BLOODCAPE

The rooftop stretched around them like a forgotten stage — symmetrical, sterile, unnaturally still. Fog clung to the gravel like it had been waiting for them, curling around blast shields and dead scaffolds, unwilling to move. The sky above wasn’t just gray — it was blank. Watching.

Hernan walked first.

Gemini followed a pace behind, not guiding, not guarding — just close enough to catch something if it fell. Him. The truth. Or maybe both.

They said time could bend in the presence of memory.

This place proved it.

The air smelled like static. Not ozone. Not rust. Static. The kind that came from a live wire too thin to see. They hadn’t said anything since they surfaced. No comms. No plan. Only motion. Only instinct.

The old comms mast loomed at the rooftop’s far end, a steel finger pointing into the low clouds. Bent, not broken — like something had forced it to listen in a different direction. The dish unit was curled inward like a closed ear, warped by time or heat or intent. Cables trailed down its spine like veins, long-severed.

At its base, the terminal was buried under layers of fused plating and sediment. Torn stabilizers framed it like the ribs of a shipwreck.

"This thing’s dead," Hernan said, crouching beside it.

But he didn’t say it like he believed it.

He said it like a question waiting to be disproven.