"What?!...That can't be right!"

The shopkeeper burrows his mustache as his heavy sigh fills the dreadful upcoming response.
"Sorry, but there was never a package sent here, but maybe it's running late," the shopkeeper affirms. "I'm sorry"

Sean runs his fingers through his hair frantically, trying to pick out a solution to his imminent problem in his strands but to no luck. The package that was suppose to arrive for him consisted of his allowance for the week.
"Alright...are you su-"

"Yes, I am. I'll go looking for you if I ever get anythin'. But for now, there's nothing I can do." the shopkeeper interrupts.

Sean trailed out of the off license dejectedly. Its neon sign flickered gently behind him “StarMart: OPEN 24/7”. He scarcely had the money to buy liquor and his hands were beginning to shake. He scrounged around in his pocket for a cigarette—no luck.

Then, he spotted a butt in the gutter. Bingo. He brushed the gunk off: it was almost entirely unsmoked. He lit the thing and brought it to his lips as sweet relief flowed through him.

He needed that money. It was his strike pay, though it was beginning to look more like severance pay. As meagre as it was, the Eclipse Corp pilots’ strike had been ongoing for months now, and Sean Haverlily had relied on the bundle of 30 Carbons a week to keep himself fed and clothed.

The Union had splintered weeks ago. Some members accepted buyouts. Others disappeared. A few found work off‑world, chasing rumours of better pay on distant moons.

Sean stayed.

Aerilune was home. Its silver‑blue skies, its humming skylanes, its crowded markets and flickering holo‑ads were as much part of him as they were of the city. Leaving felt like cutting out a piece of himself.

He exhaled slowly, watching the breath fog in front of him.“Alright,” he muttered to himself. “Think. There’s got to be another way.”

Sean glanced up at the sky. A shuttle streaked overhead, its engines leaving a faint violet trail. For a moment, he imagined himself in the cockpit again, hands steady, mind sharp, guiding passengers through the stratosphere.

That life felt impossibly far away now.

He crushed the cigarette beneath his boot and continued on home.

The walk home seemed to drag. He could smell the smoke from the cigarette he smoked from his lips, and its smell seemed to mix like oil and water with the smell of the smog in the cold, damp air around him. He'd turned nose-blind to it. When you had lived here, stayed here as long as he did, there was plenty of things you had turned blind to-- Begging lepers on the side-walk, the 35% mortality rate for under 12s, and the bizarre, dystopian state of Aerilune. Aerilune was black and white in the way it either made you or broke you, but to Shawn, it all seemed to be grey. He couldn't remember the last time he had a win or a great show of toughness amidst hardship, or faced a total catastrophe that left him devastated. He couldn't feel anything but indifference for that fact.

He found himself alienating with each other step he took back to home. Maybe the prior Union members were right. This place was limbo. They were right to leave, he thinks. Yet, like a problematic family, he couldn't seem to disregard his loyalty to it, to Aerilune. How could he be so sure those who left were living any better than he was here? What if Aerilune was the best it got? He got conflicted. He wished he could say Aerilune was great. But, at the back of his mind, there was always a nagging voice saying that Aerilune was the worst it got.

By the time Sean reached his block, the streetlights had begun their Sisyphean descent: half of them dead, the other half buzzing like they were thinking about it. The entry scanner blinked red when he pressed it.

“Yeah, figures,” he muttered.

He didn’t bother trying again. A quick shove at the door near the hinge popped it open with a dull crack. Someone had broken the lock months ago. No one had fixed it. He had only been living here a month since his old place evicted him for late payments, and already knew how the machine of digs like these worked.

The apartment greeted him with silence.

He dropped into the chair by the window, staring out over Aerilune’s fractured skyline, where the traffic lanes shimmered overhead like veins carrying something sick through the city.

His stomach tightened. He needed to find food. He grabbed his jacket and headed out before he could think better of it.

The transit platform hovered three levels above street grade, suspended by cables that creaked whenever a tram passed through. Sean leaned against the railing, watching a freight convoy drift below, long chains of cargo pods marked with the stark, silver insignia of Eclipse Corp, a circle eclipsing a line.

A tram screeched into the station, doors snapping open. Sean stepped inside with the rest of the silent crowd. Above the door, a holo-ad flickered to life: a smiling pilot guiding a family through a sunlit sky that didn’t exist anywhere on Aerilune.

“Eclipse Corp — Carrying Tomorrow.”

Sean let out a dry snort through his nose.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Carrying it right over us.”

“You always did have a way with optimism.”

The voice came from his left. Sean stiffened, then turned. Mara. She leaned against the pole like she owned the tram, arms crossed, expression already halfway to annoyed. Her jacket still bore her faded Union patch, stitched, not printed.

“Didn’t think you still rode public,” Sean said.

“Didn’t think you still existed,” she shot back.

The tram lurched forward.

Sean looked away first. “What do you want?”

Mara tilted her head slightly. “Word travels. StarMart. Missing pay.”

He frowned. “You following me now?”

“No,” she said flatly. “I’m dealing with the same problem.”

That made him look back.

“What?”

“No drop this week. Not for me. Not for Kess. Not for anyone I’ve checked with.” She paused, watching his reaction. “You thought it was just you?”

Sean’s jaw tightened.

“That shopkeeper said nothing came in,” he said. “Nothing.”

“Exactly.”

The tram rattled harder as it curved along the outer rail, the city yawning open beneath them, stacked districts, flickering grids, smoke rising upwards like teeth in a dragon’s mouth.

Mara pushed off the pole and stepped closer, lowering her voice.

“The Union’s not paying.”

Sean shook his head. “No. They don’t just stop. That’s the whole point. Strike pay keeps people from folding.”

“Yeah,” Mara said. “And what happens when someone wants the strike to fold?”

He went quiet. “You’re thinking Eclipse,” he said.

“Have you heard from Frankie since he ‘left the planet’? From anyone?”

Sean held her gaze. “You always jump to the worst-case.”

“And you always wait too long to admit it’s already happening. You don’t get to do this, acting like if you sit in your apartment long enough, it’ll fix itself.”

His shoulders tensed. “I’m not—”

“You are,” she said. “You stayed when the others left. Fine. So did I. But I haven’t seen you on the picket lines once.”

“Aerilune doesn’t take care of anyone,” Sean snapped. “You strike, you get replaced. Picketing isn’t going to do anything.”

“At least I’m doing something. You’re starting to sound like a scab.” she shot back.

The tram slowed as it approached the next platform, brakes screaming softly.

Mara exhaled.

“Look,” she said, quieter now. “There’s a guy in Dock Sector C. Used to run logistics for Eclipse shipments before they kicked him out. If something’s intercepting Union pay, he’d know how.”

“You already talked to him?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not yet,” she said, meeting his eyes again, “he doesn’t talk to people he doesn’t trust.” She held his gaze then. “He’ll talk to you.”

Sean frowned. “Why me?”

“Because you flew for Eclipse longer than any of us,” she said. “You know them. You are them.”

Sean looked down at his hands, flexing them unconsciously, as if his flight gloves were already there.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Worked out great.”

The tram doors hissed open.

Mara stepped back toward them. “Dock Sector C. Noon.”

She paused, just before stepping off.

“Or don’t come,” she added. “But if you’re right, if this is nothing, then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Sean watched her disappear into the crowd.