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Finally, I look at him. “You can relax now,” I say, a little teasing.

He shrugs, but his eyes are softer than before. “You did good.”

I want to tell him he did, too, but the words won’t come.

So we just sit, in the quiet, our hands joined on the battered cot, pretending there is nothing outside these four walls that can touch us.

For the moment, it’s almost true.

It takes a while for my pulse to settle. I keep expecting some Authority goon to bust down the door and drag us back to zero, but the only sound is the soft clatter of Kang pacing the length of the tiny room. He moves with the kinetic energy of a caged wolf: restless, coiled, all the more dangerous for how quiet he’s being.

I press my hand to the fresh bandage, feeling the throb underneath. Dr. Yen’s paste is already starting to numb the wound, but the ache runs deeper, into bone and memory.

I wait for Kang to start talking, but he doesn’t. He just stands by the door, arms folded, eyes fixed on the nothing at his feet.

I can’t help it—I start to laugh. It comes out brittle, but real. “You know,” I say, “I think you scared her.”

He looks up, startled. “Who?”

“The doctor.” I grin. “I thought you were going to snap her neck for touching me.”

He blinks, surprised by the accusation. “She was moving too fast,” he says, which is so perfectly Authority that I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing again.

I raise an eyebrow, trying to make my face do the things it used to do when flirting still meant something. “Would you have shot her?”

A muscle jumps in his jaw, but he catches himself before going full stone face. “Not unless you asked.”

I roll my eyes, but it feels good to poke at him, to see the cracks in his mask. “Relax. I’m not in the market for a bodyguard.”

He smirks, just a little. “Could have fooled me.”

It’s a dangerous line, and we both know it. For a second, the air between us is charged, the way it used to be in the block during late shift, when no one was watching and the only thing keeping us from killing each other was the mutual exhaustion.

He steps closer, not all the way, just enough to erase the illusion of distance. His gaze drops to my shoulder, then to my face. He lifts his hand, slow, gives me time to stop him. I don’t.

His fingers trace the edge of the bandage, so light it’s almost not a touch at all. The heat of it burns straight through the gauze, down into the place where the pain lives. I go still, breath snagged in my chest.

He doesn’t pull away, not immediately. His thumb lingers, then drops to the inside of my elbow, where the skin is thin and scarred from old needles. His eyes follow his hand, unreadable.

“You should rest,” he says again, but this time there’s something else in his voice—an apology, maybe, or a promise.

I want to say something biting, to keep the joke going, but all I can do is nod.

He steps back, the connection severed. I feel the loss of it like a small violence.

He crosses to the door, checks the lock out of habit. “I’m going to scout,” he says, already Authority again. “Check the tunnels. See if there’s another way out.”

“You think we’ll need it?” I ask, softer than I mean to.

He turns, catches my eye. For a second, his guard drops all the way. “We always need a way out.”

He stands in the threshold, one hand on the latch, the other curled in a loose fist. The look he gives me is hard to catalog: part regret, part hunger, all too raw to meet head-on.

Then he’s gone, the door hissing shut behind him.

I exhale, slow, and lean back against the cot. The smell of mint and alcohol lingers in the air, but under it is something else—something like hope, which is much, much scarier.

I close my eyes, counting heartbeats, and try to remember how to be alone.