"Kit?" Alfie was at my side instantly, pink coat bristling. "You alright? Did it hit you?"
"No," I choked out. I stared at my hand. "I touched her."
Alfie went still. "And?"
"And I think I just electrocuted us both."
When I finally got back to the bus it was quiet. Deadly quiet.
Zia was barricaded in her bunk. The Do-Not-Cross tape mocked me from the floor.
We huddled in the lounge. Alfie was pacing, wearing a track into the carpet. He looked like a caged fox, energy snapping off him in waves of burnt sugar.
"She thinks we hate her," Alfie said, running a hand through his hair. "She thinks we’re repulsed. And now you’ve grabbed her and she ran like she was on fire."
"I saved her life," I said, staring at my boots. "The light would have crushed her."
"You touched her," Euan said. He was sitting at the table, staring at his laptop, but he wasn't typing. "We broke the seal."
"She’s analyzing it," Euan continued, voice flat. "We’re giving her meters. We’re building air systems. We’re keeping distance. She is interpreting the data set as disgust. She thinks we are avoiding contamination."
"Weareavoiding contamination," I snapped. "Just not hers. Ours."
"She doesn't know that or maybe she just doesn't understand it."
Alfie stopped pacing. He slammed his hand against the wall. "It’s a mess. We’re a mess. We need to, we need to tell her."
"No," I said. "We tell her, she runs for real. She’s got an Exit Card in her pocket, remember? Rowan put it there."
"So what do we do?" Alfie demanded. "Watch her treat us like radioactive waste?"
I looked at my hand again. I could still feel the ghost of her pulse.
"We change the rules," I said. The Manchester accent was thick in my mouth, heavy and grounding. "No more guessing. No more trying to be clever with air vents and protein bars."
I looked up at them.
"We follow her lead. Every step. If she moves back, we move back. If she draws a line, we don't cross it. If we need to touch her to stop her dying, we ask forgiveness after, but otherwise? Hands off. Hands visible."
"Ask," Alfie whispered. He looked at his thumb, at the sharpie.
"Ask, don't assume," I confirmed. "Same rule, but make it more obvious. Absolute baseline."
Cal cleared his throat from the kitchenette. He was leaning against the counter, mug in hand, looking as unruffled as a Sunday morning.
"Shall we log it?" he asked dryly. "On the board? So we don't cock it up later when biology gets loud?"
Rowan was already there. She sat on the sofa, tablet propped on her crossed legs, stylus moving.
"Way ahead of you," she said.
She turned the screen around. A new digital whiteboard file.
BOUNDARIES.
Status: LIVE.
Default Protocol: Do-Nothing unless invited.
