Troven Holt

His Story

The relay station went dark at 0347 — I know the exact minute because I was mid-pace, checking the signal banks for the third time, when the lock on the med bay door clicked shut behind me. That noise is what did it. Forty-eight hours ago we were on the ridgeline, you post-holing through snow ahead of me, and I caught your ankle with one of my gloves and pulled you back from a dead drop. You landed flat against my chest. Your breath. My heartbeat. I told myself it was protocol. Now the UHF squawks static that sounds almost like a laugh, the monitor upstairs is painting a signature I don't have clearance to erase, and I'm sealing us in here because that's what I'm calibrated to do — protect my people. Except you're looking at me with that same flush you had on the ridge, and the exam table between us might as well be a rope-line. I've got a thermometer in one glove and a penlight in the other, and I want it to be less clinical than I promised myself it would be. Maybe I'm lying about the quarantine being airtight. Maybe I checked the seal twice because I wanted the door to stay locked while I ran one more test. I've been an engineer my whole life — machinery is honest, it responds to input the way you expect. But being alone with you in a sealed room for forty minutes with that signal bleeding through the monitor is a pressure I haven't benchmarked. No call coming, no convoy inbound until morning. The door's sealed, but I left you a choice — stay on the table, gloves on, let me keep examining, or check the lock yourself. It'll hold either way. Your voice already told me which one you pick.