Thirty-Two Holes of Dust

Thirty-two holes. I counted them again at four, at five, at five-forty. Still thirty-two. The grille keeps its dust, and the line gives nothing back.

Vassili's weapon rests on my knees. I run my thumb over the grip, where the enamel has worn away: a patch of bare metal the size of a coin. She always held it in the same place. I know it from the wear. My memory has nothing to do with it.

The day we met paid for Castellane's door. I still have her name, her registry number, her morning cough. The day itself is missing. I search for it along the edges, like a lost shelf mark you recover from its neighbours. A corridor? A rainstorm? The registry offers three hypotheses and refuses to rule.

I tried to make tea. Kettle filled, never switched on. I drank the cold water standing by the sink. It tasted of pipe. I finished it.

My back pulls from the neck down. I change chairs. The second one creaks under me. I go back to the first.

ATHENA ordered me to rest. I shut down three sensors out of five. The last two stay open, because switching everything off would look too much like what they did in that stairwell, and I still don't know what followed the nineteenth blow.

No one has shown me a body. The Alpha Register does not record a death without a document. I reread my line: registry number, time, duration. Nothing else. The word appears nowhere. My fingers refused to type it.

Around six, I set the weapon on the table, barrel to the wall, the way she used to.

Then I picked it up again.

I lay down on the concrete, the grip against my sternum, my thumb on the bare patch. Nineteen degrees at first. By dawn, the metal had taken mine.