Splinter View: Chapter 2 — November 4, 2025

CHAPTER 2 — “Threshold”

The door sighs shut behind us, sealing the cabin with a click that feels more final than it should. Inside, the air is cool and unmoving, thick with the smell of stale wood-smoke and something greener—wet moss crushed into old timber. Dust motes drift in low-angle sunlight that leaks through slatted blinds, each speck moving at its own lazy pace, like a private galaxy no one has charted.

Mika’s claws tap-tap across the foyer’s pine planks, a solitary metronome in the hush. She circles twice, then plants herself beneath a coat hook, ears angled toward the living room archway. I balance the spectrometer case on a half-moon entry table, flick the wall switch. A single pendant bulb sputters awake, amber light pooling over braided rugs that have seen better decades.

The stillness out here feels clean. No committees. No whispers. Just air thick with resin and math. I roll my shoulders, feeling the weight of the last few months—the department’s side-eye, the way my name had become a footnote in Horvenstein’s lab after the inquiry. My dark hair, cropped short on the left side, falls into my eyes as I lean over the spectrometer case. Rae Mori didn’t run. She retreated. Semantics mattered.

Last month, I could still trust the equations. They bent, but they never broke. Out here, I keep waiting for the first one that doesn’t add up.

Lena would call it running away. She’d be right. But that word—running—still sounds cleaner than being sent away. Maybe it is. But at least the data can’t accuse anyone of misconduct.

“Okay,” I exhale, pulling out my phone. Routines are ballast. The screen wakes to an old text from Lena—“Don’t forget to actually rest.” I swipe it away before it can feel like judgment. Before it can sound like her.

“Wi-Fi password…” The slip of paper taped near the router reads HALVORSTEINS_GUEST and—naturally—SCI3NCE_CaN_KISS_IT. I snort. “Power strips,” I continue, noting two outlets along the baseboard. “Motion cams go facing deck door, kitchen window, and—” I glance at the loft stairs—“top landing, just in case.” The list steadies my pulse the way titration marks steady a shaking hand.

I pad farther in, sneakers whispering over wood. The living room is a time capsule: stone hearth gone cold, leather sofa wearing a corduroy throw, bookshelves sagging under field guides and yellowed journals. No TV, no smart speaker beyond what I brought. Perfect isolation, I remind myself—exactly what I asked for.

Mika rises and follows, nose low. She pauses at the hearth, sniffs the ash tray, lets out a breathy whine. Her reflection glitters in the black glass of the dormant stove. Mine does not; I’m too far back, a moving shadow among stationary ones.

A board creaks overhead—house settling, I decide, though no log cabin I’ve studied settles in a rhythm like boot steps. I angle my phone upward, thumb hovering over the flashlight, and deliberately do not turn it on.

Mika’s tail thumps once against the floorboards, her golden eyes flicking up at me like she’s waiting for orders. I scratch behind her ears and glance down at the faint, jagged scar on my left wrist—a souvenir from the last time I trusted a mentor’s judgment. The spectrometer had imploded mid-calibration, glass shrapnel embedding itself in my skin like a lesson. Horvenstein had called it “collateral damage.” I’d called it Tuesday.

“Whole place to ourselves, girl,” I say to Mika, voice tacking toward cheer. The words evaporate into the high-beamed ceiling. No echo; the cabin drinks sound. For a moment I wish Lena were on the other side of a video call, filling the space with sarcastic commentary.

Instead it’s just the dog, the dust, and the silent promise of unbroken concentration. I force a grin, scoop up the spectrometer case, and walk deeper into the hush, ticking items off my list before the quiet can tick off anything of its own.

░░ TRANSMISSION SEALED ░░
Next Uplink ↳ Chapter 3 — November 7, 2025