The sun rose on schedule, blooming from the wall like it always did, lifeless and late.

  I stirred beneath my blanket, groggily rubbing my eyes. As my vision cleared, the glowing panel shifted to a warm yellow precisely showing the time was 7:00 a.m. Just like every other bedroom in the district, the wall turned soft blue, dotted with cloud-white light.

  Simulated morning. Standard sky.

  I sat up, squinting against the glow, then reached for the blinds and pulled them down over the fake window. I’d seen the same “sun” for years. Same warmth. Same brightness. Never once felt real. Light didn’t mean anything here. It was just part of the trick.

  I shuffled into the kitchen, eyes still heavy. My mother sat at the table, staring at the wall display like she always did. I didn’t even need to ask.

  "Food will be delivered in a few minutes, dear. Sit with me and wait."

  I dropped into a chair with a sigh. The synthetic leather was warm from the floor's low-temp system. Behind me, the soft whir of servos approached — our home assistant bot.

  "Morning energy pill, sir? Medication protocol ready," it chirped.

  I held out my hand. It dropped two capsules into my palm. I swallowed them dry.

  My mother didn’t turn from the wall. The screen flipped through weather, district updates, ads for cybernetic enhancement, and reminders about emotional discipline. She wasn’t watching it.

  "Your father got called in early," she said.

  "To work?" I replied absentmindedly.

  She nodded, but didn’t meet my eyes. Her gaze flicked briefly to the wall display, just for a second, like she was checking whether it was listening.

  "System diagnostic. Something with the western water processing node."

  I frowned. "That’s not his sector."

  "They move people around," she said. "It’s nothing."

  It wasn’t nothing. Not really. They didn’t move people like this.

  The food tray arrived with a soft click. Real food, or close to it, protein wafers, synthetic eggs, and a steaming loaf of reconstituted grain. Better than nutrient cubes. Still bland.

  We ate in silence. The wall showed rolling clouds. Fake, just like the rest of it.

  Later, I sat through a system integrity lecture in the Civic Hall. Rows of gray uniforms. Drones flicking through slides: rot symptoms, behavior protocols, containment zones. My eyes drifted to a flickering light in the ceiling. It blinked erratically — too erratically. Almost like it was trying to say something.

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  I didn’t see my father that night. Or the next.

  On the third night, I woke to voices behind the kitchen door. Muffled. My mother’s was flat. My father’s sounded broken, like static between towers.

  The next morning, I opened the door to find him standing outside. Pale. Sweat on his brow despite the cold. His collar was buttoned one button too high.

  "Hey," I said carefully. "You okay?"

  "Fine," he said.

  It was the first time I’d ever heard him lie.

  We went through the motions. My mother smiled too much. My father barely spoke. When he did, it sounded like it came from somewhere else entirely.

  On the fifth day, breakfast was quiet again. I sat with my mother, already chewing a mouthful of the loaf, when my father took his seat across from us. He used to hum when he ate. Just quiet, almost a whisper. It was strange what I noticed in the silence.

  He didn’t sit long that day.

  His body jerked once, hard enough to rattle the entire table, then again, somehow even harder. A horrifying sound came from deep in his chest, wet and bubbling, like someone had left a pot boiling too long.

  His eyes rolled into the back of his skull. His fingers made deep scrapes across the table. I could see his nails breaking as he pulled his hand back toward himself. His skin began to crack, his neck bulging, like something inside was trying to burrow its way out.

  My mother screamed. I’ve never heard her scream like that before or since.

  As if he heard her, my father opened his mouth. A quiet gurgle escaped, then something far too loud, far too sharp. Words can’t describe the sound that came out next.

  Then it happened.

  Black rot sprayed from his lips in a violent burst. Spores swirled through the room, thick as smoke, and liquid splashed across the floor.

  The rot didn’t just fall. Some of it hovered in the air, twitching like it was breathing. Other patches crawled along the walls and the floor, as if it had a mind of its own and was moving toward something it wanted.

  The wall display flared to life.

  "Quarantine breach confirmed. Bio-risk containment protocol engaged."

  I didn’t move. My mother was frozen, hand over her mouth.

  Three sharp knocks came at the door, metallic, final.

  Two enforcers stood outside in reflective suits. One held a data pad. The other held a containment baton.

  "Household flagged. Rot exposure risk: thirty-seven percent. Authorization for forced displacement granted."

  My mother tried to argue. I didn’t hear her words.

  We had sixty seconds. A bag. A coat. Nothing else.

  The enforcers escorted us in silence. One ahead. One behind. Their boots echoed on the steel floors of the residential wing, then faded into the corridor that led to the outer wall.

  I didn’t look back. I already knew the door would be closed.

  A final gate hissed open.

  The sky outside the walls was real, smeared with ash, too bright to look at directly. The sun felt harsher, more direct than what filtered through the domes, but not unbearable. The ash and cloud cover took the edge off, just enough to keep the worst of it at bay.

  The door closed behind us with a heavy clang, steel sliding into place. For a second, I thought I could still hear my mother breathing too fast behind me, or maybe it was just the wind.

  There was no keypad on the outside.

  The sound of the lock engaging echoed louder than any alarm.

  We were outside the city.

  And no one was coming to let us back in.