Allium stepped out from the changing room and the hallway seemed to hesitate.
Not because he was dangerous.
Because he looked… different.
The gown was gone. The sterile cloth had been replaced by something that belonged to people—soft fabric, clean lines, no symbols, no war sewn into the seams. His bare feet made no sound. His shoulders sat lower than they used to, as if the weight of power had shifted from pride into caution.
Weaver stared.
He had seen Allium in ash.
In blood.
In that feral, mission-ready shape the planet itself seemed to understand—an answer, built for violence.
This wasn't that man.
And the hesitation that had always existed in Allium—quiet, tucked behind duty—was now fully visible in the way he stood, in the way his hands didn't know what to do when there was nothing to hold.
Weaver exhaled.
Not disappointment.
Sadness.
Because he could feel it: Allium didn't want to explore. Didn't want the fight. Didn't want the world's next demand.
He wanted to be small enough that no one got hurt.
Jax stood nearby, arms crossed, jaw tight like it might crack out of sheer restraint. Cassidy leaned against the wall with one wrapped hand tucked into her jacket, posture loud even when she wasn't speaking, as if energy could keep fear from getting close. Sable was there too—quiet, steady, present like a blade laid on a table.
And then—
The air changed.
A coldness slid into the corridor without any actual temperature dropping.
Commander Hawk approached from behind them, boots measured, posture carved by wars Solara didn't write down. He didn't greet the room. He didn't soften at the sight of Allium standing on his own feet.
His eyes flicked once.
Assessed.
Filed.
Then he spoke like a man asking about inventory.
"Is he stable enough for operational deployment?"
Jax's teeth pressed together so hard the muscles in his face twitched.
"Allium's aligned," Jax said, voice controlled with force. "He's doing better. Didn't have to watch a gauge or a console to see it."
Hawk nodded as if the sentence was just another data point.
No sympathy.
Only logistics.
He lifted his hand and a hologram unfolded between them, blue and red layered like bruises. A map of the region, ley signatures, emotional fields rendered into thin, shifting graphs.
At first glance, it looked calm.
Then Hawk dragged a finger across the timeline.
The last two weeks overlapped.
Then the last six days since his arrival.
The signatures jumped—not because the world had changed, but because time itself had skewed the comparison. False positives. Compression. Calm days making older chaos look worse than it was.
Hawk didn't care about nuance. He cared about the result.
He highlighted the newest feed.
Sunslope.
The emotional layer wasn't just low.
It was wrong.
A synchronization spread through the settlement like forced harmony—individual spikes flattened into the same shape, the same rhythm, the same absence.
Hawk's mouth tightened.
"Now what?"
They leaned in.
And the map shifted again.
Two signals appeared.
Not emotional.
Not human.
A frequency pattern that made something in Cassidy go still.
Her eyes narrowed. Her wrapped hand flexed unconsciously, pain ignored.
"There's no way," she whispered.
Then louder—anger burning through shock.
"No. No—this is impossible. That bug…"
Her hands trembled, not with fear.
With rage.
She stabbed a finger toward the phasing trace.
"I saw this signal enough that night to taste it," she said. "That's Khelos phasing."
Weaver's threads stirred along the wall like hairs lifting on the back of a neck.
"He is dead," Weaver said, voice low, firm, as if saying it cleanly could make it absolute. "There is no possibility he survived dissolution."
Allium stared at the hologram with a stillness that looked like restraint.
"I remember," he said quietly. "Even through the haze. He is dead."
Cassidy snapped her gaze to him.
"You said he was killed before," she shot back. "And he came back. Why would this be different?"
Allium's jaw tightened.
"I beat him before," he said. "I did not end him. That mistake was corrected."
He looked at the trace again as if staring long enough could force reality to obey logic.
"This time… he was dissolved completely."
Cassidy didn't relax.
"The data doesn't lie," she said, voice rough with distrust. "That phasing signature exists, and it's either him—"
Her eyes flicked to the second trace.
"—or something close enough to him to make me sick."
Jax leaned closer, scanning the pattern like it was a battlefield.
"This doesn't follow Varos's rhythm," he muttered. "Varos usually keeps Soul Takers near him. He doesn't leave things alive."
He said it like that was the only mercy in the enemy's habits.
If Varos wasn't killing…
…then he was doing something worse than death.
The thought settled over the group, heavy and wordless.
Allium felt it too.
His hesitation swelled, not as cowardice, but as fear sharpened into responsibility.
"If they are there…" he began, voice thin, careful. "What if you get hurt? And I—"
He stopped.
The sentence didn't need finishing. The garden had already finished it for him.
Sable moved closer.
Not sudden.
Not predatory.
A softer approach than most expected from her, like she was choosing her angle the way hunters choose wind direction.
She looked at Allium and for once her voice carried something that wasn't only function.
"Control isn't something you earn in a quiet room," she said. "It's something you learn while your hands are shaking."
Allium's eyes lifted to hers.
Sable's gaze didn't flinch.
"And you're not going to snap because you're weak," she continued. "You'll snap if you pretend you can avoid pressure forever."
She paused—just long enough for the words to land the way she intended.
Then she added, sharper, deliberate:
"Stop shrinking. Stop calling yourself a monster like it makes you safer. You want to prove you're not the thing that hurt them? Then act like you—and let us carry the rest."
The line cut deeper than comfort ever could.
Allium blinked once, the orange in his chest stirring in a way that wasn't heat.
Not rage.
Recognition.
Like someone had grabbed his chin and forced him to look at himself without letting him turn away.
His fingers curled and uncurlled at his sides.
He swallowed.
"I…" His voice faltered, then steadied. "I will try."
Cassidy's face tightened.
She turned toward Sable with the kind of calm that only shows up right before an argument becomes inevitable.
"Sable," she said, quiet, "can we talk outside?"
Sable didn't hesitate. She'd expected it.
They moved into an empty room nearby—bare walls, a single console asleep in the corner, the hum of HQ filtering through metal like distant ocean.
Cassidy shut the door.
Then she spoke immediately, words fast because if she slowed down they might turn into something worse.
"You can't address this like it's a simple adjustment," Cassidy said. "You weren't there. You didn't see what that white looked like behind his eyes."
Sable nodded once.
"I wasn't," she said.
Cassidy blinked—thrown off by the lack of defensiveness.
Sable continued, measured.
"But softening everything won't help him either."
Cassidy's shoulders rose.
"Look," she said, voice cracking at the edge of her own control, "I'm one-hundred and sixteen years old. I've watched people break. I've watched them come back. Direct approaches aren't always good."
Sable didn't move much.
But her eyes carried the weight of time in a way that made Cassidy suddenly feel like a loud teenager in a quiet room.
"Cassidy," Sable said simply, "I disagree."
Just that.
No flourish.
The simplicity had force.
She stepped a fraction closer.
"Allium is not a child," Sable said. "Gifts help. Humor helps. Keeping him tethered helps."
Cassidy's jaw set.
"It does," she insisted.
"It does," Sable agreed—then cut cleanly through the center of the argument.
"But you're treating this like a temporary storm," she said. "Like if you keep him smiling for a week, the world will forget what he can become."
Cassidy flinched.
Not from the accusation.
From the truth hiding inside it.
"Obviously not," Cassidy snapped. "And who said I'm terrified?"
Sable's answer was immediate.
"It's your act," she said. "Loudest in the room. Jokes first. Anger second. You hide it well, but it's still hiding."
Cassidy inhaled hard.
"That's just me," she said. "You'll find out."
Sable held her gaze, then looked away—not in dismissal, but in restraint.
At the door, she paused.
"Did I ever tell you my age?" she asked.
Cassidy's brows lifted.
Sable's voice stayed quiet.
"Just shy of six hundred," she said. "And that… doesn't mean I'm right."
Then she left like a shadow, the room feeling emptier for her absence.
Cassidy stared at the closed door for a second, then muttered to herself, half offended, half impressed—
"Six hundred… she might be wrong, but she looks good."
She exhaled, shook out her shoulders like she could shake off the tension, and walked back toward the group.
Hawk stood at the corridor intersection when Sable reappeared. He didn't ask what was said.
He watched the way Cassidy followed a moment later—jaw tight, eyes bright, humor not quite back in place.
A small shift crossed Hawk's expression.
Not empathy.
Calculation.
Two women.
Two methods.
One asset.
Hawk filed it away.
Then he turned without comment and walked toward Rose's room with the others already gathering.
They stood outside the ICU threshold like people standing at the edge of a river, unsure if stepping closer would disturb something sacred—or something unstable.
Rose was propped up in her bed, bruised and pale, eyes too alive for the body holding them.
Weaver spoke first, keeping his voice low.
"Sunslope has gone silent," he said. "Emotionally."
Rose's gaze sharpened.
"Phasing," she said softly. "That sounds like Khelos."
Weaver nodded once.
"It does," he admitted. "The frequency supports it."
Rose's eyes darkened with memory.
"You saw what I did that night," Weaver added quietly, like the sentence was both proof and warning.
Rose remembered.
The brutality of certainty. The finality of it.
"I remember," she said.
She started to shift—started to rise—
—and Jax stepped in immediately.
"You're not going anywhere, Rose," he said. "You're not wincing your way through this one."
Nina appeared at the doorway like she'd been summoned by the sound of stubbornness.
"You promised," Nina said flatly.
Rose grunted, the effort of resisting rest almost more painful than the injury itself.
"I did," she conceded, sinking back. "I promise I'll get better."
Jax watched her.
He could see it in her eyes—more energy than her body could afford.
"I know you're itching to get even with Varos," Jax said, softer now, "but this isn't a mission to fight. You need to recover so you can come back right."
Rose's stubbornness didn't disappear.
But her mind accepted the math.
Then her voice changed.
Not revenge. Not tactics.
Something simpler.
"That's not all this is about, Commander," she said quietly. "Allium is my concern."
The words struck the group in different ways.
Cassidy felt it like validation.
Weaver felt it like inevitability.
Jax felt it like a complication he couldn't label.
Only Sable looked unsurprised.
Jax nodded once, the closest he could get to reassurance without lying.
"He's gonna be okay," he said. "You have my word."
Rose's shoulders loosened a fraction.
She exhaled.
And the door behind them—when it sealed—almost sounded like goodbye.
They moved out.
Hawk and Sable led without waiting to see if anyone followed. Jax fell into step beside Weaver. Allium walked behind them with Cassidy, head lowered, mind clearly somewhere else.
The hallway lights passed over him and he didn't look up.
Jax spoke softly to Weaver, low enough that only the walls could overhear.
"What is going on with Rose and Allium?" he asked. "I don't remember this kind of attachment. And don't you think it's odd she's not afraid of him?"
Weaver didn't answer immediately.
He nudged Jax's shoulder—small, subtle—an instruction to keep his voice down.
Then he looked back at Allium.
Allium's gaze was on the floor, like he didn't trust himself to look at anyone and see what he'd done.
Weaver's eyes softened.
"I don't know," Weaver admitted, voice quiet. "It's as though they are more comfortable together than apart."
Jax huffed under his breath.
"My guess," he muttered, "brain damage."
Weaver ignored the joke.
Not because it wasn't funny.
Because it wasn't true.
They passed the café.
Passed the gates.
Stepped out into the reinforced road where Solara's sands usually stirred like restless things underfoot.
Tonight, the sand didn't move the same way.
Even the planet seemed to hold its breath.
They walked the path.
And the footsteps—
the ones that should have marked them—
seemed covered.
Like something had already been there.
Or like something didn't want them to know exactly where they were headed.