The first officer reached Elias with her sidearm still drawn.
She had to step over the jammed pharmacy shutter and a trail of blood that ran toward the curb. Her partner covered the street, sweeping his light across balconies, parked vans, and the broken recruitment board above the intersection.
Miss Vale crouched beside Elias with one hand hovering over his shoulder, afraid to touch him and more afraid to pull away.
"He was stabbed and shot after the blackout," she said. "The men ran east, one with a pistol and one with a knife."
The officer knelt and cut Elias's shirt open with trauma shears. The movement was practiced, fast, and angry in the quiet way professionals became angry when civilians arrived broken.
"Control, I have one civilian down outside Korrin's Pharmacy," she said. "Knife entry under left ribs and gunshot through upper shoulder, with heavy blood loss, suspects fleeing east on foot, and medical response needed now."
Her partner looked up at the ruined billboard. "Control, add that we have impact damage from one of the sky fragments. The board is split, and the civilian has active light under the skin."
The radio paused longer than it should have.
"Repeat the last item for Control," Control said.
The officer did not repeat it. She pressed gauze against Elias's side, hard enough that his body jerked even without full awareness.
"Send medical response and containment advisory to this location," she said. "We can argue vocabulary after the patient stops bleeding."
Elias heard pieces of it. Pharmacy. Suspects. Medical. His own name from Mrs. Vale, said as if the sound itself could keep him attached to the pavement.
The shard in his chest gave another pulse.
The blood under his side slowed.
The officer noticed. Her gloved hand froze for half a second, then pressed again because procedure was the only thing in reach.
"His bleeding changed under the pressure dressing," she said to her partner. "Do not touch the chest light unless medical orders it."
"I am not eager to touch the chest light."
A med cruiser dropped into the street six minutes later. By then, the robbers were gone, three blocks were sealed, and the official alert on every public speaker had changed from power instability to shelter in place.
Elias was lifted onto a stretcher with straps across his arms and legs. Mrs. Vale tried to follow until the officer stopped her with a hand raised between them.
"He needs a clean transport lane," the officer said. "Give me your statement, and I will attach your name to his file."
"His father was Captain Dorian Kael," Miss Vale said, as if that should change something.
The officer's expression shifted. Not much. Enough.
"Then I will make sure the file does not get misplaced."
The hospital took Elias through a restricted ambulance entrance. Two doctors met the stretcher before the wheels locked. The shard light had faded by then, leaving only heat under the skin and a thin pale mark across the stopped watch.
A surgeon asked for the bullet path.
A nurse asked why the stab wound had started clotting around damaged tissue that should still be open.
A security officer asked whether the patient was to be treated as civilian injured or fragment exposed.
The lead doctor answered without looking up from Elias's pressure dressing.
"He is treated as alive until someone with a larger office proves otherwise."
That settled the room long enough for work to happen.
Elias drifted under voices, lights, and hands that turned him without asking. Once, he surfaced enough to hear someone say his blood type. Once, he tried to lift his arm and found it strapped. Once, a machine near his head made a warning sound and the shard answered with pressure behind his sternum.
The next time he woke, the room had windows.
Not open windows. Hospital glass with an outside view that showed another building and a strip of gray morning. Better than surgery lights. Worse than home.
An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose. Tubes ran from his arm. His shoulder felt packed with gravel. His side felt worse, but the pain had a strange edge to it, as if the wound could not decide how old it was.
He tried to raise his hand to his chest.
The IV line pulled, and the effort brought a nurse to the bedside before he managed more than a few inches.
"Do not make me explain to the doctor that you defeated restraints through stubbornness," she said. "You have already given this floor enough paperwork."
Elias blinked at her. His throat scraped when he spoke.
"Did I win the birthday raffle?"
"You won emergency surgery, armed police at the door, and an argument between two departments about who owns your chart."
"That sounds exactly like government hospitality."
The nurse adjusted the oxygen flow and checked the monitor. She was young enough to look tired in a new way, the kind that had not yet learned how to hide itself from patients.
"You were stabbed, shot, and exposed to whatever fell from the sky. The first two should have killed you before you reached us. The third may be why they did not."
Elias closed his eyes. The alley returned in uneven pieces. Mrs. Vale. The pistol. The billboard. Blue light through Elara's face on the screen.
"Is Miss Vale still alive after all that?"
"The witness from the pharmacy is alive and very loud. She threatened three officers and one vending machine while waiting for news about you."
That helped more than the pain medicine.
Elias opened his eyes again. "I need to know where my watch is."
The nurse glanced toward the small evidence bag on the counter. Inside it, Dorian's old watch rested with a pale line across the glass.
"The officers would not let us put it with your clothes," she said. "They called it fragment exposure, whatever that means."
"It belonged to my father before tonight."
"Then I will write that where the wrong person can read it."
She finished the check, marked something on the bedside tablet, and looked toward the door before lowering her voice.
"People will come asking questions when you can stay awake long enough to answer them. Some will be medical and some will not. If you do not know something, say you do not know, and do not guess just because the uniform is expensive."
Elias watched her for a second.
"Is that official medical advice from this floor?"
"That is floor advice from someone who has seen charts disappear."
She left him with the monitor beeping and the old watch in its evidence bag.
Elias looked at the pale line on the glass until sleep pulled him under again.