The wind moved sideways out here.
Not against you. Not behind. Just… across.
It swept over the scrubland like it had no interest in direction — only presence. A kind of elemental patience. The kind that outlives maps. Hernan stood just beyond the broken perimeter fence of the weather station, boots sunk into the dust where the asphalt had finally given up and let the dirt win. The old satellite dish creaked above him. Not scanning. Not transmitting. Just… turning. Still moving, long after everything else had stopped needing it to.
He hadn't spoken aloud in hours.
He hadn't needed to.
Every word he once used to carry a command, a trigger, a protocol, a code. Here, none of that mattered. The station was gutted — stripped of data drives, unlit except by the late afternoon sun. The air inside was neither warm nor cold, simply indifferent.
And Hernan was welcome in that indifference.
