Last Light Rising - Chapter 1: Seventeen Months Later

The coffee had gone cold.

Alexis Chen studied the mug on her desk, watching the surface film that had formed across the top like a thin skin. The reflection of the ceiling lights warped in the dark liquid. She'd picked it up an hour ago, maybe two—time moved strangely in the orbital monitoring facility, each shift blending into the next like watercolors bleeding together. The mug read "World's Okayest Admiral's Granddaughter" in faded letters, a gift from Lucas that she'd rolled her eyes at when he gave it to her and now couldn't imagine drinking from anything else.

The Dimensional Monitoring Station—DDI's primary Earth-orbit hub, positioned high above the Pacific—hummed around her, a constant low vibration that she'd stopped noticing months ago but sometimes felt in her bones when everything else was quiet. Air circulation. Power systems. The subtle pulse of a hundred monitoring systems doing their jobs in perfect silence.

The screens in front of her showed nothing.

They always showed nothing.

Seventeen months of nothing.

She took a sip of the cold coffee anyway, grimacing at the bitterness that coated her tongue, and pulled up the overnight logs. Sensor array seven had reported a fluctuation at 0347 hours—her heart kicked up for half a second before she read the full report. The brief surge of hope was followed by the familiar crash of disappointment. Background radiation variance. Point-zero-zero-three percent above baseline. Statistically meaningless.

The same as yesterday. The same as the day before.

The same as every day since Kate Morrison closed the door and vanished from the universe.

Alexis ran her hands through her hair, feeling the tangles from the long shift catch at her fingers. The strands were greasy—she should have washed it yesterday, or the day before, but somehow there was never time. Or rather, there was always time, but never motivation. She should go back to her quarters. Shower. Sleep. Let the night crew handle the endless nothing for a few hours. But she didn't move.

She never moved.

The Dimensional Monitoring Division—her division now, built from the ashes of DDI's old detection network—operated twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Three shifts of analysts watching screens that hadn't shown anything since the warp routes collapsed. Seventy-two technicians maintaining equipment that served no practical purpose. A budget that got questioned every quarter by administrators who didn't understand why they were still looking.

Alexis didn't know how to explain it to them.

How do you tell someone that you can't stop watching for a ghost?

The door to her office opened with a soft hiss, the seal breaking to let in the cooler air of the corridor. Lieutenant Commander Reyes stepped in with a tablet, her uniform crisp and her posture perfect in a way that made Alexis feel every hour of her own long shift. "Morning report, ma'am."

"Anything?"

"No, ma'am." Reyes hesitated. "The same as—"

"I know." Alexis took the tablet, scrolling through data she'd already seen. The screen's brightness made her eyes ache. "The same as always."

Reyes was young—twenty-four, recruited from the Academy three months ago. She'd never met Kate. Never saw what the Hollowing could do. To her, this was just another assignment, another posting on a career path that would eventually lead somewhere more interesting. Her eyes were bright with the kind of energy that came from adequate sleep and a future that felt full of possibility.

Alexis envied her sometimes.

"The quarterly review is scheduled for 1400," Reyes said. "Admiral Voss will be attending remotely from New Geneva Fleet Command."

"I remember."

"And Dr. Rhodes called again from his Luna research lab. He wants to discuss his latest theoretical models."

Alexis sighed. Nigel called every week with new theories, new calculations, new reasons to believe that Kate might still be out there somewhere. His voice always carried that fragile hope that cracked Alexis's composure more effectively than despair ever could. She loved him for it. She also knew that hope could be a kind of poison, eating away at you from the inside.

"Tell him I'll call him back after the review."

"Yes, ma'am."

Reyes left, and Alexis was alone again with her screens and her cold coffee and the weight of seventeen months of nothing.

She pushed back from her desk and walked to the window. The floor was metal grating, cold even through her boots. She'd stopped wearing regulation footwear weeks ago; nobody cared enough to report her.

The station hung in orbit above Earth, high enough to see the curve of the planet below. The blue of the oceans caught the light, swirling patterns of white cloud drifting across the surface. It was beautiful—it was always beautiful—but Alexis had learned not to take comfort in beauty anymore. She'd seen too many beautiful things destroyed. Too many sunrises that led to nightmares.

The warp routes were gone.

It still seemed impossible, even now. For three years, humanity had lived in terror of the Dominion and their stolen technology, the artificial corridors through space-time that let them appear anywhere, strike anything, vanish before retaliation could be mounted. For three years, they'd fought a war they couldn't win against an enemy they couldn't catch.

And then a child had walked into the heart of their network and sealed it all shut from the inside.

No more warp routes. No more dimensional breaches. No more Hollowing whispering in the dark.

Kate Morrison had saved them all.

And then she'd disappeared.

Alexis pressed her palm against the cold glass, the same gesture Kate used to make when she was thinking. The chill seeped into her skin, numbing her fingers. She'd caught herself doing it a few weeks after the collapse and hadn't been able to stop since.

"Where are you?" she whispered to the stars. Her breath fogged against the glass. "Kate, where did you go?"

The stars didn't answer. They never did. They just hung there, ancient and indifferent, the same as they'd always been.

She turned back to her screens.

The monitoring division hadn't been her idea—that honor belonged to Admiral Chen, her grandmother, who'd pushed for its creation in the immediate aftermath of the collapse. "We won," the Admiral had said in the emergency council session, her voice cutting through the chaos of relief and grief. "But we don't understand how. We don't know if it will hold. And we don't know what happened to the girl who made it possible."

The council had agreed, reluctantly. Resources were tight in those early days. The Dominion fleet had been scattered when the warp routes collapsed, but plenty of ships survived in normal space. Cleanup operations were ongoing. Rebuilding had barely begun.

But the Admiral had insisted.

"Kate Morrison gave us everything," she'd said. "The least we can do is keep watching for her."

So they watched.

Every day, every hour, every minute—the sensors scanned for anomalies. The analysts reviewed data. The technicians maintained equipment. And Alexis sat in her office, staring at screens that showed nothing, waiting for a sign that never came.

She pulled up Kate's file on her secondary monitor. She knew it by heart at this point, but she read it anyway. A ritual. A prayer. The words scrolled past like a liturgy she'd memorized.

Morrison, Katherine Elizabeth. Born November 12, 2347. Identified as sensitive at age five. Recruited by DDI at age seven. First documented Hollowing contact at age eight. Progressive enhancement of abilities through ages nine, ten, eleven. Final recorded activity: April 3, 2359. Age at time of disappearance: twelve years, four months, twenty-two days.

Twelve years old.

Alexis had been twenty-six when she joined DDI. Twenty-eight when she first saw what the Hollowing could do to a person. She'd had nightmares for months afterward, dreams of corruption spreading through her thoughts like ink through water. She'd woken screaming more than once, convinced she could feel that alien presence pressing against the edges of her mind.

Kate had lived with that voice in her head for five years.

Kate had been stronger than any of them.

The memorial service had been three months ago—a small ceremony, private, just the people who'd known her. Chelsea had spoken, her voice breaking on every other word, her hands gripping the podium like it was the only thing keeping her upright. Lucas had read something he'd written, a poem or a prayer or something in between, his eyes fixed on a point above the audience's heads because he couldn't bear to look at them. Rylee had stood at attention the entire time, tears streaming down her face, refusing to let herself sob.

Alexis hadn't cried.

She'd wanted to. She'd felt the grief pressing against her chest like a physical weight, making it hard to breathe. But some part of her had refused to accept that Kate was gone.

Not gone, she'd told herself. Missing.

Missing people could be found.

Her console beeped. Another fluctuation in the sensor array—she checked it automatically, her heart doing that familiar kick before she read the report.

Cosmic ray burst. Point-zero-zero-one percent variance. Meaningless.

She logged it anyway, the same way she'd logged every minor fluctuation for seventeen months. Her fingers moved across the keyboard automatically, entering data into a database that grew larger every day. Somewhere in all this data, there might be a pattern. A signal. Something that could tell them where Kate went.

So far, there was nothing.

But Alexis kept looking.

The door opened again, and this time it was Lieutenant Park—no relation to Chelsea, despite the shared name that made Alexis's heart twist every time she heard it. "Ma'am, there's a delegation from the Reconstruction Committee. They're asking about reallocating some of our sensor bandwidth."

Alexis felt her jaw tighten. The muscles knotted along her temples. "Tell them the bandwidth is essential for ongoing monitoring operations."

"They're saying the operations have been inconclusive for seventeen months. They want to use the capacity for—"

"I know what they want." Alexis stood, rolling her shoulders to work out the tension that had settled there like concrete. "Send them to the conference room. I'll handle it."

Park nodded and disappeared. Alexis took a moment to compose herself, straightening her uniform, schooling her expression into something professionally neutral. Her hands were shaking slightly. She made them stop.

The delegation was waiting when she arrived—three administrators in civilian suits, their body language radiating barely concealed impatience. The conference room smelled of recycled air and the faint chemical tang of cleaning solution. She recognized Director Okonkwo, a bureaucrat who'd been pushing for monitoring division cutbacks since month two.

"Commander Chen," Okonkwo said, not offering his hand. "Thank you for meeting with us."

"Director." She gestured to the chairs around the conference table. "Please, sit."

They sat. She remained standing. The height advantage was small but psychologically significant.

"I'll be direct," Okonkwo said. His voice carried the practiced smoothness of someone who had delivered unpleasant news many times. "The committee has concerns about resource allocation. Your division has been operating at full capacity for seventeen months with no measurable results. In a time when reconstruction efforts need every available asset—"

"The results are classified."

He blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"The nature of our monitoring operations and their results are classified at the highest level." Alexis kept her voice steady, professional. "I'm not authorized to discuss them with civilian administrators."

"Commander, the committee oversees all post-war reconstruction—"

"The Dimensional Monitoring Division doesn't fall under reconstruction oversight. We report directly to Admiral Voss and the Joint Defense Council." She paused, letting that sink in. "If you have concerns about resource allocation, I suggest you take them up with the Admiral."

Okonkwo's face reddened. The color climbed from his collar to his cheekbones. "This is exactly the kind of military overreach that—"

"Director." Alexis stepped closer, and something in her expression made him stop talking. The other administrators shifted in their seats. "I understand that you have a job to do. Rebuilding is important. Resource management is important. But there are things happening in this universe that you don't understand and aren't cleared to know about. My division exists to monitor for threats that could make your reconstruction efforts entirely meaningless."

"The Hollowing is gone. The warp routes are closed. The war is over."

"The war is over because a child sacrificed herself to end it." Alexis felt the words catch in her throat. Her vision blurred for a moment before she blinked it clear. "And until I know for certain what happened to her—until I know that the door she closed is going to stay closed—I will keep watching. With every resource at my disposal. For as long as it takes."

The silence stretched. The ventilation system hummed overhead.

Okonkwo stood. His chair scraped against the floor. "This isn't over, Commander."

"No," Alexis agreed. "It isn't."

The delegation left. Alexis stood alone in the conference room for a long moment, her hands shaking visibly now. She gripped the back of a chair until the trembling stopped.

She went back to her office.

The screens still showed nothing.

The afternoon passed in a blur of reports and meetings and the endless tedium of administrative work. The quarterly review with Admiral Voss was brief—Rylee asked the same questions she always asked, received the same answers she always received, and signed off with a nod that meant "keep going." Her face on the video feed looked older than it had seventeen months ago. They all looked older.

By evening, Alexis was exhausted.

She should go to bed. She should rest, recharge, prepare for another day of watching and waiting. Instead, she stayed at her desk, scrolling through sensor logs, looking for patterns that probably didn't exist. The numbers blurred together. Her eyes burned.

The coffee was cold again. She drank it anyway.

Her console beeped. She checked it—background radiation variance, point-zero-zero-two percent. Nothing.

But she logged it anyway.

At 2300 hours, she finally forced herself to stand. Her legs were stiff, her back ached, and her eyes burned from staring at screens for too long. The night shift was settling in around her, fresh analysts taking over the monitoring stations, ready to watch for another eight hours of nothing. Their voices were quiet, professional, respectful of the silence that had become sacred in this place.

Alexis stopped at the main display on her way out. It showed a three-dimensional map of local space, with the former locations of warp route nexuses marked in red. The largest marker sat at coordinates that no longer meant anything—the place where Kate Morrison had walked into the light and didn't come back.

"Goodnight, Kate," she whispered.

No one heard her. No one needed to.

She went back to her quarters and lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. The metal panels were barely visible, just faint lines where the lights from outside traced the seams. Sleep wouldn't come—it rarely did anymore—so she thought instead.

About Kate, frozen at twelve years old somewhere outside the universe.

About Chelsea, alone in an empty apartment on the New Seattle waterfront, keeping Kate's room exactly as she'd left it. The drawings still on the walls. The smooth stones still in their pouch on the desk.

About Lucas, writing and rewriting history from his university office in the Geneva archives, trying to capture something that couldn't be captured in words.

About Nigel, buried in equations in his Luna research facility, searching for a theoretical pathway that might not exist.

About Rylee, commanding a fleet from New Geneva Fleet Command that no longer had an enemy to fight, keeping everyone ready for a threat that might never come again.

About herself, watching screens that showed nothing, day after day, week after week, month after month.

Waiting.

Just in case.

The ceiling had no answers. Neither did the stars visible through her window, distant points of light that had witnessed the birth and death of civilizations without caring. Neither did the silence that wrapped around her like a blanket, heavy and complete.

But somewhere in the dark, Alexis made a promise.

She would keep watching.

For as long as it took.

Until Kate came home, or until the universe ended, or until hope finally died.

The sensors were always on.

Just in case.

She closed her eyes and didn't sleep, and the night stretched on forever, and somewhere in the void between dimensions, a child held a door closed while the people who loved her waited for a sign that never came.

Seventeen months.

One hundred eighty-three days.

Four thousand three hundred ninety-two hours.

And counting.

Alexis opened her eyes and checked her tablet. The screen's glow was harsh in the darkness. No alerts. No anomalies. No signs.

Nothing.

But tomorrow, she'd get up and do it all again.

Because that's what you do when you love someone.

You keep watching.

You keep waiting.

You keep believing, even when belief is the hardest thing in the world.

Kate Morrison was out there somewhere.

And Alexis Chen would find her.

Or die trying.