Yuri & Nyla POV
The ceiling came back first—flat, too clean.Then morning light cut across her vision as the building's autonomous systems adjusted the panoramic Opac windows. The brightness arrived in measured bands, precisely as the system was programmed for the entire east wing.A low hum sat beneath everything—constant, regulated. Not power. Life-support.
Her throat worked. Dry. Her chest rose, then stalled halfway through the breath.
Movement to her left drew her attention. As she followed it, pain came late—like it had been waiting its turn.Not burning. Just pain each time she tried to move—absence wrapped in pressure, cinched tight by something that refused to let her forget it was there.But another concern surfaced.
A bay, she thought. Medical.
The bed beside her—where a boy and a tiger cub were supposed to be lying quietly—was empty.
Only a folded blanket remained, neatly arranged.
"Kaodin," she called, thinking he might be in the bathroom.
She waited for it—the scrape of a chair, a shadow shifting, his weight settling somewhere close.
Nothing came.
Silence filled the gap it left. Too deliberate.
A nurse android stood beside her bed, a sight she hadn't noticed earlier, already mid-routine. Its movements were quiet—only the faint whisper of servos marking each adjustment—as one articulated hand worked the bedside medical-assist panel, sliding it into its active configuration. Soft glyphs bloomed and rearranged themselves across the screen with each input, their glow reflecting faintly against the stabilizing hardware near the stump where her arm had once been.
"…Hey," she said, voice rough. "Where's the kid?"
The android's head angled a precise three degrees.
Its faceplate remained smooth and unreadable, soft indicator lights nested along the seams of its neck and chest dimming as background processes throttled down.
"Patient Nyla," it said. Female voice. Neutral. Smoothed just enough to keep panic down. "Consciousness confirmed. Please restrict your movement. Do not attempt to sit upright."
A brief pause followed—shorter than Nyla expected, as if the answer had already been queued.
"Regarding your inquiry," it continued. "Patient Kaodin's absence was noted. He was notified by Commander Arika and departed the room earlier to perform a routine morning jog."
Servos clicked softly as internal records updated across the medical bay's closed network.
"Data updated at the Medical Bay entrance," it said. "He is currently accompanied by Lieutenant Yuri and is en route back to this room."
Nyla stared at it.
Just… stared.
Her lips twitched before she could stop them, teeth flashing for a split second as the image caught up—the kid, bandaged and wrecked less than a day ago, apparently deciding cardio was a good idea.
"…Of course he did," she muttered.
Then the sound slipped out of her—short, rough, disbelieving. A laugh she didn't plan to make and didn't bother taking back.
"Unbelievable," she said, shaking her head a fraction. "I lose an arm and he goes for a jog—"
The laugh caught wrong.
Her throat seized, dry and scraped raw, and the sound collapsed into a sharp cough she turned her face away from, jaw tightening as she rode it out. One cough. Then another—short, controlled, stubbornly contained.
Idiot. Laughing with a throat like sandpaper.
She swallowed. Regretted it immediately. Her throat felt raw, like she'd been breathing dust.
"…Water," she added, eyes still on the ceiling. "Need… water."
The words came rough, chased by a faint cough she didn't bother hiding.
A pause. A faint tick—like a neural processing unit skipping.
"Hydration request acknowledged," it said. "Oral intake will be limited."
"Good," Nyla said hoarsely.
The android's hand moved accordingly. It drew a slim dispenser arm from the bedframe, aligned it with mechanical precision, and tilted a narrow spout toward her lips.
"Do not lift your head," it said.
"I won't," Nyla muttered. "Promise."
The spout touched. A measured release—cool, controlled. Just enough.
She drank in short pulls, careful, disciplined. The water scraped down her throat and settled the burn without soothing it completely. When she stopped, the dispenser withdrew at once.
"Intake complete," the android said. "Monitoring swallow response."
"Still alive," Nyla said. "Gold star."
She went quiet again after that—saving her breath, eyes fixed on the ceiling—listening now, waiting for the sound of footsteps that moved too lightly for a boy who should've been resting.
Morning jog, she thought.
The android's hand returned to the panel.
"Patient Nyla," it said, "I will begin basic assessment prior to Dr. Mintra's scheduled checkup. Preparatory evaluation is required before your implant procedure commencing this afternoon."
Nyla didn't answer. Just gave a small, permissive nod.
The panel brightened.
"Pain assessment required," it continued. "On a scale of zero to ten—"
"—don't," Nyla cut in. Her jaw tightened. "Just… ask it straight."
A pause. Slightly longer this time. A low, contained hum resonated faintly from its torso.
"Describe current pain," the android asked. "Burning. Pulling. Or the perception of movement in the absent limb."
She stared at the ceiling. Counted one breath. Two. Her tongue stuck unpleasantly to the roof of her mouth.
"Sometimes it spikes," she said. "Mostly it just… pulls."
"Phantom sensation noted," it replied. "Frequency and intensity logged for physician review."
Its articulated hand adjusted a setting on the medical-assist panel. The movement was deliberate, visibly sequenced—each action completed before the next began.
"Please confirm," it continued, "are current pain-management protocols adequately effective?"
Before Nyla could answer, sound reached her first.
Footsteps. More than one set. Approaching with purpose.
A voice followed—elderly, gentle, amused.
"…that's funny, Lieutenant Yuri. I thought you were extremely proficient with the opposite sex. Clearly, you underestimated the girls on this floor far too much."
"Also, forgive the medical bay's temperature," she added. "This floor was adjusted earlier to support a specific diagnostic procedure. It isn't normally maintained at this level."
A brief pause.
"Per your inquiry regarding the boy's signs of catching a cold," she continued gently. "I'll have antiseptic prepared for him as well. My apologies, young man."
The footsteps slowed.
"Now," the voice went on, matter-of-fact, "the King has issued an urgent compensation order for her mercenary assistance. I intend to deliver my best work. Besides, she'll need to be fit enough to take care of her brother too, no?"
"…Huh," another voice—closer now. Younger. Familiar. "I'm her brother…?"
The words cut off as the footsteps stopped outside the door.
The nurse android didn't look up.
Two security androids shifted in unison.
A brief pause followed—not silence, but processing.
Optical arrays swept once. Facial vectors locked, cross-checked against the militia database.
"Lieutenant Yuri," one unit reported. "SAI Aux-Recon-7. Identity confirmed."
Metal repositioned. A synchronized clack—salutes rendered without flourish.
Another scan passed lower this time, tagging the white edge of a lab coat as it moved.
An embedded ID strip stitched into the fabric of the lab coat flared briefly as one of the security androids emitted a low-power multispectrum sweep from its cranial sensor array—infrared, ultraviolet, and near-field RFID layered into a single pass.
The scan completed in under a second.
The nurse android continued calmly, as if none of the arrivals mattered.
"Please respond," it said. "Are current pain-management protocols adequately effective?"
She exhaled.
"…It still hurts," Nyla said. "But it's manageable."
The android paused.
Tick.
"Response logged," it said. "Baseline accepted."
Its hand moved—precise, unhurried—finalizing entries on the medical-assist panel. The interface responded at once: a translucent anatomical projection rose just above the screen, resolving into a simplified upper-torso model.
The image auto-centered on her left side. A clean cutaway bloomed where her arm should have been, layers separating with clinical clarity—bone ends capped, tissue margins mapped, stabilizing hardware overlaid in muted lines.
Numerical bands slid into place beside the stump: pressure tolerance, neural response latency, phantom-signal frequency. One value pulsed amber, then settled back to green as the android confirmed the input.
A thin marker appeared along the margin of the projection—not an alert, just a quiet deviation tag. A delta symbol, small and understated, anchored to the neural response graph where the curve dipped a fraction out of baseline before correcting.
A short status pulse rippled across the interface. The projection minimized, collapsing back into the panel and holding there—assessment complete, delta noted, queued for physician handoff.
Only then did the room change.
The door seals disengaged with a soft hiss.
Cool corridor air slipped in first, followed by motion.
Nyla's eyes shifted.
Kaodin stepped through with the others. His skin carried a faint flush instead, heat still trapped under it, like he'd run harder than he was supposed to. Damp hair clung at his temples. He looked… annoyingly intact.
He spotted her immediately.
And smiled.
Nyla felt it before she showed it. Then her mouth tilted anyway—a small, crooked smirk she didn't bother hiding.
Kaodin lifted a hand in a lazy half-wave. "Morning," he said lightly, then nodded toward Dr. Mintra with exaggerated seriousness. "Doctor says I'm your brother now, right?"
He glanced back at Nyla, eyes bright. "So. Big sis."
She snorted, careful not to laugh again. "You jog, you get promoted. That how it works now?"
"Apparently." He shrugged. "Commonly good Muay-Thai boy practice."
He was carrying Wawa.
Not slung over a shoulder or tucked under an arm—held straight in front of him, both forearms cradling the tiger cub like a baby. Wawa's paws dangled lazily, tail flicking once, utterly content. Kaodin's expression matched it: easy, nonchalant, eyes bright with mischief.
Nyla's mouth curved before she could stop it.
Then her eyes slid sideways.
Yuri stood just behind him.
He shifted his weight, already edging sideways toward the inner door. "Uh—anyway, I'm hitting the bathroom?"
Then she saw it.
Lipstick. Everywhere.
Not one shade—many. Smears crossing his cheekbones, a streak dragged along his jaw, faint imprints clustered near his mouth like a forensic record of poor life choices. Reds. Pinks. Something dangerously close to purple.
The laugh burst out of her—sharp, helpless, too loud for a medical bay.
Yuri flinched. Then looked at her. Then—slowly—understood.
"…It wasn't like that," he said immediately.
Nyla tried to rein it in. Failed. Her shoulder protested, pain biting hard, but she couldn't stop the sound tearing out of her anyway.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, made it worse. "I didn't do anything," he insisted. "I was just standing there."
That only made it funnier.
Her laughter broke off into a cough she turned away from, jaw tight as she forced it down. When she looked back, her eyes were wet—but sharp.
Yuri's gaze dropped from her face to Kaodin.
He stepped closer and caught Kaodin lightly by the shoulder before he could reach the towel on the rail near the door, fingers testing the fabric as if he expected it to still be soaked.
"…How," he said slowly. "You were drenched. You were trembling. You were five minutes away from getting sick."
He looked down at the boy's face, baffled.
Kaodin didn't answer right away.
He just looked back at Yuri.
Then at Yuri's face—covered in lipstick marks, multicolored.
Kaodin's mouth twitched once—a barely contained smirk, eyes crinkling as he forced it down out of habit more than restraint. Not disrespect. Not here. Not to people outside his dojo. Not to elders. Not to someone who'd bled beside him.
"I'm still fine," he said at last, tone easy as ever. "But… at best…"
He stepped closer and lowered Wawa carefully to the floor at the foot of Nyla's bed. The tiger cub stirred, eyes half-lidded, then looked up at Kaodin.
Kaodin glanced at Nyla—not asking, just acknowledging. Watch him for me.
"…I'll go take a bath now."
Wawa rose unsteadily.
Not because the form was fading—but because it wasn't.
The pressure around him had thinned, the earlier density gone, but the transfigured shape still held. Kaodin's intent hadn't been released yet, and without that release, the cub couldn't collapse back into the looser, less demanding spectral state.
Too much strain.
Too little recovery.
The cub padded forward on stiff limbs and climbed up beside Nyla beneath the blanket. He circled once—slower than before—then coiled against her ribs, nose tucked in, tail wrapping once as the effort finally caught up with him.
Only then did the tension ease.
Wawa went still.
Asleep—not from comfort, but exhaustion.
Nyla watched Kaodin disappear through the inner doorway, the sound of water starting up a moment later. Her breathing finally settled.
Then she looked down at the weight pressed against her side.
Brother, she thought. Idiot.
And somehow—relieved.
Her smile lingered.
Just long enough.