Caleb faced the mirror and tried to answer the question without lying.
Is this still you?
The uniform jacket hung over the chair. The medical tablet still glowed red on the counter. His raised purple marks curved beneath the edge of his shirt, warm where Elara's palm rested over the hidden anomaly in his chest.
His body carried a steadiness it had no right to carry, and that scared him more than pain would have.
The fever scared him less than the quiet under his skin.
The scar pattern, the purple marks, even the way something inside him had reacted to Elara before he decided what he wanted. All of that gave him something to watch.
The silence gave him nothing.
The hunger had been cruel, but at least it had been familiar. It had spoken in a language he understood. Food. Heat. Debt. Repair. Pay the cost or collapse.
Now the cost had gone quiet. Caleb's attention dropped to Elara's hand.
"I do not know," he said.
Elara stayed, and that mattered.
