"Only when I twist hard," Caleb said. "Breathing is fine unless the uniform catches against the marks."

Elara looked down at the tablet, then back at him. "When I touch near it, I need you to tell me exactly what changes. Not the clean answer. Not the answer you would give a medic because you want them to clear you faster. If it burns, tightens, pulls, reacts, anything, you tell me."

Caleb looked down at the purple ridges along his side. "You came prepared."

"I came annoyed," Elara said, setting the tablet on the counter beside the mirror. "Those are different things."

"With you, they usually end up in the same place."

A faint crease touched the corner of her mouth, then disappeared.

She removed her remaining glove and placed it beside the tablet. Her bare fingers hovered above the outer edge of the spiral without touching him yet.

Caleb’s abdomen tightened.

Elara’s eyes lifted to his face.

"That happened before I touched you."

"I know."

"Then explain it to me before I put my hand on you."

Caleb searched for a way to say it that did not sound like the fever had finally reached his head. "It is like my body noticed your hand before I decided what to do. I saw you move, and the place around the mark reacted before I could think through whether it should."

Elara kept her fingers still in the air. "That should scare you."

"It does."

"Good. Then we are starting from the same place."

Her fingertips touched the skin beside the first ridge.

Caleb’s hand closed around the edge of the counter.

The mark was warmer beneath her touch than it had been under his own hand. Maybe it was because her fingers were cooler. Maybe it was because the heat under the skin cared more about someone else touching it. The warmth moved slowly along the curve of the spiral as she traced the outer line.

Elara watched his face instead of the mark.

"Your breathing changed," she said.

"It is not pain."

"I believe you. I am asking what it is."

He swallowed. "Pressure. Under the skin. Like something is tightening around the place where the wound used to be."

Elara’s hand stilled at once. "That is the kind of answer I need. If it changes into pain, you tell me before you decide you can handle it."

"It is not pain. Keep going, just slower."

She studied him for another moment before moving again.

Her fingers followed the raised line over his lower ribs, careful with the pressure. The motion began like a field check. Controlled. Measured. Practical. Then the room started to feel too small for that lie. Her bare hand was warm against him. His skin answered before his mind caught up. Every inch she traced made the marks feel less like something printed on a medical report and more like something that had settled into him while he was too weak to object.

Elara reached the point where the spiral disappeared under the edge of his shirt.

She stopped there.

"I thought distance would help," she said.

Caleb looked at her.

She kept her eyes on the marks.

"When you entered the system, I told myself I was doing the right thing by staying away from you. First Division politics follows people. My family name follows people. Sponsors, contracts, target lists, promotion boards, all of it circles anyone standing too close. I thought if I let you stay angry, if I stopped pulling you into my reach, you might stay outside the blast radius."

Caleb’s jaw tightened. "You thought ignoring me was protection."

"Yes." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

"That sounds worse when you say it plainly."

"It felt worse every time I did it."

He looked down at her hand resting near the sealed wound. "I was in the disposal yards, Elara. I was cutting bone out of carcasses for debt credits. You knew that. I was never outside danger."

"I know."

"You knew it then too."

Her fingers stopped moving.

Caleb kept his voice quiet. "You knew where I worked. You knew what the yard did to people. You knew I was taking jobs nobody wanted because my family could not afford me saying no. You backing away did not make me safe. It made me think you had decided I was not worth the trouble."

Elara looked up at him.

The words reached her. He could see it in the way her face lost its command-set stillness for a moment. She did not cover it with rank this time.

"I never decided that."

"Then what did you decide?"

Her hand slid away from the mark, but she stayed close.

"I decided I was scared and dressed it up as strategy. I told myself I was keeping you out of my mess. I told myself anger was safer than attachment. I told myself enough useful things that I could keep walking past you without stopping."

Caleb did not answer right away.

The air vent hummed above them. Beyond the door, the event rolled on with announcers, camera drones, sponsors, and a crowd waiting to turn every survivor into content again.

Elara drew a breath and continued.

"When the feed showed that body, I thought the distance had failed anyway. I thought I had kept you away from me, and you had still ended up dying under my command. Then Aris said the feed moved. Soma went down. Kikaru ran into the collapse. Rina was bleeding out. Jaxson was gone. The floor was disappearing under everyone, and every person alive was looking at me like I could invent a safe answer if I wanted one badly enough."

Caleb listened.

"I ordered the evacuation because that was the only order that kept the living alive," Elara said. "I would give it again. I know that. I can stand by the order and still hate the part where I thought I left you under the map."

"You made the right call."

"I did not come here for you to make it easier."

"I am not trying to make it easier."

"You are," she said. "You do that when something hurts. Someone gives you the ugly version, and you turn it into practical math so neither of you has to sit with it."

Caleb looked at her hand, then back at her face. "Maybe I do that because practical math is the only thing that ever paid my bills."

Elara’s expression shifted.

He let out a breath and leaned back against the counter. "You were right to pull them out. I can know that and still hate being the one underneath the map. Both things can be true."

Her eyes stayed on him.

"That is closer to honest."

"I am improving."

"You are still terrible at it."

"Rank C now."

"That does not help."

He almost smiled.

This time, she saw it.

Her hand returned to his side, but the touch changed. It was still careful. Still aware of the fever warnings and the unnatural warmth under the marks. Her palm settled against him in a way no medic had touched him. No scanner. No contract. No investor looking for yield.

Skin against skin.

Caleb’s breath shifted.

The spiral under her palm tightened.

Elara felt it.

Her focus sharpened.

"There it is again."

"I felt it."

"It moved toward my hand."

"I know."

"Does it feel like you are moving it?"

Caleb looked down at the place where her palm covered the mark. "No. It feels like something under the skin is answering before I can tell it whether to answer."

Her fingers flexed lightly against his ribs. "Answering me?"

He hesitated.

Elara waited.

"Yeah," Caleb said. "You."

She did not pull away.

Anyone else might have reached for a scanner or called Tali back into the room. Elara stayed close, her palm steady against the raised pattern, her face tilted up toward his with fear, guilt, and anger still there, but no disgust.

Caleb noticed that more than anything.

"You are not looking at me like the medics did," he said.

"How did they look at you?"

"Like I was either a problem or a payday."

Elara’s hand pressed more firmly against his side. "You are both, apparently."

"That was supposed to help?"

"No. That was supposed to be true."

A quiet breath left him, almost a laugh.

Elara’s mouth softened for a second.

Then her hand moved higher.

She traced from the lower marks toward the center of his chest, stopping above the place where the main anomaly sat hidden behind bone. Caleb went still before she touched it.

Elara noticed again.

"This part is different."

"Yes."

"The main anomaly is still there?"

"Yes."

"Who knows?"

"Tali suspects. Soma knows enough to threaten me. The medics know less than they think. The owner of my stream probably knows more than she should."

Elara’s gaze flicked toward the covered camera in the corner.

The black cover over the lens sat flush against the casing.

She stepped away from Caleb and crossed the room. Her fingers opened the service panel under the mount.

A small red request light blinked behind the cover.

Elara stared at it.

Caleb lowered his shirt halfway. "Active?"

"It requested access through a medical privacy exception."

"VeilWard?"

"Someone using their permissions."

"Can you shut it off?"

Elara caught the fiber line between two fingers and pulled it free.

The camera died.

Caleb raised an eyebrow. "Can you do that?"

"No."

She left the wire hanging and walked back to him.

She had broken protocol. Not for the event. Not for the Guild. Not for the division.

For him.

Elara stood close again.

Her bare hand returned to the center of his chest, palm flat over the hidden anomaly.

Caleb felt heat gather beneath her touch. The purple marks on his side tightened, then eased, as if whatever had rebuilt him was listening from under the skin.

Elara’s voice lowered.

"I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer without turning it into a joke or a bill calculation."

"I do not joke that much."

"You joke when something matters."

He let that pass because she was right.

She looked down at her hand on his chest. "Is this still you?"

The question cut cleaner than he expected.

Caleb looked at the mirror.

The uniform jacket hung over the chair. The tablet still showed fever warnings. His raised marks curved under the shirt. His body felt steady in a way it had no right to feel. He had woken up hungry every day since the parasite first saved him, and now even that familiar suffering had gone quiet.