HONOUR OF SILVERIA

I wake at 03:58.

Two minutes before the alarm. I turn it off before it sounds.

The glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling are fading as the room lightens. I have counted them every morning this week. Two hundred and fourteen. The same number each time. I do not know why I keep counting.

The Pelaveria butterfly is on the wall beside my bed.

Elowen gave it to me Wednesday. I had told her it was beautiful. She looked startled, then she smiled, and she handed it to me without argument. She had already helped me prepare today’s uniform.

Laome left Thursday night. She claimed she needed to sleep in her own bed before she “turned feral.”

I inspected her for signs of physical deterioration and found none. I logged it as figurative language.

The apartment has been quiet since they left.

I had assumed quiet was what I wanted.

I am still determining whether I was correct.

It was the only period of uninterrupted isolation I had experienced all week. Since Vivi brought the books, I have only finished one. This body fatigues far more easily than expected.

Concentration feels heavier than motion.

A bag has been in the corner of the living room since I arrived.

Laome had said, ignore it, it is just trash. So I had. She had said it with her arms crossed and her chin up, which I have logged as a posture she uses when she is telling me something true but incomplete.

This morning, I do not ignore it.

I carry it to the coffee table and open it.

Test papers.

Mathematics. Physics. Chemistry. History. Languages.

I look at the scores printed in red at the top of each one.

All 100.

Thirty-four papers. Dated from September 2019 through March 2020. Two weeks before the accident.

I sort them by subject, then by date. I stack them in a neat column on the desk and look at the result for a moment.

Then I pick up the nearest one.

Mathematics, November 2019.

Beside a particularly complex proof, in the margins, in small and careful letters:

Good job, Neptune.

I look at the score.

100.

I look at the note.

I put it back.

There are books about space everywhere.

Not scattered. On the kitchen counter, by the sofa, in the window frame, open to specific pages. The system is not alphabetical. Not chronological. But I still believe it follows some internal logic I cannot decode.

There are sticky notes too.

Random notes.

On the mirror.

On the kitchen cabinet.

On the bedroom door.

On the television.

On the spine of a book about orbital mechanics.

Under the coffee table.

Inside the wardrobe.

I stop counting.

The last one is different.

Find the sun, it burns away the lies.

My beep goes up.

I stare at it.

What does that mean?

A lie implies an original truth.

The logic does not resolve.

I close the wardrobe door.

The school-issued textbooks are on the desk.

I open the first one.

On the inside front cover, a label box for the student’s name.

Over it, a strip of tape.

Above the tape, in blue pen: Neptune.

I open the next.

Every official label that would have originally read “Carena Bjornhelm Ahlquist” had been taped over and rewritten.

I look at my student ID card.

SIHS-019-004.

Carena Bjornhelm Ahlquist.

I look at the books again before setting the ID card facedown beside them.

My phone buzzes.

Right. The message.

A message from Nerei, sent the morning after I was discharged.

I have asked her about the ARC envelope.

Don’t open any envelope alone, she said.

I had replied: Why.

No response.

Four days of silence.

I close the app and open my email.

I put the ARC envelope in my bag.

An announcement in my school email says a preparatory assessment will be held today, Friday April 10, from 12:00 to 16:00.

I read it and make a decision immediately.

A preparatory assessment means observable data. Mine and everyone else’s.

Today is the optimal point of re-entry.

I put down my phone and go to the bathroom.

The shower takes 7 minutes and 42 seconds. I timed it.

Water temperature: 38°C. Hot enough for effective decontamination of the skin's surface layer. Not hot enough to elevate core body temperature and impair cognitive function.

I have read that some humans take showers for “comfort.” For up to 20 minutes. This is a significant waste of resources. 8 minutes feels like too much for me.

I stand in front of the bathroom mirror.

White hair. Green eyes. No expression.

I look like a piece of paper.

I have read that humans perform grooming rituals for social acceptability and self-confidence. I brush my hair. It is straight. It does not tangle.

This is efficient.

I look in the mirror again. Same face. Same stranger.

I move on.

White shirt. Ankle-length dark navy skirt. Mandatory dark blue tie, according to the student handbook I found in the desk drawer. The rest is optional.

I do not put on the blazer. I do not know if I own one.

I look in the mirror again.

Assembled. Functional. I look like a procedure that has been correctly followed.

I adjust the tie knot until it is symmetrical.

I pick up my bag and leave.

The walk takes forty-three minutes.

I already remembered the route.

Everything is where it should be.

Ahlquist.

I found the same last name in the first five minutes of having internet access. Sunday night. Erik Johan Ahlquist, experimental physicist. Born 1963. Published extensively, 1985–2005. Missing since January 2008 along with his wife.

The follow-up article took four minutes to find.

A house that was there and then was not.

No debris.

No seismic record.

No physical remains.

His daughter, Carena—me, possibly—found at the site unharmed.

Investigation closed without conclusion in 2009.

I read it four times that night.

I have since run the physics.

There is no mechanism by which a structure dematerializes without leaving displaced air, altered ground pressure, thermal trace, or debris scatter.

The absence of all four is not a gap in the evidence.

It is the evidence.

Neptune is a name chosen in a room I cannot remember, by a girl who taped over her own name in every book she owned.

Her father was a man who disappeared without leaving a hole in the ground.

We are both anomalies.

The Honour of Silveria becomes visible in the last 20 minutes.

Crown with wings. 121 meters.

I do not stop to stare this time.

I turn the corner and go up the stairs to my school.

I am twenty minutes early.

The hallway outside the classroom is already crowded.

Students are standing around the scaffolding near the left side, where one glass section of the building has just been repaired.

Several of them are staring at me.

Some go silent the moment they see me.

One girl covers her mouth.

Someone else says, “That’s her.”

Another voice, lower: “She’s back?”

I do not understand the reaction.

I keep walking.

The room goes quiet in the way rooms go quiet when something enters that they did not expect.

Six students are already seated. More are clustered near the door. One boy near the back is staring at me like I am a ghost and he is deciding whether ghosts are allowed to have shoes.

“Neptune?” someone whispers.

“Oh my god,” someone says. Her voice is thin with panic. “You’re really here?”

I stop.

The class is looking at me.

“Are you okay?” another student blurts out.

“They said you fell,” someone else says, “From the rooftop. Three floors down to the scaffolding.”

“She fractured like, everything.”

“Head trauma, too. Bad. Really bad.”

“I thought she died.”

“Yeah… Suicide.”

My heart monitor jumps.

I stand still.

The words do not arrange themselves into something useful.

Fell.

Scaffolding.

Blood.

Dead.

I look at the people saying them.

Their faces are pale.

Some look frightened for me.

Some look frightened of me.

I had thought I was late to class.

Apparently, I am also late to my own death.

A boy near the front row stands up so quickly his chair scrapes backward.

He is tall. Light brown hair. Straight posture.

“Everyone, sit down.” His voice cuts across the room.

Nobody listens.

“I said sit down!” He repeats, louder and sharper this time.

That works better.

The students slowly return to their seats, though several kept staring at me.

The tall boy walks toward me.

“Are you actually okay?” he asks quietly.

“Yes,” I say. “I believe so.”

He stares at me for a second.

“You believe so?”

I process the question.

“Data lost. I have amnesia,” I explain. “My memory before waking up in the hospital is inaccessible.”

The tall boy’s expression changes again.

Not fear, not exactly.

“You don’t remember?” he asks.

“Correct.”

“You don’t remember the fall?”

Fall.

My heartbeat spikes again.

“No,” I say.

I look at my hands. At my arms, the unblemished skin. “I am also not suicidal.”

The tall boy exhales. A long breath. Like he has been holding it for weeks.

“Do you remember this class?”

I shake my head slowly.

“I’m Donovan,” he says. “Class representative. If you want, I can tell you what we know.”

I nod once.

He reaches into his folder and pulls out a folded document. He had straightened the folder three times before doing so. It was already straight. I did not understand the function of the action.

“The school received a copy of your medical report,” he says carefully.

“I think… I thought you should probably see it. I kept a copy,” he says quietly. “Just in case.”

I take the paper.

It is heavy.

I notice the crease marks.

It's been folded and unfolded many times.

I read it.

Severe Traumatic Brain Injury.

Unstable Type II Odontoid Fracture, C2.

Open comminuted fractures, left arm, brachial plexus involvement.

Right femur.

Flail chest.

Grade III splenic laceration.

12.5 hours of surgery.

Glasgow Coma Scale: 3T.

I stare at the page.

Then I stare at Donovan.

A class representative does not receive a patient's medical file. That is a violation of privacy law. Hospitals do not distribute surgical records to students. Not even to next of kin, without consent.

Someone wanted this information inside this room.

I look back up.

“This report describes catastrophic structural damage,” I say to everyone in class.

“Yeah,” someone mutters. “That’s why everyone thought you were dead.”

I look at Donovan.

“But that is inconsistent with my current condition.”

I fold the page along its original crease.

I look at Donovan.

“The report describes a different person,” I say.

His mouth parts slightly. He looks at the report, then back at me.

“They told us you were in the hospital,” he says carefully. “But they didn’t say—”

“The report is inaccurate, the titanium is not in my spine. The fracture lines are not in my arm. Last week’s imaging showed none of it.” I say. “This paper may be fake. Do not believe in rumours.”

That makes him blink.

I glance at my left hand.

The fingers twitch once, without instruction.

“The arm is still recalibrating,” I say. “But everything else is functional.”

A student near the back mutters, “What does that even mean?”

I hear them talking about my words being weird.

I do not know what to do with that.

Donovan clears his throat.

His eyes move to the copy in my hand, then to the paper again.

His voice lowers.

“You’re right. If you’re here then you must be fine. I don’t know who started it,” he says, careful again. “But the rumour spread fast.” He takes back the paper. “Welcome back, Neptune.”

I just nod.

I go to the very back. Right side. A desk with the label 019-004 in the corner.

I sit down.

The seat beside mine is empty.

The girl directly in front of me is already turned sideways in her chair, watching me with an expression I am still learning to classify. Relief, perhaps. Something more complicated beneath it.

She has pale blonde hair cut just below her jaw, and very light grey eyes that look silver in certain light.

“The seat next to mine,” I say. “Who sits there?”

“Ootake Mirei,” she says. Her voice is quiet and careful in the way of someone who measures what they use. “She never comes in though. So.” She pauses. “I'm glad you're still okay, Neptune.”

My books say: reciprocate acknowledgement. Reinforce connection.

“I am also glad you are okay,” I say.

She blinks. She turns back around.

Was that the right exchange?

I don’t understand.

I noted it as: successful.