Scene
The cell was silent but for the low hum of the circulation vents. The air was thin, metallic, dry enough to crack her lips. Beyond the walls, Lyra knew, there was nothing but a dead planet — an atmosphere of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, thin as gauze, unbreathable, colder than ice. The Authority had chosen their prison well.
She lay curled on the cot, staring into the dark. Then a shape was there.
At first she thought it was a guard. She sat up sharply, pressing back against the wall. But the figure was neither uniformed nor armed. A man — or something like a man — stood in the corner of her cell, pale light pooling faintly around him though there was no source.
“Who are you?” Her voice was hoarse. “How did you get in here?”
The stranger regarded her with calm, distant eyes. “Do not lose hope.”
Lyra laughed once, bitter and hollow. “Hope has only ever led me to despair.”
The man tilted his head, as though weighing her words. “Someone is coming for you,” he said at last. “But he is fractured. Broken into many possibilities. You must help him find the right one.”
Her breath caught. She wanted to demand answers, to grasp the meaning hidden in his words, but her throat closed. The room tilted, shadows stretching. The figure began to dissolve, as though he had never been there at all.
Lyra jolted awake — alone, the hum of the vents steady, the cell unchanged. A dream, she told herself. It had to be.
Yet something lingered, warm and steady in her chest. For the first time since her imprisonment, she felt it: hope.