Solara HQ did not feel like a fortress anymore.
It felt like a building full of people trying to pretend their minds belonged to them.
Cassidy moved through the corridors with her jaw locked and her hands clenched inside her sleeves, stepping around the evidence of fracture like it was debris after a storm—only this storm had no sky, no lightning, no warning. Just thoughts.
A door had been barricaded from the inside with a cot frame and a shelving unit. Someone had painted a symbol on it in hurried, uneven strokes—something meant to mean safe but shaped like panic instead. In the next hall, a man sat on the floor with his back against the wall, staring forward without blinking while tears slid down his face like he didn't know they were his.
Further in, voices spiked.
Two technicians argued in a corner with the kind of anger that didn't belong to the words they were using. One shoved the other hard enough to make their shoulder hit the bulkhead. No one stepped in. No one trusted their own intentions enough to play hero.
Cassidy passed them anyway.
Not because she didn't care.
Because there was only one unfair battle she could afford to focus on.
She kept moving.
The deeper she went, the stranger the air felt—too still in places, too heavy in others. Lights held their brightness for a second longer than they should have before dimming back down. It wasn't malfunction.
It was restraint.
Like the building itself was trying not to make noise.
Cassidy's Mark pulsed once against her wrist. Sky-blue. Soft. Alert.
Her pace didn't change.
She reached the dorm.
Allium's door.
The hallway outside it was quiet in a way that didn't match the rest of HQ. No crying. No shouting. No hurried footsteps. Just silence stretched tight, like thread pulled to the edge of snapping.
Cassidy raised her hand to knock.
Her Mark flared—sharp enough that it stung.
She froze, breath caught.
"Okay," she whispered to herself. "Okay. So… no knocking."
She swallowed and tried again, gentler, barely a tap.
The Mark flared again.
Cassidy shut her eyes briefly, jaw tightening until her teeth hurt.
"How am I supposed to get in then?" she muttered, voice low like the walls were listening.
She reached for the doorknob.
No flare.
Cassidy stared at her wrist like it had betrayed her on purpose.
"Of course," she breathed. "Just step into a nuclear reactor. Thanks, gift."
She turned the knob and eased the door open.
The room was dim.
Not dark—dim, like the light itself had been told to keep its distance.
Orange glowed in uneven pulses across the floor and walls, then thinned, then fought back. White pressed into it in slow increments, not burning, not exploding—correcting. The air carried the faint scent of Solara apples and something sharper underneath it: sweat, fear, and the metallic edge of too much energy held in too small a space.
Apples lay scattered on the floor.
Bruised.
Half-eaten.
One crushed near the base of the bed where it looked like it had fallen mid-bite.
Allium was in the corner.
Not sitting like someone resting.
Curled inward like someone trying to make their own body smaller than the thoughts inside it.
One arm wrapped over his head, fingers tangled in his hair, gripping hard enough to turn his knuckles pale. His other hand scraped against the floor in shallow, absent motions, nails whispering over the material like he was searching for friction, for grounding, for anything that belonged to him.
Cassidy's throat tightened.
She opened her mouth to speak—
Her Mark flared.
She stopped.
She took one step closer anyway.
The Mark flared again, hotter this time.
Cassidy paused, breath shallow, heart thundering too loud in her ears.
The vision from before tried to climb up her spine like a reflex.
Ash.
Fire.
White light.
Allium looking at her like she was a target.
Every instinct in her screamed to do something.
To grab him.
To pull him back.
To make it stop.
She moved closer.
The air grew heavier with each footstep, as if the room noticed her approach and increased the pressure on purpose. Orange flickered, dimmed, then surged in defensive pulses. White threaded through it, sterile and patient.
Cassidy stopped when she was a foot away.
Allium's shaking was obvious this close—not dramatic, not convulsive, but constant. A tremor in his shoulders. A tension in his jaw. Muscle held ready to move without permission.
Cassidy's eyes burned.
Her Mark flared again.
Her hand twitched, wanting to reach for him.
Flare.
She wanted to speak.
Flare.
She felt a sound break in her chest that didn't quite become a sob.
Flare.
Cassidy swallowed hard and blinked fast, ashamed of how small she suddenly felt.
"I can't," she thought, panicked. "I can't do this. I can't be the person who sets him off. I can't—"
She shifted her weight and sat down slowly on the floor, not close enough to touch him.
Not close enough to trigger whatever line the Mark was protecting.
She watched.
She watched Allium's orange lose ground in thin, miserable inches.
Watched white creep upward beneath his skin like frost through cracks.
Watched him fight in silence.
And for a moment, she hated the Mark.
Not because it was wrong.
Because it was right.
Her hands shook as she reached into her pocket without thinking.
Her fingers brushed something soft and familiar.
Earbuds.
Cassidy froze.
The Mark did not flare.
It warmed.
Not bright.
Not sharp.
Warm, like approval without a word.
Cassidy's breath hitched.
She pulled them out slowly, staring at the small plastic shapes like they were relics from a life that still had music in it.
Her Mark pulsed again—gentle, steady, content.
Cassidy looked back at Allium.
Then, very carefully, she leaned in.
The warmth stayed.
She moved closer until she was beside him.
Still no flare.
She sat down within his reach, close enough to share air but not so close she touched him yet.
Allium turned fast.
Too fast.
His eyes locked onto her with a flash of white so clean and intense it made the room feel smaller. Pressure hit Cassidy's chest like invisible hands, pushing her backward without moving her.
Her body went cold.
Not from Rose's frost.
From instinct.
A tear slipped down her cheek anyway, silent and honest.
Cassidy lifted her hand slowly, like she was approaching a wild animal that might bolt—or bite.
Between her fingers, she held out one earbud.
She didn't speak.
She didn't dare.
Her eyes did all the talking:
Please stay here.
Allium's gaze held her like a blade.
Then the orange returned in a thin thread, as if something inside him recognized the shape of her intent.
Not control.
Not fear.
Company.
Cassidy moved her other hand gently toward his hair.
Her Mark stayed warm.
She brushed his hair aside and placed the earbud in.
Then she put the other in her own ear.
Cassidy closed her eyes and turned the music on.
The first notes were quiet.
Not triumphant.
Not loud.
Something sad enough to be honest.
Allium's shaking didn't stop instantly.
It slowed.
Like his body had found a rhythm that didn't belong to the voices.
The white didn't retreat dramatically.
It hesitated.
Cassidy stayed still beside him, breathing in time with the sound, letting it fill the room without demanding anything from him.
Then she leaned in.
Her arms wrapped around him, careful and slow.
The Mark did not flare.
Allium didn't move at first.
He didn't return the embrace.
He didn't push her away.
He just… allowed it.
They sat like that on the floor in the dim, orange-white light, music threading through the silence.
Cassidy's heart pounded hard enough to hurt.
Then it started matching something else.
Not a pulse.
A presence.
Allium's breathing.
Slow. Forced. Then steadier.
The white glow began to fade, not defeated—outlasted.
Orange deepened, calmer, collected, reclaiming the room one inch at a time.
Cassidy didn't open her eyes.
She didn't look for proof.
She just stayed.
Quiet company.
A choice that didn't fight.
Eventually, Allium's voice came—soft, raw, like it had to travel a long distance to reach the air.
"Thank you."
Cassidy opened her eyes.
She looked at him and smiled gently, like smiling was the only safe thing she knew how to do right now.
"Don't," she whispered. "I like your company."
Her voice trembled on the honesty.
"Are you okay now?"
Allium nodded once.
Small.
Real.
The Mark at Cassidy's wrist settled, the sky-blue pulse easing back into something normal.
For a moment, the room felt like it belonged to them again.
Then—
A sound.
Not from the music.
Not from the vents.
Not from the building.
A dry, careful click.
Cassidy's breath caught.
Allium's head turned slightly, eyes sharpening.
Another click followed, softer, like an insect adjusting its grip somewhere just out of sight.
The room did not change.
The air did.
Like attention had entered it.
Cassidy didn't move.
She didn't tear the earbuds out.
She didn't reach for her gauntlet.
She just held onto the quiet for one more second, because she understood what Khelos was doing now.
He wasn't trying to end them.
He was learning how to stand close.
He was listening to what worked.
And he had just heard the first thing that brought Allium back.