Two days later, Elias could sit upright without feeling as if his side was being opened again.
That was the official improvement. The unofficial problem was that no one could explain why the wounds were closing cleanly. The surgeon came in twice with the same chart and a different frown. The nurse changed the dressing with the care of someone handling a patient and a crime scene at the same time.
Elias learned the room by its noises. The monitor near his left shoulder clicked before it beeped. The air vent rattled every few minutes. The guard outside his door shifted weight when officers passed, which meant the guard was bored but not careless.
The nurse entered after breakfast with discharge forms tucked under one arm.
"You are healing fast enough to make the doctors suspicious and slow enough to keep them from calling you a miracle in front of your face," she said. "If you can walk the hall without falling over, they will start planning release conditions."
"That sounds like a threat disguised as progress."
"Most hospital progress is exactly that."
She helped him sit at the edge of the bed. His feet touched the floor. Cold tile, real weight, a pull through his side that made him grip the mattress until it passed.
No flash of blue light. No voice from the sky. No hidden power taking over his body.
Just pain, and the embarrassment of needing help to stand.
After she left, Elias found the remote and turned on the wall screen. He wanted weather, sports, anything ordinary enough to make the room smaller.
The first channel showed an emergency panel.
"Officials continue to investigate the unexplained atmospheric event that produced visible light trails over several major cities," the anchor said. "The Office of Public Safety has denied rumors of a foreign attack and has urged citizens not to share unverified fragment footage."
The screen changed to shaky civilian video of blue streaks cutting through the night.
Elias tightened his grip on the remote.
"In a related incident, a City Covaign civilian survived a violent street attack after one of the light trails passed through the district. Medical authorities have declined to release details, citing patient privacy and active public safety review."
The anchor moved on before Elias could decide whether to be relieved or offended.
"Military officials have also refused to comment on reports that Commander Elara Cross has been removed from public appearances following last night's containment alert. Her office states that Commander Cross remains on active duty."
Elias turned the screen off.
The room did not get quieter. It only stopped giving him new reasons to be angry.
A knock came at the door. Firm. Not medical.
Elias looked toward the guard shadow under the glass panel. The guard spoke to someone, then stepped aside.
Elara entered in uniform, but not the poster version. No dramatic armor, no public smile, no heroic lighting from a recruitment board. Dark jacket, hair tied back, one hand tucked inside her coat like she was holding something still against her ribs.
She stopped just inside the room, looking less like the poster on the street and more like someone who had slept badly in a chair. "You look worse than the report said," she said.
"You came all this way to improve my morale?"
"I came because your name reached my desk before the public report did, and the morale improvement is optional."
He wanted to laugh. It hurt too much to try.
Elara took the chair beside the bed without waiting for permission. That was familiar enough to sting. When they were children, she had never asked to sit at his table, either. She just arrived with bruised knuckles, stolen fruit, or an argument she expected him to join.
"I know Miss Vale is alive already," Elias said. "You do not get to use that as your gentle opening."
Elara's mouth moved, not quite a smile. "She gave a statement long enough to qualify as a field report. She also called you brave, stupid, and too thin."
"At least two of those are unfair."
"I agree because you are not brave in any organized way."
That got the laugh out of him, small and painful.
Elara set a thin tablet on her knee. The screen showed the alley from a security camera above Korrin's Pharmacy. Elias saw himself step in front of Mrs. Vale. Saw the lights fail. Saw the knife man return.
He looked away when the blade entered his side.
Elara did not fast forward. She let the footage run because skipping would have been kinder, and they had never been good at kind lies with each other.
The gun fired. Elias fell. The billboard split.
Then the feed drowned in blue distortion.
When the picture returned, the robbers were running and Mrs. Vale was halfway under the shutter.
Elara paused the video.
"The shard never appears clearly on camera," she said. "It hits you inside the distortion. The same type of distortion happened in the council room when I was struck."
Elias looked at her coat. "The fragment struck you during the council incident too."
She removed her hand from inside the jacket. For a moment, he saw the outline under the fabric near her collarbone. A small raised shape, blue at the edges.
"During an off record briefing, when they were assigning my division to Cradle," she said. "The cube divided, and I woke with a fragment under the skin while twelve people argued over whether I was still authorized to command."
"Did they let you keep command?"
"I am here, so somebody lost that argument."
Elias looked at the dead screen. "I do not remember a fragment staying in me. I remember the watch burning and then nothing clean."
Elara reached into her coat and put a sealed evidence photo on his blanket. It showed Dorian's watch in a clear bag, the pale line across its face brighter than it had been this morning.
"The fragment may not have stayed where the doctors expected," she said. "It may have used an anchor."
Elias stared at the watch photo while the monitor clicked once before the next beep. "That watch belonged to my father."
"I know, and that is why I came myself."
He looked back at her. The public Elara from the billboard would have said something smooth about service or sacrifice. This one looked tired and twenty eight and angry that the world had found another way to use the Kael family.
"What happens to me after this?" he asked.
Elara closed the tablet. "Now you heal enough to leave the hospital. Then you tell me the second anything speaks to you, burns, moves, or makes the room feel wrong."
"That is a generous list of disasters."
"That was the short version of the list."
She stood before he could ask more. At the door, she paused.
"Elias, do not give a statement to anyone from Public Safety without calling me first. They are pretending this is medical because medical sounds harmless."
"And what is it actually supposed to be?"
Elara looked at the guard outside the door.
"It is recruitment, containment, or burial, and they have not decided which one fits you yet."