Chapter Text
It had been a few months since the election, and January was settling into a routine at Songshu. He was grateful for how his life had unfolded. He was out of prison, his relationship with River had become something steady and real, he loved caring for Yuan, he’d even forged real friendships with the staff—and had held entire conversations with Sasha that didn’t involve a gun. For the first time in forever, he felt like all his needs were met.
Even so, a quiet unease had taken root. Life-threatening chaos might no longer be a daily expectation, but anxiety still tugged at him like a deep current. He wasn’t concerned about being sent to prison or deported anymore, and he wasn’t hypervigilant about being shot or attacked again (although he did worry about River’s safety when they were out and about, but that was different). What lingered was a stubborn certainty that all this would collapse eventually. That something could go wrong, and he’d be left alone again, scraping by in an inhospitable world. He tried reasoning himself out of it, but that snarling inner voice was resolute.
The dreams had begun a few weeks ago. At first just the one, then a pattern: the floodwaters of London, the Opera House, the endless rain. Each night, he woke breathless and panicky, silently clinging to a sleeping River like a lifeline. He never mentioned it. They were too busy. He didn’t want to add another worry to their list.
But the nights went on, and the knot inside him only tightened.
He didn’t want to become the kind of person who swallowed everything until it curdled into anger. He’d seen what that did. His father’s violent outbursts, his mother’s retreats. He couldn’t bear the thought of repeating that pattern. If he was nothing else, he wanted to be a good, emotionally available partner and parent to his little family. It was what they deserved.
So, with help from—of all people—Dr. Okonkwo, he found a therapist. River knew, vaguely; they thought he was sorting out ‘residual stress,’ which was true, technically. He just hadn’t mentioned the nightly floods and the bit where he woke up shaking. He felt like this was a problem he should try to fix on his own. And he promised himself, quietly but sincerely, that he would put in the work.
His therapist’s office was in Dengta, high up in a glass tower overlooking a crowded street. It was unassuming in a way that felt anonymous and safe. No journalists would be waiting to snap a photo of Consul-Consort Stirling sneaking off to see a shrink.
Dr. Halloran was a slight, naturalized woman originally from Chicago. He’d chosen her precisely because she was from Earth, someone who might understand what it was like to leave a planet behind. This was his fourth visit.
As always, they sat opposite each other in soft chairs, a few feet apart. She held a tablet in her lap, stylus poised for note-taking. “You said last week,” she began, “that you’re sleeping, but still dreaming of London.”
He nodded. “Yes. The flood. The Opera House, rowing through the city looking for help. There’s so much water, and I know I won’t escape it.”
“What emotions do you feel in the dream?”
“Panic. Fear. Despair. Helplessness.” His throat tightened. “I know my world’s ending.”
Dr. Halloran tilted their head slightly. “And what happens when you wake?”
“Panic. Like I can’t breathe. Then I force myself to pull it together before– before I wake up my spouse. Sometimes I go down to the kitchen and make tea.” He gives her a faint smile. “Which I realize is the most British possible response to impending doom.”
That earned the brief, professional half-smile he’d hoped for. Permission to be wry about unbearable things.
After a pause, she said, “I’ve been thinking about something we could try, if you’re up for it. It… can be intense, so don’t feel that you need to say yes. We can always revisit this in the future if you’re not ready, but it’s shown some promise for people who struggle to process trauma through talk alone.”
“Okay… I’m interested. What is it?”
“It’s a form of controlled immersion. You’ve been very analytical in talking about what happened in our previous sessions, but analysis isn’t the same as processing. You’ve seen halo tests, rights? This technique uses a halo device to extract memory data and generate a virtual reality reconstruction. In your case, the London flood—kind of like an immersive film of your own life, with your younger self as the main character. You’d experience it as a bystander rather than a participant.”
He stared at the carpet. “You mean I’d… relive it?”
“Not exactly. You’d witness it unfolding, aware that it isn’t happening to you now. It’s a technique for re-contextualizing the event… seeing it safely, now that you have some distance from it. Cognitively and emotionally, but also geographically, in this case. What do you think?”
He gave a short, incredulous laugh. “That sounds like science fiction.” But the idea of seeing the Opera House again pulled at him. It made his heart hurt. He took a breath. “How does the memory extraction work?”
“During the extraction session, you’ll wear a halo. I’ll guide you through prompts on a tablet to focus on the right timeframe, and the device records the sensory data associated with it. The system then builds the VR environment over the next 48 hours or so. Once it’s ready, I’ll receive a preview, which we can watch together. Think of it as a short trailer of the event. If you’re comfortable after that, I’ll send you the full file to explore privately, on your own time.”
“And it won’t pick up… other memories?” He was acutely aware that he was holding onto state secrets that kept his family safe.
“No. You’ll sign consent paperwork that limits the capture to the parameters you select. Nothing else.”
He nodded slowly. The idea felt terrifying and curiously logical. If he couldn’t stop having the dreams, maybe the solution was to walk through his nightmare on his own terms.
“Okay. Alright. Let’s try it.”
On the train back to Songshu, he leaned his forehead against the window. Tharsis’ city lights reflected faintly over the swirling dust as he ascended the valley wall. For the first time since London, he felt the smallest shred of control settle onto him.
The following week, Dengta lay beneath a slow-moving dust veil. Taking the train in, January watched the city blur into muted reds and golds. The soft edges made the world feel far away. He tried not to read too much symbolism in it.
Dr. Halloran’s office smelled faintly of cleaning solution and lemon tea. The halo device sat on the table between them, a smooth ring of matte silver pulsing purple light. He knew from experience that it was harmless. It still made his stomach twist.
“Nothing to worry about,” she said softly, setting up the interface on her table. “It just listens.”
He sat down in his usual chair and took off his glasses. She placed the sensor on his forehead, and a second on his wrist to track his vitals.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s begin with something simple. I’ll prompt you to call up the first memory of that period. How about your commute from your flat to the Opera House? Just observe it. Don’t force details. Let it surface on its own.”
He nodded. His palms had already begun to sweat.
“Tell me what you see.”
He closed his eyes. “The water taxi stopping outside my bedroom window. I remember climbing through the window and sitting on the top platform. Riding to work. Not a care in the world.”
“Good. What’s the weather like?”
“Um. Typical London weather. Overcast, gray. Might rain later.”
“I see. Tell me about arriving to work.”
“The water taxi pulled up to the stairs of the Opera House. The water had covered most of the stairs but the door wasn’t underwater. Not at that point anyway. So I climbed out onto a dry stair and went inside. Most of the Company was already there, they’d spent the morning rehearsing scenes that I wasn’t in, so I didn’t have to come in until later. I… walked up to the stage through the rows of seats so I could watch the rehearsal. Everything is red velvet and polished wood. It smelled like dust and varnish. I watched for a few minutes, then said my hellos when they finished the scene. I think I headed back to my dressing room then.”
“Ok, very good. And when did it start to rain?” she said.
“Ah, um. I remember hearing it on the roof just before going on stage to rehearse my first scene. It was loud, but I was used to the sound at that point. It wasn’t anything to worry about.”
“And when did it become something to worry about?”
He swallowed. “I remember the orchestra conductor coming in and saying that the foyer was flooded. That hadn’t happened before. The water had gotten into the electrical wiring and we lost power. Honestly I still wasn’t too worried at this point… more irritated because it meant I’d have to spend the night there. I wanted to go home and shower, sleep in my own bed. And my contact lenses were already dry and hurting. I didn’t bring glasses so I couldn’t take them out. I was just annoyed. I didn’t understand yet that this was the beginning of the end.”
“And then what?”
“I tried to sleep but woke up a few hours later. I went to the window and saw how serious it really was. The water was up to the sill. People were on rooftops, in boats. I… realized that this was different than the flash floods before.”
Dr. Halloran’s stylus scratched quietly against her tablet. “Stay there for a few minutes longer. Let it fill in around you.”
He did. He heard water slapping the House’s stone walls, mixed with soft sleepy murmurs behind him. He heard the rain hitting the water, hitting the tents people had pitched on the rooftop across from him. He heard muffled weather sirens going off across the city and garbled emergency announcements coming from phones and radios of people drifting by in rowboats and canoes. He felt the chill of wind over water. His breath hitched.
“All right,” she said gently. “Now let’s move forward.”
They worked through his trip out into the flood, looking for supplies with his Conductor. Coming back to a group of 20 people with barely enough food to feed five of them. The rationing, the starving, the helplessness. Fourteen days of survival, giving up, and persisting.
And then rescue on the fifteenth. Marshmallows. Agreeing to seek refuge in Tharsis. The Crossing.
By the time he finished, his throat ached. He opened his eyes to find Dr. Halloran watching him carefully. “The halo has the range it needs now. The VR environment will take about two days to render, and then we’ll look at the preview together.”
He nodded faintly, reaching up to touch his forehead after she removed the halo.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Strange,” he said. “I haven’t told that story before, at least not all in one go with all the details. I feel a bit disoriented.”
“That’s normal.” She set the halo aside and offered him a glass of water. “You did well, January. Go easy on yourself tonight. Rest, eat something comforting. The body can’t always tell the difference between real stress and remembered stress.”
He smiled weakly. “Lovely. I’ll do my best.”
When he left, the dust had dissipated. On the ride back to Songshu, he messaged Mx Ren. “Any chance the kitchen could make something ‘comforting’ tonight? Doctor’s orders.”
Ren replied almost immediately. “Define comforting. I remember those culture segments you filmed about traditional British food. Are you hoping for something bean-based and absolutely revolting? Should I tell the chef to burn it before sending it out?”
“Ha ha,” he wrote. “Cake, Ren. Something sweet and chocolatey.”
“Ah, medicinal chocolate. The best kind.”
A few days later, he was back in Dr. Halloran’s office to view his ‘trailer.’
The preview was short, only about a minute and a half. Projected above her tablet, it played like a ghost’s memory. He saw his commute through Covent Gardens, the little water taxi nudging up to the Opera House. His throat tightened at the sight. Then came the jump cuts: the lobby half submerged, his own blurred reflection in the rising water, the rowboat, the days of hunger, the helicopter’s winch descending through the rain. He had to look away or he was going to cry.
Dr. Halloran’s voice brought him back. “I’ll send you the full file now. You control when and where you engage with this. It’s safe, and you can stop it any time. Let’s meet again in a week or two and see if you’ve made any progress. No pressure.”
He nodded, blinking too often. “Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”
He thought about the VR immersion for three days.
He thought about it on the train home from Halloran’s office, listening to the shushing and rhythmic beats of the rails to drown out the rush of phantom water.
He thought about it in the mornings, when River was gone by 7am and the house hadn’t yet launched into its daily explosion of meetings, meetings, meetings.
He thought about it in the evenings, during lulls in dinner conversation, and later, in the dark, listening to River’s breathing settle into sleep.
He still hadn’t told them about the dreams, or the VR file. River would be gentle and concerned and would treat him as though he was precious. It would be too much. He couldn’t hold himself together under that kind of tenderness.
He was scared, but he wouldn’t make this anyone else’s problem.
On the fourth morning, he opened the House Gale calendar and blocked two hours in the VR room for the following afternoon:
VR Chamber 01 — 14:00–16:00 — January
The next morning, January was up early for a photoshoot featuring Fenhua’s upcoming line. River blinked awake an hour later to an empty bed and pulled up the day’s schedule. The morning was packed with briefings about the convoy from Earth, but the afternoon was a mess of red lines. Meetings with three senators: cancelled. A consular visit from the Eurasian delegation: postponed.
A free afternoon and evening was as rare as rain on Mars.
They checked January’s schedule next, hopeful. No such luck: fittings for the upcoming gala, a culture segment to film, a call with the Tharsis Ballet Company. And–
VR Chamber 01 — 14:00–16:00 — January (Encrypted File: External Source).
They could see that he’d created the entry himself. No other attendees. He almost never used the VR chambers since he didn't have haptics, and apparently he was bringing his own file? Hm. It could’ve been nothing. But they were themself… and they had never once let a mystery go uninvestigated.
January let the door seal behind him and stood still with his back to it. The VR chamber was all white walls and an open floor plan. The adjoining prep room held adaptive furniture that could be brought in for longer sessions. His nerves were begging him to hold off just a few more minutes, so he made a drawn-out process of dragging a big, padded platform seat to the middle of the VR floor, taking his time positioning it as if it mattered where he sat.
Finally, he linked his glasses to the system and opened the file. The menu glowed, waiting. He took a deep breath and selected proceed.
The first frame felt like a fist to the chest. He was in his old flat in Hackney, watching his younger self climb through the window into a water taxi. And then there were the front steps of the Royal Opera House, its gilded foyer, velvet seats. The place that had been both work and refuge.
He was hovering on the balcony inside, looking down at his younger self rehearsing a complicated scene with Terry. His wrists twinged in sympathy, but past-Jan was making it look effortless. He really had been good at his craft.
The simulation slipped forward: the laughter, the birthday cake, watching others rehearse into the evening. Then, inevitably, the sound of rain. It made his pulse quicken and chest constrict. And then the orchestra conductor was speaking in urgent tones, telling everyone that the foyer was flooded under feet of water already, and the rain was still coming.
He didn’t hear the door open behind him.
River entered quietly, soft-footed as always, and closed the door behind them. Their implants connected to the system automatically. User: Aubrey Gale — Haptic implants detected. Join active session? They selected Yes.