Mina woke to the sound of voices.
She lay still for a moment, her body heavy with the kind of exhaustion that sleep couldn't touch, her mind slowly cataloguing the unfamiliar space. The air was warm. The surface beneath her was soft - a real bed, not concrete or broken tile. And somewhere nearby, two men were talking in low, measured tones that suggested a conversation she wasn't meant to hear.
She opened her eyes and found Gray watching her from across the room. His expression was guarded, his body tense, but something in his eyes softened when he saw her stir.
"Hey," he said quietly. "How do you feel?"
Mina considered the question. Her limbs ached. Her head throbbed with a dull, persistent pressure. But beneath all of that, there was something else - a sense of rest that went deeper than physical stillness. For the first time in days, she hadn't woken to immediate danger.
"Better," she said, and was surprised to find she meant it. "What time is it?"
"Late afternoon. You've been sleeping for most of the day."
Elias appeared at the edge of her vision, carrying a mug that steamed with something that smelled like soup. He crouched beside her bed, his movements careful, his expression gentle in a way that made Mina's chest tighten.
"You needed it," he said. "Your body was running on empty. I've seen it before - people pushing themselves past their limits because stopping feels like dying." He offered her the mug. "Here. Eat something. Your system needs fuel."
Mina took the soup automatically, her hands wrapping around the warm ceramic. The first sip was thin but savory, and she felt something in her stomach unclench that she hadn't realized was knotted.
"Thank you," she said, and meant it.
Elias nodded, but as he straightened, Mina noticed something - a slight hitch in his movement, a careful way he held his left hand against his side. Her eyes tracked to it instinctively, and through the strange sense that had been growing in her since the sky fell, she felt the wrongness before she saw it.
"You're hurt," she said.
Elias's expression flickered - surprise, maybe, or something more guarded. "It's nothing. A scratch from a few days ago. It's healing."
"It's not." Mina set down the mug and sat up, her exhaustion forgotten. "Let me see."
For a moment, Elias didn't move. His storm-colored eyes studied her face, and Mina had the uncomfortable sensation of being measured, assessed, catalogued. Then, slowly, he extended his left hand.
The cut ran along his palm, deep enough to have needed stitches in the before, ragged at the edges where it had tried to heal and failed. The skin around it was red and swollen, and through her strange sense, Mina could feel the infection spreading beneath the surface - a slow, persistent heat that would eventually reach his blood.
"This should have been treated days ago," she said, her voice sharper than she intended. "Why didn't you say something?"
"I didn't want to impose." Elias's voice was mild, but there was something in his eyes that Mina couldn't read. "You were exhausted. I figured it could wait."
"It can't wait." Mina took his hand in hers, her fingers pressing against the wound. "The infection is spreading. If I don't do something, you could lose the hand. Or worse."
She felt Gray move behind her, felt his tension like a physical presence. "Mina, you don't have to - "
"I want to." And she did. The need to help, to heal, was as much a part of her now as breathing. She couldn't explain it, couldn't name the force that moved through her when she touched someone's pain, but she knew it was real. And she knew, with a certainty that bypassed thought, that she was supposed to use it.
She closed her eyes and reached.
The sensation was familiar now - a pulling from somewhere deep in her chest, a warmth that flowed through her arms and into her hands. She could feel Elias's wound like a map of wrongness, the torn flesh and the spreading infection and the cells that should have been knitting together but weren't. She pushed against the wrongness, willing it to change, to heal, to become whole.
It was harder than it had been before. Her exhaustion was a weight that dragged at her concentration, and the infection was stubborn, resistant to her efforts. She could feel herself draining with each passing second, her energy flowing out of her and into the wound.
But she didn't stop. She couldn't stop. The need to heal was stronger than the cost.
Slowly, imperfectly, the wound began to close. The inflammation faded. The ragged edges of the cut knitted together, leaving a pink scar that would fade with time. The infection retreated, pushed back by whatever force moved through Mina's hands.
When she finally opened her eyes, she was trembling. Her vision swam, and she had to grip the edge of the bed to keep from falling. But beneath the exhaustion, there was something else - a quiet satisfaction, a sense of rightness that she couldn't explain.
Elias was staring at his hand. The wound was gone, replaced by fresh pink skin that looked like it belonged to someone years younger. He flexed his fingers, watching the way the new skin moved, and his expression was something Mina couldn't quite parse.
Wonder, maybe. Or calculation.
"That's useful," he said, and his voice was soft, almost reverent.
The word hit Mina like a slap.
Useful. Not amazing. Not miraculous. Not even kind. Useful - like a tool, like a resource, like something to be deployed when needed and set aside when not.
She flinched, pulling her hands back, and the warmth that had been flowing through her turned cold. "I didn't do it to be useful," she said, and her voice came out smaller than she wanted. "I did it because you were hurt."
Elias's expression shifted, and for a moment, Mina thought she saw something like regret flicker across his features. But before he could respond, Gray was there - stepping between them, his body a barrier, his hand closing around her shoulder.
"She's not a tool," he said, and his voice was hard, cold in a way Mina had rarely heard. "She's a person. And if you can't see the difference, we're leaving."
The tension in the vault became a physical weight. Mina could feel it pressing against her skin, thick and suffocating. Elias stood frozen, his healed hand still raised, his storm-colored eyes moving between Gray's protective stance and Mina's trembling form.
"I didn't mean - " he started, but Gray cut him off.
"You meant exactly what you said. You saw what she could do, and you calculated how to use it." Gray's voice was low, dangerous. "That's what you do, isn't it? Calculate. Prepare. Turn everything into a resource to be managed."
For a long moment, no one moved. The silence stretched, heavy with things unsaid, with trust that had been built and broken in the space of a single word.
Then Elias exhaled slowly, and something in his expression shifted - a crack in the composure, a glimpse of something rawer beneath.
"You're right," he said quietly. "That was... poorly chosen. I apologize." He looked at Mina, his eyes meeting hers. "What you did was extraordinary. Not useful - extraordinary. And I was wrong to reduce it to anything less."
Mina wanted to believe him. She wanted to accept the apology and let the tension dissolve, to go back to the fragile peace they'd been building. But something in his eyes still looked like measurement, still looked like calculation, and she couldn't shake the feeling that he was apologizing for the word, not the thought behind it.
"It's okay," she said, because she didn't know what else to say. But her voice was hollow, and the warmth that had filled her when she healed was gone, replaced by a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.
Gray didn't move from his position between them. His hand stayed on Mina's shoulder, steady and protective, and she was grateful for it in a way she couldn't express.
"We should rest," he said finally, his eyes never leaving Elias. "Tomorrow, we can talk about what comes next."
Elias nodded slowly, his composure returning like a mask sliding into place. "Of course. Rest. We all need it."
But as he turned away, Mina caught the way his hand flexed - the healed hand, the one she'd poured herself into - and the gesture looked less like gratitude and more like testing.
The weight of three settled over the vault, and Mina wondered if they had just become something more than survivors, or something less.