The birds stopped singing on the morning of the audit.
Seventeen-year-old Cam Ross stood barefoot on the rusted steps of his aunt’s trailer, cold metal biting into his heels, a chipped mug trembling in his grip. The air smelled of rust and the sharp tang of last night’s rain evaporating off hot gravel. Above him, the sky sagged, overcast and too quiet. Not a chirp. Not a flutter. Just that thick, heavy silence, as if the world had paused, holding its breath before something broke.
He poured the coffee into a patch of dry weeds. It steamed in the cool air, curling with the weight of a memory he didn’t ask for.
“They’re rebooting again,” came a voice from the gravel path.
Jules, eighteen, gear-headed, and half-feral, slung her copper-threaded hoodie over a mess of curls as she stalked past, the shotgun on her back catching the dull light, a warning sign in steel and shadow. She was technically his neighbor, though neighbors meant something different now. You didn’t borrow sugar. You shared silence.
“You think it’s another update?” Cam asked.
“Probably,” she muttered. “Birds don’t go quiet unless they’re syncing or glitching. My cousin in Zone 12 saw one fall straight out of the sky last month. Hit the concrete hard. Left sparks.”
Cam swallowed hard. Everyone knew the truth now, at least those who dared to speak it in whispers. The birds weren’t real, not since the Collapse.
Before the Recalibration, birds had been just birds. Cam remembered them, barely. Bits of flash and flutter from when he was small. Sparrows nesting under the eaves. A blue jay once stole his snack. Real wings. Real songs. Then came the great silence. Then the replacements.
They called them A.V.I.A.N.s—Automated Visual Intelligence and Audio Nodes. A fancy name, scientific sounding. Weather monitoring, environmental analysis. That was the story. But people knew. They were eyes. Ears. And they reported everything.
You couldn’t talk about the old birds, not in public. You couldn’t sing. Couldn’t keep books about nature unless they were government-approved. His aunt had burned his dad’s field guide collection when the scans began, just in case. Cam still remembered the way the pages curled, the smell of ink and old paper burning to ash.
The audit van crested the hill, a shadow made solid. Matte black. Windowless. Humming with the low thrum of electric menace. Dust spiraled behind it, carried in its wake.
Jules didn’t say goodbye. She vanished behind the shed.
Cam stepped off the porch. Spine straight. Face calm. Inside, he was lightning.
The van hissed open.
Two officers emerged, all in gray, with the same patch stitched to their chests: a silver crow, wings flared wide. One was tall and pale, the other compact and watchful.
“Citizen Cameron Ross,” the taller one said. “Your file was flagged. Loyalty verification required.”
“I already submitted my weekly,” Cam replied.
“That’s why we’re here.”
Inside the van, the air buzzed with static. They strapped him in with practiced ease. A lens adjusted to his pupil.
“Do you believe the Sky Net Avian Initiative protects our freedoms?” “Yes.” “Do you understand that organic birds are classified as extinct due to natural causes?” “Yes.” “Have you encountered, touched, or witnessed a non-registered avian life form in the past thirty days?”
Cam’s pulse kicked.
Last week, by the abandoned creek bed, he had seen one. Small. Brown. Unmarked. Alive. It had sung. He hadn’t told anyone. Not even Jules.
“No,” he said.
The lens held him a moment longer. Then: a green light.
“Clear,” the officer said. “Next audit in thirty days. Noncompliance will result in reassignment.”
They unbuckled him and pushed him out the hatch without ceremony.
That night, sleep evaded him. The wind moaned against the trailer walls, rattling loose siding with a sound like bones in a can. Cam slipped out the back and followed the dry ditch down to the place where the bird had appeared. The moon hung low and orange, bleeding into the horizon. He sat for an hour, flashlight ready, heart thudding.
Then flutter.
Not synthetic. Not coded.
A real flutter. Feathered. Trembling.
A shape danced in the beam—small, breathing, impossibly alive. Cam’s breath caught in his throat. Tied to its leg was a note, soft and weathered, folded with care.
Hands trembling, he unrolled it.
You’re not crazy. We remember, too.
