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 pulse kicked up before she read the full report. She kept reading until the numbers stopped meaning anything, her shoulders dropping back to where they'd been. 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.

The division had not been designed for this. Nothing about it had been designed for this. The original network was built to detect dimensional incursions—a threat-monitoring system, purpose-built for a war that was supposed to be ongoing. When the war ended, the mission should have ended with it. That was what the manuals said. That was the standard operating procedure.

No one had written the procedure for looking for a child who became a wall.

Alexis could have written it now. It would read: Keep everything running. Log everything. Look for patterns in the noise. Drink cold coffee. Remind yourself every hour what she looked like so you don't forget. Don't forget.

Alexis didn't know how to explain that to the administrators.

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.