The Yellow Rose

My name is Aura. I live in Sector 19, one of the industrial zones still standing after the Restructuring. Everything here is concrete and rusted metal, stitched together with wiring that sparks if you breathe too hard. I work as a general technician. That’s a fancy way of saying I fix things that should have stopped working years ago. My copper-colored hair is always pulled back, my blue eyes dulled from years of fluorescent lighting. I’m stocky. Not slim, not soft either. The labor keeps me strong. That strength is the only thing my superiors ever valued.

I hate my job. Always have. Orders come from behind glass or through the crackle of overhead speakers. Fix this. Open that. Turn off the lights. Don’t speak. Do your job. That last one echoes loudest. So, I stopped speaking unless I had to. I became a shadow in a place that didn’t want me, only what I could do.

The only place I felt alive was at home, with Rhiannon.

She worked maintenance too. Not because she lacked skill, but because women who challenged authority were quietly shoved aside. She applied to Engineering Command five times. Her scores were high. Her file was flagged. Too many notes about her tone. Too many reports from men she corrected. She didn’t sit still. She didn’t apologize.

They pushed her to the lowest levels, gave her a frayed jumpsuit and a broken cart, and told her to keep the system running. She did.

The first time I saw her, I was cleaning a corridor that didn’t need to be cleaned. We were often assigned busywork when supervisors couldn’t find real problems. She turned the corner, a worn Kindle in one hand.

“What’s your name?” she asked. “I’m Rhiannon.”

I was startled. Most people ignored me completely. Her eyes met mine and didn’t look away. There was power in her gaze. She didn’t ask for attention. She simply had it.

“Aura,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

After that, we kept crossing paths. Maybe coincidence. Probably not. She lingered near my work area, striking up conversations while she rewired junctions or replaced filters. Sometimes she paced. Other times she stood still, calm in the hum of machinery and the hiss of aging vents.

She told me stories. Her brother fled overseas to avoid military conscription. Her old dog used to curl at her feet and refused to believe he wasn’t a lapdog. She talked about her nightmares, and the medication people wanted her to take. She refused. Said it dulled her too much. She’d rather feel fear than nothing.

One day she asked me what I liked. I didn’t know how to answer. No one had ever cared before. I just shrugged. Words felt risky.

The next day, she gave me a yellow rose. The petals were brittle at the edges, probably pulled from one of the wilted flower beds near the dome’s edge. Still, it was beautiful.

“This is for you,” she said. “Yellow roses mean friendship. I’m glad to call you mine.”

I held it close. I didn’t speak. She didn’t need me to.

After that, we grew closer. We exchanged small gifts. She made a bracelet from copper wire. I carved a figure out of scrap. Eventually, we started leaving coded messages in tool lockers. Little notes that only we could read. Love, hidden in plain sight.

Two years later, we married in secret. New policies had made it illegal for women to marry each other. They called it a security risk. Said it encouraged “unproductive alliances.” That was their language. Ours was simpler. Ours was love.

Time moved differently for her than it did for me. Rhiannon’s golden hair faded to silver, then she dyed it reddish brown to hold off the years. But dye didn’t change her slower walk, the way her hands shook when she held a wrench, the way her boots. still patched with duct tape, dragged more than they stepped.

She still tried to work. But more and more, I found her curled beneath our worn blanket, too tired to get up. The air in the dome was filtered and dry. It made her cough. She wouldn’t go to a doctor. Said we couldn’t afford questions.

One night, I lay beside her and listened to her breathe. The rhythm had grown shallow. I counted the seconds between each inhale.

When she woke, she smiled at me, the way she always did when pretending nothing hurt.

“I love you,” she whispered.

I took her hand. “I love you too.”

She reached up and touched my face. Her fingers were cold.

“You haven’t aged,” she said. “Not since the day we met.”

I leaned into her touch. “Good genetics,” I said.

She smiled again, slower this time.

“Thank you for loving me.”

She breathed in once more. Her eyes closed. Her chest went still. The silence that followed was louder than any machine I’d ever heard.

I held her close and rocked gently. As if that could bring her back. I had never cried before. But that night, I did.

They buried her in the outer fields, past the dome where sunlight still reached through cracked sky glass. I planted her beneath a dying oak tree. She had always loved trees. Said they didn’t need permission to grow. They just did. Even when their roots broke concrete, they kept reaching.

I wore the copper bracelet she gave me. I folded a yellow rose into her blanket before the soil covered her.

After that, I stopped showing up to work. No one came to find me. People like me were easy to forget. That was the point. Unregistered. Undocumented. Easy to lose beneath the layers of patched uniforms and creaking boots. Even the drones skipped my unit. Maybe someone marked me as retired. Maybe they thought I was already dead.

But I wasn’t.

And that was the problem.

A year passed. I looked in the mirror and saw the same face Rhiannon first saw. Not a wrinkle. Not a gray hair. Not even tired eyes.

At first, I thought it was grief. Denial. But denial doesn’t stop your skin from sagging. It doesn’t keep your bones from aching. I wasn’t aging. I hadn’t been, not for a very long time.

The truth is, I don’t know how old I am.

I remember fields of real grass. I remember birds in the sky. I remember my sister and I running barefoot through wildflowers. I remember a hospital room, white walls, voices behind a curtain.

“She’s not ready.”

“She volunteered. It’s too late.”

Then it all went dark.

The world shattered. Governments collapsed. Corporations replaced them. Science became property. Failed projects were erased, repurposed, or hidden. I was one of them.

But I survived. I was made to. Whatever they put in me, whatever they changed, it worked. Too well.

I spent years hiding. Slipping between sectors. Keeping my head down. No one questioned women who worked hard and said little. I disappeared into the system. Let the world rebuild itself again and again, while I stayed the same.

Then I met Rhiannon.

She saw me. Not what I was, but who I was. She never asked where I came from. Never flinched when she touched my skin and found no scars. She just loved me. Fully. Fiercely. Quietly.

And I let her grow old.

That haunts me.

I should have left when the signs started. Should have vanished again, like I always had. But I didn’t. I stayed. Because she made me feel like I wasn’t a mistake.

Now she’s gone. And I am still here.

The domes are closing. They're calling it population control. Purity protocols. New words for the same old ideas.

But there are whispers in the underground. Women are organizing. Mechanics. Teachers. Ex-soldiers. Some of them remember Rhiannon. They speak her name like a warning and a promise. She left behind schematics. Hidden codes. Maps of tunnels no one remembers.

I wear her jumpsuit now. It still hangs too big on the shoulders. The boots are almost falling apart. I fix them anyway.

They say ghosts haunt the mechanical levels.

Let them say it.

Because I am still here.

And this time, I will not stay silent.