She stepped closer.
His knees gave, just slightly. She caught the weight before it crashed—one hand on his arm, the other guiding him down onto the edge of the medical cot.
Her grip was steady. But her voice wasn't.
"It's fine," she said, and the crack in her tone betrayed the words. "You're still shaky. It's been too long since you walked."
Elias let her steady him. Just for a breath. Then his hand brushed her arm—fleeting, deliberate. A touch that tried to say something without shaping it into sound.
He didn't look up right away. His lungs still burned. The buzz of the ward pressed too hard against his skull.
But then—
Movement.
Just past her shoulder. Not a person. Not a shadow.
A shape.
Geometric. Floating. It flickered into being with a vapor trail curling like breath in cold air. Its form was boxy—stacked prisms and fractured squares, each edge lined in faint light, transparent as data glass.
His breath caught.
