The restaurant alley had better lighting than Korrin's Pharmacy and worse memories.
Elias stood near the service door with his coat half buttoned, watching Elara check both ends of the lane before she spoke. The red dress under her coat looked out of place against trash bins, wet pavement, and the kitchen vent breathing steam into the cold air.
"You could have called me first," he said.
"I did not want this conversation logged through a line that may already be watched."
"You understand how comforting that sounds."
"I am past comforting you, Elias, and I am trying for useful."
She took one step closer. The fragment under her collarbone gave off a faint blue push through the fabric. Elias felt his father's watch answer from inside his coat pocket.
He had started carrying it after the third dream. Bad idea, probably. Leaving it at home had felt worse.
Elara noticed the movement of his hand.
"You brought the watch with you."
"It belonged to my father before it became everybody's favorite evidence problem."
"Has the watch changed since discharge?"
Elias considered lying. The watch warmed against his palm as if objecting in advance.
"It stops at 6:52 every night," he said. "Then it runs backward for eleven ticks and fixes itself before morning. I have decided that is rude, but not yet fatal."
Elara did not smile. "My fragment has started talking to me."
That landed badly enough that Elias forgot the cold. "The fragment talks to you now."
"Not in words all the time, but through pressure, images, and a direction in my head that feels like an order until I push back. Last night it gave me your street, your restaurant, and the smell of burnt sugar from your kitchen."
"That is specific enough to be creepy."
"It wanted me to find you," Elara said, and the watch grew warmer in his palm.
Elias pulled it from his pocket. The pale line across the glass had spread into a branching mark that reached the case edge. Elara's fragment brightened under her coat, and she pressed one hand over it with clear effort.
"May I check something without forcing it?" she asked.
"That depends whether checking involves needles, handcuffs, or a government van."
"It involves my hand on your chest and both of us pretending this is not awkward."
"That may be worse than the van."
She waited. That was new. The old Elara would have done the thing and argued afterward. This Elara knew enough about containment to ask first.
Elias nodded.
She placed her palm flat over his sternum, careful to avoid the healing wound beneath his ribs. The watch in his hand went cold.
Elias felt an answering pressure under the skin, not at his chest, but through the path between his wrist and heart. Like a thread being pulled through water.
Elara's face tightened.
"There is something in you, but not where mine is," she said. "Yours is spread thin, or hiding, or both."
"I hate every option in that sentence," Elias said.
"I hate every one of those options too," Elara said as she stepped back and drew in a careful breath.
"I am supposed to submit a report tonight. If I name you as a confirmed shard host, Public Safety will take you before morning. If I omit you and they find out, I lose the only access I have to the people already taken."
Elias closed his fingers around the watch. "So why tell me before filing?"
"Because I spent years letting offices decide what counted as necessary. I am trying to stop doing that with people I know."
That left him without a clean joke.
Elara looked toward the street. "I will report that your exposure remains inconclusive and that medical follow up is needed before classification. That buys us time, maybe a day and maybe less."
"You came dressed like that to buy me a day?"
"I came from a charity dinner where half the defense budget pretended to care about children. The dress was camouflage for people with money."
"That is good, because I was worried my life had become socially complicated on top of everything else."
A sound cracked behind his eyes.
Not outside. Inside. Close enough that his hand went to his temple before he knew he had moved.
The alley tilted. Elara reached for him, but the service door, the bins, and the wet pavement peeled away like paper caught in a drain.
Elias found himself standing on a pale floor that had no walls and no ceiling he could trust. It felt less like a dream than a room assembled by someone who had heard rooms described once and decided details were optional.
A small shape hovered in front of him.
It was no larger than his hand, with a red shell, black markings, and blue eyes too bright for its small face. Two thin antennae lifted from its head and moved like they were listening to different stations. It had tiny arms folded with great seriousness, which made the rest of it harder to take seriously.
Elias took one step back and nearly tripped over nothing.
"I need you to explain what you are before I decide this is a head injury."
The creature looked down at itself, then back at him.
"That is a fair request, and I wish I had a stronger answer. I think I am the thing that kept you from dying."
The voice was high, quick, and far too cheerful for the amount of blood Elias remembered losing.
"You only think you kept me alive?"
"My memory is damaged because I woke when the shard bonded through the watch and into you. Before that, there is a lot of blank space and one very strong feeling that dying would have been rude."
Elias stared at it.
"You are inside my father's watch."
"Partly inside the watch and partly inside you, which sounds invasive when said aloud."
He looked around the blank room. "Where did Elara go in this?"
"Outside, holding you upright and saying your name with controlled panic. She is better at panic than most people."
"You need to put me back."
The creature's antennae dipped.
"I can, but you should know people are looking for every shard host; some want to recruit them, some want to cage them, and some want to cut them open and call it research."
Elias felt the watch ticking in a place where his wrist should have been.
"And what exactly do you want?"
The creature folded its tiny arms tighter.
"I want a name, food if that applies, and for both of us to survive long enough to figure out why the cube remembered your family."