It’s 03:12 am, and the base is quiet, but not silent. E.V.E.N’s safehouses never really sleep; they just hibernate until the morning comes and Kairo starts mixing, or Minjae makes observations about acoustic dead zones (which are actually pretty useful, not that Onyx would ever tell him that), or Soahn pesters everyone about having breakfast — even if that breakfast usually consists of energy bars and instant coffee strong enough to strip paint.
Vents rattle through the night, an irregular rhythm that Onyx tracks without thinking, just in case something needs fixing before it stalls out entirely. But mostly, it’s still and uneventful. Onyx likes it that way.
Folding his arms against the cold bleed from the server alcove, he stalks the tunnels with measured strides, noticing the scuttle of rats near the floor, the sheen of condensation on the walls. Old graffiti creates a faded riot of colour and slang, a lot of which he doesn’t fully understand. He gets the gist, though: this place sucks, no way out, nothing works, “Lara loves Tommy.” Whoever they are, he wonders if Lara and Tommy are still alive down here.
Doesn’t matter. People come, people go. The Ghost Lines is a dank, endless sieve of lost causes and survivors. You rarely see the same faces twice.
But some people stay.
E.V.E.N stays.
After a while, Onyx picks up a disruption in the temperature logs on his internal HUD, which piques his interest. He heads towards it, surprised to find it coming from a room he knows. Rayne’s room.
Pausing outside the door, he glances down at the soft glow of heat blooming under the threshold. That’s probably not good. He listens for any movement within the room, but there’s nothing, just that strange heat output.
“Rayne,” Onyx says, “I’m coming in,” and he pushes the door open.
Rayne stands at the centre of the room, still as a statue, back straight, shoulders set. The darkness throws his silhouette into soft edges. He’s shirtless, the exhaust vent at the base of his spine cycling hard. He turns slowly on the spot.
“Onyx.”
There’s no surprise, but there’s a slight twitch in his jaw like he’s buffering something mid-thought. Onyx wonders how it’s possible for a synthetic to look tired, but Rayne does in that moment, his face slack, one eyelid set a little lower than the other. Whatever he’s been pushing himself through lately, it’s starting to show.
“Did you need something?” Rayne murmurs.
“No,” Onyx says. “But I think you do. You’re overheating.”
“Yes. I thought if I stopped for a while, it’d settle down.”
Onyx frowns and scans the room. It’s clear and functional, but not entirely untouched. A folded white jacket rests across the back of a swivel chair, and he can see faint sketches in the dust on the floor — waveform lines, the physical shape of music that he can’t hear. Something Rayne is working on.
He doesn’t ask.
Rayne watches him with that unreadable expression, eyes dark and unblinking, chin slightly angled downward.
“Do you sleep?” Onyx asks.
“No, not really.” Rayne gives him something like a smile, or at least an imitation of one. “I’ve been careful not to power down since Kairo and Soahn found me.” He tilts his head to one side. “Apparently, you don’t sleep much either.”
“Mm,” Onyx says, non-committal. He points to the vent near Rayne’s spine. “We should fix that.”
“It resets,” Rayne says simply.
“Shouldn’t need to.”
Rayne turns away and moves to the chair, touching the white jacket with his fingertips. “Do you dream?” he asks after a moment.
“No,” Onyx says. It’s a lie, and maybe Rayne knows it, but it’s easier than talking about sleepless nights and rapid-fire memory bursts that hit and vanish before he can name them.
Rayne glances at him. “Lucky.”
Onyx arches an eyebrow. “You’re telling me you do dream?”
“Yes,” Rayne says, then he pauses. “No, I suppose they aren’t dreams. At least not how you understand them.”
“Then what are they?” Onyx asks before he can stop himself.
“Honestly, I’m not sure. Fragments. Code. They feel like dreams, but I know that’s impossible.” There’s the barest hint of a question in that last part; Onyx narrows his eyes, but Rayne continues, a little quieter now. “Faces I don’t know. A voice that says my name like it knows me. Sometimes it says I deserve better than ‘this’, but I don’t know what it means.”
Onyx stares at him for a long time. This isn’t what he expected when he first entered Rayne’s room, and he isn’t sure how to process it. This uncanny openness, the way Rayne feels like static, half-there, half somewhere else.
“Should we be worried?” Onyx finally says. “About you?”
Rayne shakes his head. “I don’t think so, no. It’s probably just things I’ve picked up over the years. Not mine.” Though he still doesn’t sound sure. Rayne’s always been something of an enigma, but right now, Onyx truly doesn’t know what to make of him. Even so, he can hear the soft whir of Rayne’s hardware, the vent gasping; he can feel the heat radiating from him, still far too hot.
“Seriously, if you’re burning out, I want to know before the fuse goes,” he says. This is safer ground. Ground he understands.
This time, the smile is real, if exhausted. “Then maybe don’t wait so long to find me next time,” Rayne says.
Huffing, Onyx steps closer and indicates the chair. Rayne sits, folding his hands on his lap. “You’re staying?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
Going to the wall nearby, Onyx folds his arms across his chest and leans against the cold concrete, and for a while, they say nothing. He listens to the subtle change in Rayne’s noises, waiting for the moment the vents ease up.
“It’s strange, but it seems quieter when you’re here,” Rayne eventually says.
Onyx shrugs one shoulder. “I’m just a distraction, that’s all.”
“Maybe.” A curious pause, like he’s listening to something only he can hear. “Onyx, you really don’t have to—”
“If you’re going to break,” Onyx cuts in. “I’d rather be here when it happens.”
After a long time, Rayne nods, just once. He eases back in the chair, letting his weight fully settle, and stares down at the floor. “Okay,” he whispers, and it feels like a decision has just been made.
Onyx watches as Rayne goes very still, and he starts to understand what has just been decided. The soft whir becomes a stutter, and he hears internal mechanisms winding down with a tick-tick-click.
“Don’t let me sleep too long,” Rayne mutters. The last word is thin and drawn out, glitching a little at the end.
Onyx stiffens, letting his arms fall to his sides as he sees Rayne power down completely for the first time in months. For a horrible moment, he almost tells Rayne to stop, to wake up before he’s gone, but he doesn’t. He can’t.
No. This is Rayne’s choice, and if it means Onyx stays watch all night, then so be it. He has nowhere to be. Morning is still hours away.
Onyx remains where he is, listening to the tunnels outside in case anyone approaches, sensing the steady absence of heat where it had been too much before.
Rayne sleeps — really sleeps — and nothing breaks. The room gradually grows cooler.
And Onyx stays, because it’s what he does.