The next morning, Eva woke before the sun.
For two years, she had lain in bed until the light forced her eyes open. For two years, she had waited for the world to start without her. But today, she sat up before the first grey thread of dawn slipped through the curtains.
Her body ached. The tentacle wounds were still healing, still tender, still purple at the edges. She dressed slowly, pulling on clean clothes that had been folded on the chair for months. They smelled like dust.
The corridor was empty. The facility was still asleep.
She walked to the cafeteria.
Warden was already there.
The kid sat beside her, eating something from a bowl—some kind of grain, some kind of milk, the kind of food that had no name but filled your stomach anyway. He looked up when Eva entered, then looked back down at his bowl.
Warden's visible eye tracked Eva across the room. She didn't sign anything. Just watched.
Eva sat across from her. The same table. The same chairs. The same grey light through the same grey windows.
"I didn't dream about her last night," Eva said.
Warden waited.
"I dreamed about... nothing. Just darkness. And I woke up, and I didn't know why I was awake. And then I remembered." Eva's throat moved. "And it still hurt. But it didn't..." She paused. "It didn't crush me."
Warden signed. The kid swallowed his food and translated. "That's called healing."
Eva looked at her hands. "It doesn't feel like healing."
"What does it feel like?"
"Like I'm leaving her behind."
Warden signed again. The kid set down his spoon. "She's not behind you. She's with you. You don't leave someone behind by moving forward. You leave them behind by staying still."
Eva stared at him. At this boy who spoke for his mother, who translated grief into words, who had been found in a lab when he was twelve and had probably been translating pain ever since.
"How do you know that?"
The kid looked at Warden. She signed. He listened.
"Because my mom stayed still for a long time. After her Lily died. She didn't eat. Didn't sleep. Didn't talk to anyone. She just sat in her room and stared at the wall." He paused. "And then one day, she got up. And she came to find me."
Eva's eyes moved to Warden. The scarred face, the missing finger, the arm held together by Umbralite. The woman who had lost everything and kept going.
"How did you do it?" Eva asked her. "How did you get up?"
Warden was still for a long moment. Her visible eye was distant, looking at something Eva couldn't see. Then she signed.
The kid translated softly. "She says... she didn't do it for herself. She did it for the people who still needed her. Because staying dead while you're still alive doesn't hurt the people who hurt you. It only hurts the people who love you."
Eva's chest tightened.
"I don't know if anyone still needs me."
Warden's eye snapped back to her. She signed quickly, sharply. The kid's voice was faster now.
"Your friends need you. Maya needs you. Leo needs you. Wolfen needs you. The people outside—the ones Derek is leading—they need you. The world needs you. You just can't see it because you're too busy looking at the ground."
Eva blinked. "That's... a lot."
Warden's visible eye crinkled. She signed again, slower this time.
"She says... sorry. But you needed to hear it."
Eva almost laughed. Almost. "Yeah. I guess I did."
The kid went back to his bowl. Warden went back to watching Eva. The light shifted through the windows—grey to pale gold to something almost warm.
"I don't know how to start," Eva said. "I don't know how to be... here. Again."
Warden signed. The kid translated without looking up.
"You already started. You got out of bed. You came here. You're talking." He paused, listening. "That's three things. Tomorrow, do three more. The day after, three more. Eventually, you won't have to count."
Eva looked down at her hands. The scars. The calluses. The hands that had held Lily's face, that had held her sister's dying body, that had held nothing for two years.
"Okay," she said. "Okay."
The sun was higher now. The cafeteria wasn't quite so grey.
Warden reached across the table and touched Eva's hand. Just once. Just briefly. Then she pulled back and signed something that made the kid smile.
"She says... you're going to be okay. Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday."
Eva pressed the photograph of Lily against her chest.
"Someday," she repeated.
It wasn't a promise. It wasn't a plan. It was just a word.
But it was something.