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When I am quiet, he slides his hand from my shoulder to my chest, palm pressed flat over my heart. The gesture is so intimate it makes me flinch.

“You feel that?” he says, his voice low. “That’s not a monster. That’s human. I should know.”

I want to believe him, but I see the bodies, the blood, the way I let Stitch die.

He leans closer, his forehead touching mine. “I was supposed to kill you,” he says. “That was the mission. But I didn’t, because you make me remember what it feels like to care. You make me human. That’s not weakness. That’s why you’re still alive.”

I close my eyes. Let the heat of his body seep into mine, let the weight of his hand pin me to this moment. My breathing slows, steadies, though my eyes still burn.

“I wanted to save her,” I say, voice barely a whisper.

“I know,” he says. “But you can’t save everyone.”

The words sting, but they are true.

For a long time, we just sit there, his hand over my heart, my pulse hammering against his skin. The forest wakes up around us, a living thing, but here in this bubble of pain and sweat and breath, there is nothing but the two of us.

When I finally look up, Kang’s face is softer. His eyes are tired, but not empty.

I wipe the tears from my face, embarrassed by the weakness. “Sorry,” I mutter.

He snorts. “Don’t be. You’re the strongest person I know.”

I want to laugh, but it hurts. Instead, I lean into his hand, let it ground me.

The sun is higher now, the fire burned down to embers. I stare at the red glow, and think of Stitch, and promise myself that I will remember her. I will remember all of it.

Even if it kills me.

We sit like that until the world is bright and sharp again.

Then, together, we walk.

We keep walking, east by the trickle of the creek, through woods that look less like home and more like the x-ray of a cancer every kilometer we cover. The old growth is gone, replaced by a tangle of mutant saplings and underbrush that glows at night, everything fed by the run-off from the Authority’s own mistakes. I spot spores the size of my fist, bugs with too many legs, a bird that screams like a baby and never lands. The forest is alive and wrong, just like me.

Kang walks ahead, always ten paces out, checking for paths or traps. I watch his silhouette, the broad set of his shoulders, the way his jaw clenches every time he thinks I’m not looking. It hits me, all at once, that I trust him. Not the way I should—never the way Authority wants—but enough to follow. Even when I know he’s got secrets.

We walk for hours before either of us speaks. I’m running low on blood and lower on adrenaline, but I keep pace, matching my boots to his. At one point he stops, points at a ridge line. “There’s smoke,” he says, and sure enough, a thin blue thread unwinds from the horizon, too straight for anything natural. Not a fire. A signal.

He doesn’t explain. He doesn’t have to. That’s where we’re headed.

The farther we go, the more the world smooths out. The ground levels, the trees thin, the fungus turns from angry blue to a soft, regular green. The wound in my shoulder throbs, but I’m used to it now—one more variable in the equation.

By midafternoon, we crest a low rise and see the valley spread below. There’s a river, wide and brown. Beyond it, wasteland and more forests. I don’t bother asking what the plan is. I just keep moving, because moving is what I’m for.

We pause on the bank, under the shadow of a half-collapsed bridge. Kang crouches, inspects the water, then gestures for me to sit. I collapse, bones full of sand.

He kneels in front of me, pulling his battered med kit from his belt. He doesn’t say a word—just opens it, rummages through, then curses under his breath when he comes up empty. He rips off the sleeve of his shirt, folds it into a pad, and presses it to the wound.

I flinch. He ignores it.

“This will hurt,” he says, voice even. He cleans the cut, pulls the shrapnel with a pair of pliers, then tapes the edges with a strip of adhesive. Every motion is clean, professional, practiced. The pain is exquisite, but I watch his face instead. He’s not angry. He’s not cold. He looks almost sorry.

When he finishes, his hand hesitates. He reaches into his pocket, slow, deliberate. When it comes out, he’s holding something small.

My pendant. The radshield.

For a moment I can’t breathe. “You kept it.”