The air in the history room still felt heavy, even hours after Aris had cut off that raw historical feed. Eli sat in his usual chair, leaning against the wall, eyes glued to the panoramic view of the perfectly kept biodomes outside. The terror from that civilian broadcast still scratched at his mind, but underneath it, a weird, grim satisfaction simmered. Aris had seen it. She'd really seen a piece of his hell.
Aris herself seemed different. She'd gone back to her console, lost in thought, her usual calm look clearly shaken. Her movements were less smooth, more deliberate, like she was wading through thick water. When she finally turned to him, her eyes, still pale blue, held a new, deeper shadow.
"Sergeant," she started, her voice raspy, "I... I'm sorry. We've always believed that just knowing the history was enough. To measure it, to analyze it, to stop it from happening again. We forgot... the human cost. What it actually felt like". She paused, searching for words. "You're not just some old record, Eli Stone. You're living proof. And a warning".
It was the first time she'd called him Eli, not just his rank. That small change clicked with him, a tiny nod that he was a person, not just a subject. But even as that hint of connection sparked, the weight of it settled in. He was a warning. A relic of horrors they couldn't even grasp. What good was a warning in a world that had forgotten how to listen to anything but harmonious data?
Days blurred into weeks, each one a slow, unsettling mix of bland nutrient paste and the facility's humming, sterile peace. Aris kept up their sessions, but there was a clear shift. She wasn't pushing sanitized history anymore. Instead, she started watching Eli in new, less structured places, often inviting him to walk through the facility's various biodomes – huge, self-contained ecosystems that mimicked Earth's different climates. She was observing him, searching for something more.