We drove back to Sector 0 in silence.
Not the heavy silence. Not the awkward kind or the scared kind. The good kind. The kind that happens when people are too tired and too relieved to ruin the moment with words. Everyone just... sat. Breathing. Being alive. Letting the fact that we'd actually done something right settle into our bones.
Jasmine's pod hummed behind me. Green lights steady. Heartbeat steady. Lungs rebuilding one cell at a time. The nano-repair systems worked quiet — no noise, no drama, just tiny machines doing tiny miracles inside my sister's chest.
Seven to ten days. That's what the pod said. In seven to ten days, Jasmine would breathe on her own. Real breaths. Deep breaths. The kind she hadn't taken since she was thirteen years old.
I kept my hand on the glass the whole drive.
