The surgical bay lights were too bright to feel like night.
Behind the quarantine glass, PATCH$1 stood at LUIS's bedside, gloved hands resting lightly on the rail. The crystalline column that had been his legs was braced and locked into an ugly, secure frame at the foot of the bed.
Monitors beeped steady, stubborn little proofs of life.
"You're doing well," PATCH$1 said softly.
"Feels like I'm not doing anything," LUIS mumbled, eyelids heavy from the cocktail DOCSTRING had ordered. "You guys are doing all the work."
"That's the job," PATCH$1 said. "You get to focus on breathing. We handle the ugly parts."
He huffed a weak laugh. "You're very cheerful for someone about to chop my legs off," he said.
She smiled, the expression small but real.
"I've seen worse and come out the other side," she said. "So have my patients. I'm borrowing their optimism and spending it on you."
On the other side of the glass, FULCRUM watched.
He'd meant to just check vitals on the wall screen and go, but his boots had carried him that extra half-dozen steps to the viewing window. He told himself it was so he could see the crystal structure's progress directly, compare it to the 0409 file diagrams.
That was true.
It wasn't the whole truth.
Inside, DOCSTRING entered, rolling a tray beside him. She gave LUIS a cool, measured look.
"Last chance to complain," DOCSTRING said. "Once we start, your window for jokes closes until post-op."
"No more 'break a leg' lines?" LUIS asked.
"Absolutely not," DOCSTRING deadpanned. "I'm banning them by medical authority."
He snorted, then winced as the motion tugged something along the glass.
PATCH$1's hand tightened on the rail for a second.
"Hey," she said quietly. "Luis. Look at me."
He did.
"You're not alone in this," she said. "We'll put you under. When you wake up, this part will be over. You'll be missing some pieces, but you'll still be you. And I'll be here."
"You promise?" he asked, voice smaller than before.
"I promise," PATCH$1 said.
Outside, FULCRUM felt the promise settle like a weight in the air. He recognized its shape—it was the same one hanging over him every time someone said "we'll get you out" and meant "if anyone can walk through, it's you."
He watched as PATCH$1 reached out, curling her fingers around LUIS's hand.
"Okay," DOCSTRING said. "Let's begin."
A tech moved to lower the privacy screen.
"Wait," FULCRUM said quietly over the local intercom. "One thing."
DOCSTRING looked up, one brow arching.
FULCRUM keyed his mic.
"Luis," he said. "You remember what you said in the warehouse? That you didn't want to break?"
Luis turned his head weakly toward the glass.
"Yeah," he said.
"You already did the hard part," FULCRUM said. "You stayed still when every instinct said 'move.' You kept it from reaching anyone else. You did your job. Let us do ours now."
Luis blinked slowly, then exhaled.
"Okay," he said. "Okay."
DOCSTRING nodded once at FULCRUM through the glass—a small, professional acknowledgment. Then she gestured, and the screen came down, turning the rest of the procedure into shadows and shapes.
FULCRUM stayed just long enough to confirm the monitors stayed steady. Then he stepped back from the glass.
"Vitals?" he asked quietly.
"Stable," PATCH$1's voice came over the open medical net a moment later. "We're underway."
Her voice had shifted into that tone he recognized—soft, grounded, carrying more weight than her frame should've allowed. He knew FUSE lived in that tone the way some men lived in armor.
"Good," FULCRUM said.
He cut his mic and turned away.
He found FUSE waiting just outside the medical wing, leaning against the wall with a tablet in one hand and a half-empty coffee cup in the other.
"You watching?" FUSE asked.
"Long enough," FULCRUM said.
"Yeah," FUSE said. "Same."
He stared at the opposite wall for a moment, jaw working.
"She puts her whole spine into it, you know," FUSE said finally. "Every patient, every time. Then she comes back to the FOB like nothing happened, and eats terrible noodles, and pretends she didn't just talk someone through losing a limb."
FULCRUM glanced at him. There was no sarcasm in FUSE's voice now, no ego. Just a brittle kind of pride.
"I've noticed," FULCRUM said.
"Yeah, well," FUSE said. "Notice a little less."
The words hung between them—half joke, half warning.
FULCRUM could have bristled. He could have pointed out that he hadn't done anything, hadn't crossed any lines.
Instead, he looked down the corridor toward the quarantine doors.
"She chose to be in there with him," FULCRUM said. "Not out here with us."
FUSE snorted softly. "You saying I'm jealous of a trauma patient now?"
"I'm saying your problem isn't me," FULCRUM said. "And it never was."
There was a long pause.
Then FUSE huffed out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh.
"You're a pain in the ass," he said.
"So I've been told," FULCRUM replied.
They stood there in companionable silence for a minute—the containment tech and the breacher, both orbiting the same medic without getting any closer.
Finally, FUSE pushed off the wall.
"C'mon," he said. "Mess hall still has coffee that qualifies as a war crime. You look like you're about to go reorganize your gear by trauma type again, and I don't want to walk past that."
FULCRUM considered saying no. Considered retreating to his room, to the ritual of cleaning his shotgun until his hands stopped remembering the feel of crystal air.
"Fine," he said. "One cup."
"Two," FUSE said. "Minimum."
They walked down the corridor together. Their shoulders didn't quite touch, but the distance between them felt slightly less sharp.
Behind the glass, PATCH$1 bent over LUIS, voice a low murmur as the machines beeped on.
Elsewhere in the Site, in a room with no windows and too many screens, PRIORESS watched a smaller version of the same feed.
The angle showed FULCRUM at the glass, then turning away. It showed PATCH$1's hands on LUIS's, the set of her shoulders.
"Shadow channel online," she said quietly.
The reply came after a second, low and distorted.
"Here," the man said.
"You see that?" PRIORESS asked.
"What, the crystal case or the way your breacher doesn't know how to stand anywhere but on the edge of something sharp?" the man—FOXHAMMER, though the system didn't say the name—asked.
"Both," PRIORESS said. "But I was thinking about his choice to talk before he left. The way he frames survival."
"He hands it back to them," FOXHAMMER said after a moment. "Makes it their victory, not his rescue. It helps."
"Did you do that?" she asked.
A dry huff of air that might have been a laugh.
"Not at first," FOXHAMMER said. "At first I just dragged people out and let command decide who got the credit. Later... yeah. I learned it matters."
Her gaze tracked the empty doorway where FULCRUM had disappeared.
"He's carrying it well," she said. "So far."
"So far," FOXHAMMER echoed.
There was a pause, softer than silence.
"You should sleep," he added.
"So should you," she said.
"You're the one replaying footage on a loop," he said.
"You're the one answering at three in the morning," she replied.
The corner of her mouth twitched.
"Go to bed, Shadow Three," she said.
"Yes, Captain," he replied. There was warmth under the title that didn't belong on any record.
The channel clicked off.
PRIORESS sat alone in the glow of the screens for a few seconds more, watching FULCRUM and FUSE vanish around a corner on one feed while PATCH$1 bent over LUIS on another.
Then she locked the console and stood, stretching the stiffness from her neck.
Her own bed was three floors up.
She knew without checking that it would be empty when she got there.
That was fine.
There were worse kinds of fracture than sleeping alone.