The base is quiet at 03:12.
Not silent. E.V.E.N’s safehouses never truly sleep. Vents splutter. Old wiring ticks. Somewhere in the lower deck, a forgotten synth loop repeats three bars of ambient static before stalling out.
But mostly, it’s still.
Onyx likes it that way.
He stalks the corridor with measured steps and sharp eyes, arms folded against the cold bleed seeping from the server alcove. There’s a glitch in the temperature logs again. Fourth night in a row. Kairo blamed the weather. Minjae shrugged it off. Soahn said nothing.
But Onyx noticed the pattern. Always the same time, and always the same room.
Rayne’s.
He pauses outside the door. The heat blooming beneath the threshold glows faint red through his thermal lens. Not movement, just output. Something inside burning on a quiet loop.
He slides the door open without knocking.
Rayne stands in the centre of the room. Still as a statue. Unblinking. Not surprised to see him. Not entirely awake, either.
His skin catches the glow from his collar, soft metal beneath thin shadow, heat ghosting along his shoulders like a halo turned sideways. He's shirtless, the exhaust vent at his spine cycling hard, rhythm off-tempo. A faint twitch jumps in his jaw, like he’s buffering mid-thought.
“Were you going to say something,” he murmurs, voice low and neutral, “or just keep standing there?”
Onyx doesn’t flinch. “You don’t sleep. But you look... tired.”
A pause.
Rayne’s mouth quirks. Not a smile. More like something sad remembering how to imitate one. “So do you.”
Onyx steps inside.
Rayne watches, eyes dark and unreadable, arms loose at his sides. He’s like static: barely there, but constant in the silence.
Onyx scans the room, plain, functional, but not untouched. A folded white jacket on the chair. One of Kairo’s tangled wires half-built into the speaker. A sketch in the dust on the desk surface: waveform lines. Not music. Not yet.
He points to the vent near Rayne’s spine.
“You’re overheating.”
Rayne shrugs. “It resets.”
“Shouldn’t need to.”
Rayne turns away, moving to the wall. He traces the edge of a small console with his fingertips, not typing, just… moving. Grounding. The silence stretches.
“Do you dream?” Rayne finally asks.
“No,” Onyx lies.
Rayne tilts his head as if sensing the falseness, but says, “Lucky.”
Another beat of silence.
“I do. Or I used to. Hard to tell if it’s dreaming when the data’s corrupted.”
“What do you see?” Onyx asks.
Rayne’s fingers still. He exhales cooling steam from his almost imperceptible jaw vent, a faint hiss like sorrow disguised as system pressure.
“Someone else’s code,” he says. “Lines I didn’t write. Faces I don’t know. A voice that keeps saying my name like it misses me.”
A beat.
“Sometimes it says I deserve better than ‘this.’ I don’t know what.” Rayne’s gaze stays on the wall, far-off and dim. “Once, I think I saw a hand. Not code or system lines, just… a hand... holding mine. I don’t know if it was mine.” A flicker crosses his face, uncertain, almost fragile. “It felt real.”
Onyx clenches his fists. Releases. Then he steps forward. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“What would I say?” Rayne asks. “‘Hey, Onyx, do you ever wake up to code loops screaming in hex?’ You’d love that.”
Onyx doesn’t bite. He just says, quiet and even: “If you're burning out, I want to know before the fuse goes.”
Rayne looks at him for a long time, and this time, the smile is real. Small. Exhausted.
“Then maybe don’t wait so long to find me next time.”
Onyx doesn’t respond to this, just steps further into the room, slow and steady, and lowers himself the chair beside the bed. It creaks under him. One of Kairo’s wires crackles faintly beneath his boot. He leans back, arms folded, and stares at the wall, settling in for the long haul.
Rayne watches him, expression unreadable. “You’re staying.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
Another long pause. The kind that only feels awkward if you’re not used to silence.
Rayne finally moves, lowering himself onto the edge of the bed, vents sighing as he shifts. He doesn’t lie down yet, just sits there, hands resting on his knees like he’s waiting for his systems to decide if it’s safe to shut down.
After a while, he speaks, barely a whisper.
“It’s brighter when someone else is here.”
Onyx doesn’t move for a long time.
“Onyx, you really don’t have to—”
“Shh. If you’re going to break,” Onyx says, voice low, “I’d rather be here when it happens.”
Rayne doesn’t respond, not with words. Instead, he eases back, one hand gripping the blanket like it’s the only thing tethering him to the room. His eyes stay open for a long time, watching the ceiling… watching nothing.
Then finally, slowly, they close.
The room stays warm, the vent still hums, but the output stabilises. And Onyx—guardian, anchor, silent sentinel—doesn’t move until Rayne wakes.