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He shakes his head, looks into the fire. “No. Just fragments. Just… feelings.”

I nod, understanding too well.

He turns to me, his face washed in the shifting light. “You?”

I think of the hands, the voice, the impossible memory of belonging.

“Yes,” I say, and the word hurts more than anything else.

He nods, as if this answers every question.

We stare at the fire, together, the darkness outside absolute.

The pain in my shoulder is nothing compared to the ache in my chest. I let it burn. I let it remind me that I am alive.

In the morning, we will run.

Ido not sleep that night, not really. My eyes close, but my mind chews through the last hours like a dog with a bone, gnawing every inch until there is nothing left but splinters.

The memory comes in perfect detail: Stitch’s laugh, the bright shine in her eyes, the way her hand clutched at my sleeve as if I could anchor her to this world. I see the moment she fell, the blood slick and immediate, her voice already a rasp. “Guess I’m the fresh meat now,” she joked, but her eyes told a different story—she was scared, so fucking scared, and she wanted to know it mattered.

I want to reach back through time, grab her, drag her up and out and away. But my hands are useless, weak, coated with the evidence of my own failure.

Kang sleeps beside me, or at least pretends. His breathing is even, his face turned away. I listen to the sound of it, try to match the rhythm, but my own lungs won’t cooperate. Each inhale stutters; each exhale ends in a soft whimper I can’t swallow down.

When the sun finally smears itself across the horizon, I am still awake.

I stare at the sky, blue and cloudless. The bullet wound in my shoulder throbs with every heartbeat, the cloth already soaked and stiff with old blood. I peel the bandage away, see the mess beneath, and laugh.

It is a bitter sound, dry and sharp.

Kang sits up, instantly alert. He blinks, sees me, then looks at the wound. “You need to keep pressure on it,” he says, voice flat.

I ignore him. Instead, I look at the world beyond the fire, at the broken trees, the ruined landscape, the ash that drifts on the morning wind.

“They’re all dead,” I say.

He says nothing, just waits.

I shake my head, angry at the silence. “Stitch is dead. The others might as well be. Everyone who got out… gone, or worse.”

He shrugs. “That’s how it goes.”

“Don’t,” I say, and my voice cracks, the tears hot and sudden. “Don’t fucking do that. Don’t pretend it’s normal.”

He sighs, rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I’m not pretending anything.”

I want to hit him. Instead, I press my fist to my chest, right over the heartbeat. “I can’t do this,” I whisper. “I can’t keep surviving and pretending it means anything. I need to remember who I am, or I’m going to fucking break.”

Kang studies me, eyes cold but not unkind. “What if you don’t like what you find?”

The question is so gentle it almost undoes me. I picture myself in the lab coat, my hands on the glass, the rats lined up in rows. The way I watched the needle go in and never blinked.

I shudder. “What if I’m a monster?”

Kang moves then, swift and quiet. He grabs my shoulders, not hard, but enough that I can’t pull away. His hands are warm, steady. “Shut up and breathe,” he commands, and I do—because that’s what my body is trained to do. Authority says jump, you jump. Even when you hate yourself for it.

He holds me there, fingers digging into my collarbone, until the panic passes.