Intermission 3

The secret lair beneath the floating ship hummed with energy, a tangle of wires snaking across the floor like veins pumping life into Aiden’s latest modifications. The hamster battle suits had come far—too far for failure now.

Aiden, his usual boundless energy focused into a laser-like intensity, hunched over his primary workstation. Sparks flickered and danced around his nimble fingers as he meticulously adjusted the intricate fiber network integrated into the soft fleece of Lumina’s latest Mark IV iteration. His movements were precise, almost surgical, but beneath the surface of his familiar manic focus, a subtle shift had occurred, a flicker of something…off.

He paused abruptly, his breath catching in his throat. A strange tightness constricted his chest.

Then – a cough wracked his small frame.

The sound wasn’t the usual dry, throat-clearing kind. This was raw, deep, wet, originating from a place that felt bruised and tender. A sharp, metallic tang coated his tongue, acrid and unwelcome, before a small, dark splatter of red bloomed against the back of his hand.

Blood.

Aiden grimaced, his eyes darting around the cluttered space. He wiped it away quickly, surreptitiously, his mind racing. They couldn’t know. Not now—not when everything was coming together.

Not when he was the one responsible for giving them a second chance at daylight.

But before he could fully compose himself, before he could bury the unsettling evidence beneath a flurry of fabricated activity, a small, hesitant voice cut through the hum of machinery.

“Aiden…?”

Lumina stood near the entrance, clutching Nutmeg tightly, her wide eyes locked onto the stain before Aiden had a chance to fully hide it.

A heavy silence stretched between them, punctuated only by the rhythmic whirring of a nearby energy converter. The air in the bunker, usually thick with ozone and solder fumes, seemed to thicken with unspoken apprehension.

Lumina’s voice was soft, uncertain, barely a whisper. “You’re hurt.”

Aiden forced a laugh – too sharp, too loud, too obviously manufactured. “Me? Hurt? I am practically a bio-engineered marvel of resilience!” He gestured wildly with the clean hand, trying to draw her attention away from the damning evidence.

But Lumina wasn’t buying the bravado. Her gaze remained fixed on his hand, her small brow furrowed with concern.

“You’re coughing blood.” Her voice was steady now, the initial uncertainty replaced by a quiet, unwavering observation.

She took a tentative step forward, Nutmeg’s small whiskers twitching nervously against her hands. “Sissy doesn’t know, does she?”

Aiden stiffened, then placed a finger to his lips. “And she won’t, alright?” His voice dropped into something serious, something pleading. “I need you to keep quiet. Delia worries too much.”

Lumina frowned. “You can’t pretend you’re okay forever.”

Aiden stiffened, his forced joviality evaporating like mist in the artificial sunlight of their grow lamps. He quickly placed a finger to his lips, his eyes pleading with a seriousness that belied his usual flippant demeanor. “And she won’t, alright?” His voice dropped into something low and urgent, something that held a raw vulnerability. “I need you to keep quiet about this, Lumina. Delia…she worries too much already.”

Lumina’s frown deepened, her small face etched with a wisdom beyond her years. “You can’t pretend you’re okay forever, Aiden.”

She hesitated, clutching Nutmeg closer, as though the small, furry creature could somehow shield her from the unsettling truth she already instinctively knew.

“My mom did that.”

Aiden blinked, the unexpectedness of her statement catching him off guard. The bravado crumbled, replaced by a flicker of surprised empathy.

“She had a heart condition.” Lumina’s voice wavered, a fragile tremor running through it, but her gaze remained steady. “She acted normal, she smiled, she laughed…but I could see it. The way she’d get tired, the way her breathing would change.” Her small fingers brushed Nutmeg’s soft fur absently, lost in a painful memory. “She didn’t want us to be scared. But that didn’t make her better.”

Aiden stared at her – this small, resilient girl who had already witnessed the slow erosion of life, who understood the weight of unspoken illness in ways children never should. The lightness that usually surrounded her had been momentarily extinguished, replaced by a somber understanding that mirrored his own growing unease.

The weight of unspoken words pressed against his chest, a heavy burden tighter and more suffocating than any physical ailment. He saw a reflection of his own fear in her young eyes, a shared understanding of the fragility of life in their precarious world.

Slowly, carefully, he reached out and ruffled Lumina’s hair, his touch surprisingly gentle as he smoothed down the floppy ears of her hamster onesie.

“I’m working hard, Lumina,” he murmured, his voice quieter than usual, the manic energy subdued. “Because I want to. Not just to save your dad, but so the world…so you…can see another sunrise. A real one.”

Lumina nodded slowly, her gaze fixed on his, as though she understood something deeper than his carefully chosen words, a silent acknowledgment of the unspoken threat that now hung in the air between them.

A heavy moment passed, the silence thick with unspoken anxieties and shared understanding.

Then – a sudden, outraged shriek shattered the fragile stillness.

“Sissy!!”

Delia’s voice echoed through the bunker, loud enough to shake the carefully constructed mood apart in an instant. It was a voice laced with a potent cocktail of disgust and indignation.

“One of these hamsters peed on me!”

Aiden let out an exaggerated groan. “Ah, so it begins.”

Lumina giggled, her serious expression vanishing as she darted away from Aiden, already knowing what was coming.

“Don’t you dare—” Delia lunged forward, her hand still raised in a gesture of horrified accusation, ready to unleash the full force of the Wrath of Pee-pee Hand.

“Evade! Evade!” Aiden yelled, scrambling backward with surprising agility, a genuine laugh finally escaping his lips as Lumina shrieked with mock terror and sprinted across the cluttered bunker in a desperate attempt to avoid contamination.

A new, albeit ridiculous, game had begun – the sacred battle of not getting touched by Delia’s pee-hand. And, for just a fleeting moment, amidst the looming threat of the unknown and the unspoken anxieties that gnawed at them, everything felt almost normal. The familiar dynamic, the bickering and laughter, a fragile shield against the encroaching darkness.