The silence of the Moon is no longer a physical weight. It is a profound, absolute peace.
I kneel in the fine, gray dust of the Tycho crater, my heavily bandaged hands gripping Asher’s small, trembling shoulders. My son is slumped against Kade’s chest, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow and ragged over the comms. The geometric lattice in his silver eye is completely dull, receding back into the dormant depths of his stem cells. He is just a twelve-year-old boy, exhausted to the very marrow of his bones.
Margot, I say, my physical voice raspy, transmitted through the closed-loop comms. His vitals?
Margot’s voice crackles in my earpiece, tight with clinical anxiety but laced with profound relief. Heart rate is dropping to 90. Core temperature is stabilizing. The neurological burn is s
