook her head, her softness breaking my fury as she locked eyes with me. The commander’s shoulders fell. His hands unclenched, chin dropping to his chest. “Just say it. I can’t help you. I can’t help anyone. That’s why Jinnie’s gone.”

“Cruz—”

Flores spun around and stormed out the door, leaving Nita frozen in place in the center of the therapy room, and me still halfway out of my chair. After a moment, she let out a deep sigh, shaking her head, and turned to face me.

“Well?”

I dropped back into my seat, then tapped the data on the terminal.

“He saw it,” I said. “More than once, it looks like. Only glances, but whatever it is, it’s in the CARRY file. He saw it.”

“Are you sure you can’t figure out what it was?”

I shook my head, swiping the screen to scroll through the data chunks. “I don’t know. It’s trying, but the system just doesn’t have enough context to describe it. I can’t tell if it was an animal or a droid or what. Everything’s contradictory. And that’s not even mentioning how many details are overpowered by the sensory feeds. If he could answer some questions, it would help me compile this into something more readable.”

Nita lowered herself into the seat beside me, resting her head in her hands.

“We tried, Koa. He can’t.”

“Not yet. But next time, we could—”

“There is no next time. That was our last shot.” She didn’t look at me as she said it, as if she hadn’t been planning to tell me. I tried to read the expression on her face as she drew in a breath and stood up, turning away from me. “General Williams told me that if nothing changed today, they would be moving forward with another option.”

“What other option?”

Nita ran one hand along the smooth wood of her desk before stopping to grip the edge, bracing herself before she said it. “Retributive volunteers.”

The words chiseled their way into my stomach, nausea settling in. “You can’t be serious.”

“Koa…”

“You’re telling me they would bring someone out of custody, and force them into a soldier’s traumatic experience to what—report what they see?”

“They’re not forcing them. They’re volunteers.”

I scoffed, heat rising. “Sure, volunteers. And they get what in return? Reduced years on their sentence? Do they even know what they’re volunteering to do?”

Nita pushed a strand of hair behind one ear, stepping back to put more distance between us. “They were vetted. Underwent preliminary mental screening.”

“What kind of screening? Who would even be qualified to screen for that?”

“Me.” Her words sounded smooth, but felt sharp. She finally turned toward me, searching my face for a reaction, the warmth of her brown eyes a bed of deception, a blanket full of thorns. She moved toward me, as if she could use her proximity to convince me to understand. I tried to hide the disgust that was painted over my expression, but I couldn’t mask it.

“Koa,” she murmured, voice easy. “We’re at war.”

“An infrastructure war.”

“Not anymore.” She shook her head. “People are dying. Last month, they sent out four teams on deployment. Only one came back. Now, we finally have someone who actually saw this thing that keeps taking out our people—whatever it is.”

Nita reached out to touch my arm, but I recoiled. Everything in me had longed for her, but now it felt contaminated. She straightened her shoulders, blinking away the pain that almost exposed itself, and my anger cracked. Hurting her was the last thing I ever wanted to do. This was still Nita. My Nita.

“Look,” I said, measuring my words. “I know what’s at stake. But you don’t understand the CARRY system like I do. It wasn’t meant for just anyone to step inside some stranger’s memories.” I turned away from her to shut down the terminal, disconnecting the wires from the VR CARRY headset, but I could feel her attention on my words, so I didn’t take it for granted. “Nita, it’s never been tested for this type of use. It doesn’t matter if they volunteered. It could completely destabilize their mental health. We don’t even know if they’d come out and be able to tell us anything. Does that sound worth the risk?”

Her hands wrung together. “Okay, no, of course not.” She stepped closer, keeping a gentle distance in case I might pull away again. “I’m sorry, Koa. I should have told you.”

The terminal settled into an ambient hum as the cold air of the room pressed down on me. Her warmth called out, and as angry as I was, I wanted more than anything to move closer to her.

“Please,” I said, letting myself again get pulled into her stare. “You have to talk to the general. He listens to you. Tell him it’s a bad idea. Tell him it won’t work.”

She nodded. “Okay, I’ll talk to him.”

My heart thundered as she looked up at me, then I stepped backward to force myself out of her gravity.

“We can try again tomorrow,” I said, swinging my bag over my shoulder and stepping out of the treatment room. “No retributive volunteers. I can do this.”

*******

Dim light spilled across the hallway of my apartment, and I dropped my bag by the wall as the door sealed shut behind me. I grumbled at myself for leaving the work light on, yet again, and shuffled to the kitchen to fish out the last sweet-potato pouch from my ration drawer. As I downed the last bit of the rich vegetable mush, the last lines of sun disappeared behind the faded blue walls of my apartment. Too much blue, according to Nita. But when I had told her the color made me feel connected to home, she stopped criticizing it.

My shoulders ached as I shuffled toward the yellow office light—a new discomfort after weeks of translating CARRY files into usable military intel, so I tried to roll out the stiffness and stood for an extra moment at the desk of my home office, not quite ready to bend forward for my next task.

The room was too small for the equipment set up inside it. Several terminals lined the walls, cords twisted between them, some running across the floor and out the office door, tracing the hardwood lines to the next available outlet. I slipped into the rolling seat in front of my desk and pulled my work panel closer.

The rectangular grid sagged when I lifted it, the thin metal as flexible as fabric. Countless fine cables stood upright, covering the panel like strands of short hair, and I set it in front of me, slowly running my hand across its surface, ensuring each piece was firmly connected to the frame. I dragged my finger along the edge to switch it on, and each fiber illuminated with a bright, blue glow. The panel hummed, almost alive, as I leaned my face closer, its warmth rising from the surface. By the time I moved away from the pulsing blue plate of fur to link up the terminals, my entire desk had absorbed the heat, a fire hardly contained by the oak.

My fingers maneuvered the delicate threads, adjusting the sturdy metal between bouts of eye rubbing to will myself awake. Hours passed as I swiveled back and forth between intangible coding and the tangible creation, cold metals and warm lights, soft fibers and hard panels. This wasn’t work. Not like the coding the HMU had contracted me to do. This was my duty.

And it was all about balance.

*******

Heat pressed across my eyelids as light broke through my window, forcing me awake. My head was heavy as I lifted it from the surface of my workstation, room spinning out of the daze, the skin of my face raw from where my smart watch had dug into my cheek. I felt my wrist vibrate as the alarm sounded, and I blinked, trying to will the numbers into focus.

09:17.

Late.

I scrambled out from the desk, stumbling over the wires that crisscrossed in intersecting roads through the hallway, and stuffed myself into a clean pair of pants before snatching my bag from the floor and waving the front door open. Nita had started without me, I was sure of it. Maybe pulled in an AIMU operator to help sift through the data. I tapped through my watch to check the eta of the next SAEV bus, swiping past the one message she had sent.

You coming in?

I jogged to the bus station at the curb, pulling a protein bar from my bag and biting off the corner to quiet my growling stomach before slipping into the autonomous vehicle. My watch buzzed again, and I flicked my wrist to shut off the alert. No point in responding. I’d be on site soon. HMU kept their contractors close.

*

The carpeted floors of the HMU hallway swallowed the echoes of my footsteps as I rushed toward the vet recovery wing. I lifted my hand to the biometric panel beside the treatment room where Nita and I had been working together, and the thick, metal door slid open.

Nita wasn’t alone. She sat on the recliner in the center of the cold, white room, hands folded patiently across her lap. Two men in dark gray HMU uniforms stood on either side of her, and a woman in a hunter green AIMU jumpsuit sat at my terminal. The system buzzed, alive with lighted code, and they all turned their heads toward me when I walked in. General Williams was the only one I recognized, his buzzed white hair catching the reflection of light. The man who stood across from him was younger, with dark brown hair combed flat. He watched me as my eyes dropped to the bulky piece of equipment he held in his hands.

The CARRY helmet.

“Koa,” Nita’s cheeks flushed, and she sat up slightly when she saw me, her smooth black hair tied back. “I didn’t think you were coming in.”

The door slid shut behind me as I stepped further into the room, my eyes darting between her and the helmet in the younger man’s hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Glad you’re here, Koa. You can monitor the feeds for us. Officer Durrell, looks like we won’t need your help after all.” General Williams nodded to the woman with the blonde ponytail at my desk, who gathered herself to stand.

Nita settled back as the young man reclined her seat, but her eyes continued to watch me. My heart was in my throat, thick and suffocating. “Nita. You aren’t thinking about—”

“You were right, Koa,” Nita said, pulling her gaze away from me. “We can’t put a retributive volunteer into the memory. It’s a stranger. Too unpredictable a variable.”

I tried to swallow the surge that was rising in me, but it wouldn’t go down.

“This isn’t a solution, Nita.”

“I’ve actually been thinking about this for a while. Commander Flores can’t tolerate going back into his own memory, but I know what’s in there. I understand the trauma. I can do this.”

She motioned with one hand to the soldier beside me. He lifted the helmet, and I threw my arm out to block him.

“Nita. You don’t understand. You won’t just see what he saw.” Scrolls of data flashed through my mind. The readings of searing pain across Flores’s side when he was knocked to the ground. The fear. The sadness. “You’ll feel… everything.”

“Koa, if you aren’t going to work the feeds, I’m going to have to ask you to step aside, or you’ll be impeding our operation.” General Williams lifted his chest, his hands clasped behind his back as he stepped closer. His tall form threw a crooked shadow across Nita’s small frame, and he nodded at the man who held the helmet beside me. The young soldier stepped forward again, but I kept my arm extended.

“No,” I said.

Not that memory.

Not on her.

“Get on the feeds, Koa.” General Williams ordered, moving around the recliner until I could feel his breath. But I didn’t move.

“I won’t,” I muttered.

“That’s an order, Koa. We need to know what she’s seeing. In case we need to ask her questions while she’s in there.” His voice lowered into a growl, but I just shook my head.

“She won’t be able to answer. It would be like a dream where you try to scream, but nothing comes out.” Finally, I lifted my eyes to his. They were icy grey, colder than the room, squinting at me as he tried to understand. “Even if she does happen to talk, it won’t be in response to us.”

“I know how it works,” Nita said, turning to the general. “I’ll report everything when I come out. I can do this.” Her voice was steady, but shaped with urgency, pleading in a way only someone who knew her well could hear. Then her warm eyes landed on me. “This is my choice, Koa. It’s just a memory.”

She nodded at the soldier, and I dropped my arm helplessly. Nita forced a smile, but I couldn’t smile back, and the young soldier lowered the helmet over her head.

I wanted to run. Tear myself away from the scene, but the warmth of her kept me in. I watched her mouth, barely visible below the heavy metal, her lips parting as she drew in a deep breath, steady at first. Calm. Her fingers twitched. Then her jaw tensed. Her shoulders shifted, just slightly, as though in a dream.

“Where is she?” the General asked. The woman at my desk leaned toward my screen, tapping through my terminal.

“Approaching the Harvester, sir.”

My hands balled into fists. I couldn’t watch this. I wouldn’t. But I couldn’t pull away.

“Whoa.” The operator at my terminal jolted back. The screen lit up, aggressively spilling tangles of code.

Nita’s body lurched in the seat.

Her fingers clenched into fists, digging violently through the recliner. A groan clawed its way out of her throat. One of her nails broke.

She cried out.

I lunged forward, but General Williams reacted first, gripping my collar and forcing me back against the wall. The younger man jumped in, bracing me with his shoulder. I pushed back, fighting, but I was pinned. I could hear her grunting, voice raw with pain.

The general yelled at the woman at my terminal.

“Status, Durrell.”

“Knocked sideways,” she said, visibly flustered as she read the notes from my translated code.

Nita’s head pulled violently back, and she let out a guttural scream. I tried to kick. To swing. I was bigger than either of them, but they had my joints locked.

“She chose this, Koa.”  General Williams barked at me. His eyes were sharp on mine. “Help us so we can help her. How long before she sees it?”

I huffed air out of my nose. Tried to free an arm, gritting my teeth and releasing a growl.

“She said, according to your last session, that you confirmed Commander Flores saw this thing.”

I could barely hear her voice now, whimpering, body twitching forcefully behind him. I didn’t answer. My eyes were locked on Nita.

“Get her OUT,” I spat, voice seething out of me.

And then, she stopped. Everything went silent. Nita’s body fell limp across the chair.

They moved so suddenly that I almost fell as they shuffled toward Nita to remove the helmet. Her head was turned toward me. Hair had pulled loose and was matted against her face with sweat. She gasped for breath, brown eyes open, staring somewhere beyond me and through the wall.

Everything went numb.

I scrambled toward her, lifting her face in my hands.

“Nita,” I whispered. Her gaze shifted, searching for something to focus on, scanning the space until she finally found me.

“It was metal,” she muttered, her voice so far away. Her face hung, expressionless. Then her eyes drifted from me. Distant.

Cold.

*******

I had left my office light on again. The apartment was dark except for that light. Yellow and dim. Easy to forget. Barely worth remembering. Too weak to escape beyond a small strip of wood in my hall.

I dropped my bag and shuffled my feet, dragging myself down the hall and into my room. The bed was still unmade from the last time I slept in it.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept in it.

I fumbled my way to the back of my closet, pushing aside empty boxes until I found what I didn’t even realize I was looking for. Round and smooth with a metallic gleam, set atop a small pedestal Nita had helped me make.

A helmet.

I lifted it from its perch. Heavier than I remembered. It sat in my lap as I dropped onto the edge of the bed.

I ran a hand over the visor, wiping off the thin layer of dust.

We stared at each other. The helmet and I.

I drew in a deep breath and slipped it over my head.

*******

Her warmth presses in as she sits beside me on the couch, and when she leans her head against my chest, I can’t help but tilt mine toward her. Silk threads of hair against my cheek, the softness of her skin beneath my fingertips as I move my hand up and down her arm. I feel her body press into me when she takes a deep breath, her shoulders lift up against the underside of my arm, and when she sighs, my whole body relaxes with her.

“Blue makes you think of home?” Nita asks.

“Mmhm,” I answer.

“Did you know there’s this thing called color psychology? Apparently, blue has a calming effect. Subconsciously signals stability and trust.”

“Mmm.”

“So maybe that’s why blue makes you think of home.”

I don't answer, but I don’t need to. I know why blue makes me think of home. I also know we both enjoy listening to her talk. So I let her.

“Do you ever think about finding a way to go back? After your contract is done?”

“How would I even—”

“Wait, it’s today, isn’t it?” She sits up, pulling herself out of the crook of my arm, and faces me. Her deep brown eyes are almost sparkling with excitement. “The chip is fully active?”

I chuckle, instinctively rubbing the back of my neck with one hand. The skin bulges over the small, round shape at the nape of my neck, and I trace the scar with the tip of my finger.

“Yeah,” I say. “The timing isn’t exact, but, yeah. I should officially be recording all senses by now. Including vision.”

Her smile stretches across her face as she pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. She shifts closer to me, examining me for changes now that she knows I’m fully integrated with a multi-sensory recording system.

“We should celebrate,” she says finally, the loose hair breaking free and falling back onto her cheek. “What do you want to do for your first saved memory?”

I reach toward her face, moving her hair back into place. Her skin is warm as she leans her cheek into my palm.

“Wait—I have an idea,” she says, jumping off the couch and disappearing into her kitchen. “You said you built this thing to protect people’s stories, right? I mean, for reliving memories but also to pass things down?”

I laugh, and everything inside of me lights up as she reemerges with a thin book in her hands. The cover is a worn brown, pages half torn to pieces.

“What’s that?” I ask, eyeing the artifact.

“I went down to the old Carnegie library the other day. Wasn’t sure if I’d find anything, but figured I’d try. It was mostly old maps and some boring textbooks, but then I went toward the back reading section, and there it was in the middle of this round table. Just waiting for me.”

I take the book from her, turning the fragile pages in my hand. “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi?” I ask.

She nods. “I can read it to you. Your CARRY unit is all about telling our stories, right? You should save this one.”

I hand the book back, shaking my head. “A story about a mongoose? Nita, I don’t know.”

“Mongooses are amazing animals. They’re protectors.”

“Not where I’m from. Mongooses were brought to control rodents, and they killed everything. They’re murderous pests.”

She flushes, her cheeks turning a deep purple. “Well, that’s not the mongoose’s fault. They’re not killers. They just… weren’t in the right place. They weren’t where they belonged.”

“I don’t want my first saved memory to be about mongooses.” My voice comes out firmer than I mean it to, and she shifts back from me. She stares at the book in her hands.

“You’re right. It’s your memory. It should be something you choose.” She stands from the couch, her eyes still on the book.“I just really love this story.” Then she presses it against her chest and carries it back to the kitchen.

For a moment, I wonder if I said something wrong, but then she slides back onto the couch beside me. She lifts my arm with both of her hands and pulls herself back into the space underneath, wrapping her arms around my chest. Her hair smells like cinnamon, and I breathe it in, holding it in my lungs as her warmth encircles me.

“So what do you think the HMU wants it for?” she asks, tracing my forearm with one finger.

I shrug. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought past the funding. Maybe to help soldiers remember their home. The people they’re fighting for.”

She lets out a breathy sigh, pulling closer. “Well, you built something incredible, Koa. Really amazing.” Then she leans her head against my chest. “Whenever you decide to record your first memory, let me know. I want to be a part of it.”

*******

The feed scattered, and I lifted the helmet off my head.

Then I reset the only memory I had ever saved.

And play it again.

*******

She was still wearing her clothes from yesterday, and her hair hung in tangled strands around her face as she sat on the plinth in the Wellness and Evaluation Center of AIMU headquarters. Her eyes were unfocused, and she didn’t look up at me when I walked in. I didn’t know this Nita. I had never met her before.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, taking small steps closer. She nodded at something that wasn’t there, and lifted her gaze to me, forcing a thin smile.

“Better,” she lied. I wished I believed her, but I knew her too well.

“I heard you already had a few briefing sessions with the general.” The words came out angry and accusing. “They couldn’t even give you a day to recover?”

“I have information they need.” She turned her face away from me again, smile gone, no inflection in her voice. I stepped forward, reaching my hand to hers that gripped the edge of the plinth. Her skin was cold and clammy, and she didn’t flinch, didn't move. As though I hadn’t touched her at all.

I wanted to shake her. To snap her out of it. But all I could do was watch, searching her face for the person she had been.

“I had a nightmare last night,” she whispered, still speaking more to the white exam room walls than to me. “It was chasing me. Mechanical, tall, shaped like a spider. Covered in this weird, shredded gray fabric. I ran and stumbled, and ran, and when I spun back, I could see that it was carrying you. Swinging your body around like a rag doll.”

The blood drained from my face. She said it so calmly, so detached. “How similar is that to the memory you saw?”

She swallowed hard and blinked. But didn’t answer.

Her hand was still cold under mine, and I lifted it off the surface of the treatment table, squeezing it between my palms. “I should have stayed in the Hold. I never should have made the CARRY Units.”

Nita looked at me with her endless brown eyes.

“No,” she said. “What you made is incredible. Just… different than you imagined.”

“Then I’m a mongoose.” I snarled.

Her face scrunched as she looked at me, confused. Then she pulled her hand from mine and reached out to touch my face.

“What a strange thing to say,” she murmured. “You’re not a mongoose. You’re more like a bear.”

And for a fleeting moment in that cramped, cold room, she almost felt warm.

*******

The office light was still on. Still stretching in broken fragments outside the door. I moved toward the glow without thinking and settled again into the rolling desk chair.

The prototype was nearly complete, staring at me with round, black eyes. I brushed back the fiberoptic fur that blanketed the small, curved face, checking the shape of each round, tufted ear before switching the panel on. A blue pulsing glow enveloped the creature, steady and warm.

My smartwatch buzzed.

Pilot therapeutic program approved. Funding authorized via Veteran Post-Conflict Recovery Initiative.

I leaned closer, resting my head in one hand as I looked into the synthetic, marbled black eyes.

“Okay, Bear,” I whispered. “We’ve got some work to do.”