He glanced up. “Machines do not fix themselves.”
“You already worked a double shift.”
He set down the tool and flexed his fingers. “Rest is… relative.”
“You sound like half the medics I’ve ever known.” I leaned against the doorway, watching him seal the panel. “You don’t sleep much, do you?”
“Enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He studied me for a long moment. “Sleep used to bring disturbing dreams. I prefer silence.”
Something about the way he said it made my chest tighten. “Dreams about the war?”
His gaze drifted to the far wall. “About the ones I couldn’t save.”
I stepped inside before I could talk myself out of it. The air smelled faintly of ozone and oil, layered with the clean edge of medicinal herbs.
“You were a healer then, too?”
“Yes. Before that, I was a field researcher. Before that…” He hesitated, as if the word itself might sting. “A soldier by conscription. Our leaders valued obedience more than mercy.”
I thought of the man who had covered a dying raider’s face so the dust wouldn’t choke him. “You don’t strike me as obedient.”
“Not anymore,” he said quietly. “That is why I am here.”
I moved closer to the bench. The glow between us softened the hard lines of his armor, turning him from a weapon to something far more human.
“You left them.”
“I deserted,” he corrected. “When they turned the study of life into a weapon.”
He didn’t need to explain further. Everyone had heard what the Mesaarkans had done—experiments in hidden bases, humans used like raw material for genetic trials. I had seen enough myself.
“You saw it,” I said.
“I helped end it,” he replied, voice low. “Too late for most.”
I didn’t realize I’d moved until I was standing beside him.
“You couldn’t have saved everyone.”
“That’s what soldiers say to sleep,” he said. “Healers don’t get to use it.”
He turned the power cell over in his hands, studying the fractures. “This was part of a shuttle once. I keep it because it reminds me that things built for war can still hold light.”
I watched the faint pulse flicker inside the cracked casing. “It’s beautiful.”
He set it down gently. “You think everything broken is beautiful.”
“That’s because everything still standing is just waiting for the next hit.”
He looked at me then—long and searching—until the space between our breaths felt too thin.
“You speak like someone who’s seen too much.”
“I’ve seen enough to know people survive worse than they should,” I said. “And that sometimes the ones we were told to fear are the ones keeping us alive.”
