Plaza Overhang - Sotira Clinic
05:55 PM - Jan 14, 2534
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Cabinets stand open, glass doors spidered with age. A few wall panels hum weakly after Solan forced power through circuits that really didn't want to wake up.
Kaius sits on the edge of a medical bench that creaks every time he shifts. His coat lies discarded in a bloody heap on the floor. His left hand is wrapped in a temporary band of gauze from the fight with the first tiger, but Solan has that hand propped in his own grip now while cleaning the reopened slice along the palm.
Solan works fast, but not gracefully. Stress knocks his stutter into everything he says, each consonant catching like it hits gravel on the way out. His cheeks are blotched, partly from the cold, partly from glaring at Kaius like the man personally offended the concept of caution.
"Y-you are irrevocably talented at s-stubbornness," Solan mutters while squeezing another line of med-gel along Kaius's palm. The gel fizzes softly as it bonds with the skin. "Y-you a-a-already had one wound to deal with. Then you go r-r-running off again to play bait."
Kaius barely flinches even though the gel burns. "You needed time. So I gave it to you."
"That's not an e-e-excuse," Solan snaps. "You're not a shield. You're not a lure. You're not d-disposable."
Kaius watches him with a faint tilt to his mouth, an almost-amused crease that makes Solan's ears go a little pink. "Didn't look disposable to me. I'm still sitting here."
"That's b-b-because I'm p-patching you," Solan says, far too sharply. "And because you're too s-s-stubborn to die even when-when you g-get... clawed like th-this."
Kade pops his curly head up from behind a counter, holding an ancient med-scanner like it's a priceless relic. "This thing looks expensive. Also, it just shocked me. So maybe it's evil." He drops it instantly.
Jessa elbows him aside and digs through the same cabinet. "You keep touching stuff. Maybe it's karma."
"It shocked me through gloves!"
"Then double karma."
Solan squeezes his eyes shut. "Both of you, p-p-please stop committing technological crimes. If you break the diagnostic array, I'll short-circuit myself."
Kaius smirks. "They're enthusiastic."
"They're d-d-destructive," Solan counters. "There's a difference."
He finishes Kaius's hand, rising to stand behind him. "Alright. T-turn a little. I need to get to your back."
Kaius shrugs off his inner shirt in one smooth, practiced motion. The garment drops to the floor, leaving him bare from the waist up.
The chatter stops dead. The air in the clinic, already cold, seems to drop another five degrees.
Kaius is lean, but every inch of his short frame is corded and sculpted. Muscle groups ripple across his shoulders and chest, defined by years of brutal, kinetic training. But it's the history etched into his skin that steals the breath. Old scars and thin white lines that crisscross his ribs and shoulders, a past look into countless close calls. They gleam under the weak emergency light. The skin along his lean abdomen is tight, leading down to a faint, dark happy trail that disappears below his utility belt.
Jessa lets out a low, almost involuntary whisper, her neon gaze locked onto the sculpted muscle. "Holy shit."
Kade's jaw literally drops open. He snaps it shut with an audible clack before immediately opening it slightly again. His eyes trace the line of the scars across Kaius's flank, and he exhales a soft, choked sound that is pure, physical awe. "Oh, hello there, you beautiful catastrophe. That's... that's worth freezing for."
Solan freezes, his medical focus shattering. His cheeks flush red, and he pauses, tilting his head slightly, his gaze fixed on the landscape of scars before slowly tracing the sharp angles of the muscles. He shakes his head once, a tiny, almost imperceptible motion.
Kaius shifts, bracing his hands on his knees, deliberately ignoring the audience.
Solan's composure snaps back into place, masked by sharp anger. "You got th-this one when you ran?" His voice drops. "I knew you were drawing it off the car. I knew, I just... d-d-didn't know it got this bad."
Kaius shrugs one shoulder. "Big cat had big claws."
"That's not f-funny."
"Didn't say it was."
Solan wipes the wound with warmed saline from a half-functional sterilizer unit. The unit beeps unpredictably, lights flashing in patterns that mean absolutely nothing.
Jessa looks over. "Is it supposed to sound like it's choking?"
"It's f-fine," Solan lies, moving the cloth with deliberate pressure. "Well, it's f-functioning enough."
The unit sparks once. Everyone freezes. Then it falls quiet.
Kade points at it mournfully. "We killed it."
"No," Solan snaps. "It wasn't alive. It was barely usable. And I need you to s-s-stop touching things."
Kaius huffs a soft laugh, which earns him a sharp jab of pain.
Solan's hands soften immediately. "Sorry. Hold st-still. This is the d-d-deep part."
"You apologizing now?" Kaius teases lightly.
Solan mutters something that sounds like shut up but with too many syllables to be fully legible. He works carefully, stitching the deeper tear first, layering the med-gel afterward until the wound glows faintly from the polymer activation.
Kaius feels each tug but stays still. Their proximity creates a brief pocket of warmth, the only real warmth in the clinic.
Solan's voice goes quiet. "You can't k-keep doing that. Throwing yourself between us and anything with teeth like you've got nine lives stashed under that coat."
"Didn't plan on dying today," Kaius says. "Didn't plan on letting a tiger chew through your little group either."
Solan stops stitching for one heartbeat longer than necessary. "W-w-we're not your responsibility."
"I'm well aware," Kaius says.
Solan goes scarlet from cheeks to ears and compensates by stitching faster, muttering curses that trip over his stutter until Jessa leans against a counter and snorts.
"Solan, breathe. You're vibrating."
"I'm fine," he insists, which is a lie large enough to fill the clinic.
Kade snickers. "He's so fine he's stuttering at level two."
Solan grabs a roll of bandage and swats at Kade without looking. "You two n-need something to do. Go sort the meds. C-c-carefully. C-c-carefully."
Jessa salutes. "Sorting. Not touching the electric murder box. Got it."
They move to a side cabinet and immediately start arguing over labels.
Solan finishes the final seal on the back wound and smooths the polymer with his thumb. The gel gives off a low hum as it sets.
"You'll be alright if you don't twist too much," he says softly. "And don't start another fight in the next ten minutes."
"No promises," Kaius says.
Solan groans into his hands. "I h-hate you."
Kaius tips his head back slightly to look at him. "Nah. You just worry loud."
Solan's blush goes nuclear. "Shut up."
The clinic crackles with half-dead electricity. The air carries the sharp tang of med-gel, melted frost, blood, ozone, and something hopeful beneath all that ruin. The pheromone amplifier Solan is building sits on the counter, pieces gleaming under the flickering light.
Solan hunches over the metal table where he's spread wires, canisters, and half-functional instruments in a chaotic circle. The air is thick with burnt insulation and the faint sweetness leaking from an open pheromone canister. Kaius sits propped against the backrest of a cracked examination chair, his bandaged arm across his lap and his breathing steady but strained.
Solan's soldering tip spits sparks as he presses it to a joint. "The perimeter's compromised," he says, voice pitched low, tight, and carrying that sharp stutter that gets worse every time adrenaline hits him. "Th-they're not s-s-stupid animals. The second they figure out we split the route, they'll adapt. W-w-we need something to buy time. More than bullets."
Kaius watches him work like he's watching a storm build. "What're you saying?"
"That your genius p-plan forgot to-to account for the actual n-nature of the creatures we're dealing with," Solan fires back. He doesn't even look up. He grabs one of the thumb-sized canisters, twists a tool around the cap, and cracks it open. A heavy, musky smell rolls out like hot breath from a furnace.
Kaius wrinkles his nose. "Tracked those things for two days straight. I'm trained for this."
"Fascinating," Solan says, because sarcasm is easier than yelling. His hands never stop moving. "I'm rigging a s-s-stripped sensor array to the exhaust ports of three high-intensity scent markers. Tenebris Tigers don't track primarily by sight. They track by chemosignals. And n-n-not simple ones either. A whole w-web of pheromones, s-stress markers, and blood components."
Kaius lifts a brow. "I know how they hunt. They've got external sensory ridges just for mapping smell in three dimensions." He wince-s, shifting his weight. "That's what makes them so damn good at killing."
Solan snaps the last canister into a palm-sized metal frame and tests the release valve. The thing looks like it was built during a caffeine bender using stolen parts, but it hums with purpose.
"I'm calling it the V-V-Volatile Pheromone Disruptor." Solan says it with pride, even if his stutter clips the first word in half.
Kaius grunts. "Didn't think it needed a name, but sure."
Solan pretends he didn't hear that. "Your b-bullets were actually... brilliant," he admits, cheeks flushing a little. "Crude, but effective. They blind the tiger's p-primary sensory matrix."
He tosses the device lightly onto Kaius's chest.
Kaius catches it with his uninjured hand, turning it over. The casing is patched with uneven welds, and the underside still has a smear of Solan's blood from when he cut himself earlier. "It's clever," he says. "Still doesn't change that your whole assessment was off. The plan wasn't stupid. It was necessary."
Solan finally goes still, shoulders tightening. He straightens up. His height isn't impressive, but his anger makes up for inches.
"Necessary?" His voice cracks with disbelief. "You led us into open ground over a compromised bridge. You hoped you could bluff your way past two apex predators. You relied on luck. And pride. W-w-we lost the primary transport, and Calyx almost fell off the bridge. Don't lecture me about necessity."
Kaius lifts his good hand and gestures toward the sealed clinic door. "Look around. You needed this place. Your supplies were almost gone. The others were freezing in that train car. You think staying cautious would've saved you? If we'd taken the long route searching for a hidden entrance, you'd have starved before finding one. And if we'd crossed out in the open without chaos on our side, the tigers would've wiped out your whole group."
Solan narrows his eyes. "You d-don't know what I would've d-done."
Kaius's voice softens, but the intensity sharpens. "Your caution would've killed you slower. My plan used the bridge as noise. Chaos was the point. It got us in here. It kept you alive. And now you've got power, shelter, meds that aren't completely useless, and a defensible door."
Solan looks away for a moment, jaw tight, because he knows the truth of that hits hard.
Kaius continues, steadier. "Now we shift the goal. The distraction's done. We got inside. The new plan's simple. Get the rest of your people here. Immediately. This is the only safe harbor left on this route."
Solan breathes out, almost a shiver. The soldering iron clicks against metal as he sets it down. The clinic lights flicker overhead, casting the two of them in a pulse of amber and shadow.
He doesn't agree out loud, but he doesn't argue either.
In this world, silence carries its own language.
Solan turns away from the bed, bracing his weight on the metal counter as he scrubs his hands with a chemical wipe scavenged from the med-kit. The bite of antiseptic stings his skin, sharper than it needs to be. "The p-plan still could've been better," he mutters, voice tight but steady, the way he gets when he's trying not to think about Kaius bleeding through fresh stitches behind him.
Kaius shifts against the nest of blankets and salvaged jackets beneath him. His breath leaves in a slow, rough exhale that almost hides the pain sliding through it. "You said that already," he answers, sounding far too pleased for someone who's one bad cough from reopening his back. "But you were right about your other point. The second cat was circling. You were worried they'd flank us."
Solan slows, mid-scrub. The wipe hangs limp between his fingers. "I was worried they'd coordinate," he says. "They're not lone predators. They track each other. T-They sync."
A thin twitch pulls at the corner of Kaius's mouth, half smirk, half grimace. "And you were exactly right about that."
He lets the silence drag for a beat, then lowers his voice into something sly and maddeningly gentle, like he's handing Solan a secret. "But I've got good news for you, Four Eyes."
The nickname lands with the familiar little sting, but Solan doesn't rise to it. Not now. His stomach has already dropped. The cold dread creeps under his ribs, the kind that comes right before a truth he doesn't want to hear but can't look away from. He turns slightly, shoulders rigid. "What good news? You drew it off the ridge?"
Kaius meets his gaze, direct, unblinking, and the usual smart-ass gloss is gone. What replaces it is something dark and edged, the kind of pride that comes from surviving a choice that should've killed him.
"No," Kaius says quietly. "I killed it."
The overhang seems to swallow the sound. Solan freezes, the wipe crumpling in his hand. His mind runs the math automatically, injury angles, blood loss, how far Kaius would've had to lead that animal away to save him and the twins and the nine strangers they'd barely met. None of the numbers make sense. Kaius should not be breathing, much less talking.
Before he can respond, the scrape of boots climbs up the steps, and the twins burst back into the space. Jessa is carrying a chemical pack; Kade has coils of cable looped around his arms like some overeager electrician. They both stop short, having walked straight into the tail end of Kaius's confession.
Kade's eyes go huge. He drops the cable in a tangled heap. "Hold up, what? You killed the second one? The bastard that was sprinting up the ravine?"
Kaius gives a shrug that's so slight it would look dismissive if not for the way his jaw clenches through the pain. "It was heading for you three. Couldn't let it reach the clinic. Had to end it."
Kade whistles low, shaking his head like he's looking at a magic trick he still doesn't believe. "Jesus. You know that's, like, real damn attractive, right?"
"Kade," Jessa snaps automatically, even though her voice wobbles with her own shock. She drops the pack at her feet with a hollow thud. Her eyes flick across Kaius's battered frame, then back to Solan. "Remind me never to piss that man off. He doesn't half-ass anything, does he?"
Then, abruptly defensive, she points at Solan with both hands like she's offering evidence at a trial. "You remember we stuck up for you, yeah? In the train car? When everybody was losing their minds about the supply count? We had your back."
Solan turns fully this time, the antiseptic wipe falling to the floor. He levels a dry, steady stare at her, his exhaustion making him sharper than usual. "Jessa," he says, pausing just long enough to make her squirm. "Truly?"
Her mouth opens, shuts, opens again. "I mean, well, yes?"
Solan sighs, scrubs a hand over his face, and mutters something that sounds an awful lot like, "Unbelievable," as the cold wind rattles the metal siding of the overhang.
The moment settles, tense and strangely intimate, each of them trying to understand what the hell Kaius just survived, and what it means for all of them now that he has.
Jessa lifts her hands in a jerky, frantic little wave, cheeks flushed like she's been caught shoplifting. "What? I'm just making sure we all know who's actually friends with who. That's normal. I'm... clarifying."
Kade slides between them before Solan can respond, palms spread in the universal sign of please don't start shit. His breath fogs in the cold air as he looks between the two of them. "Can everybody relax? We're acting like he is some random dude who wandered in off the Frostline. He just dropped two predators the size of compact cars. That earns him, what, three months of being treated like a real person? Bare minimum."
"He is a stranger," Solan replies, voice clipped and cool as he folds the used chemical wipe with surgical precision. He lifts the lid of a cracked biohazard bin and drops it inside without looking. "A s-s-statistically improbable stranger, but a stranger nonetheless."
He doesn't say the rest, that Kaius's choices threw Solan's entire risk model into chaos. That the man took wounds Solan never calculated for. That now Solan owes him his life twice over, which is its own kind of vulnerability.
Kaius huffs out a laugh that sounds like it scrapes his ribs on the way up. He props himself on his elbow despite the stitched gash across his back pulling tight. The motion makes Solan's jaw flex. The twins stare like they're watching a lion stretch.
"Stranger or not," Kaius says, "I saved all your asses." His smile is lazy, worn, and honest enough to be irritating. "And I'm not gloating. I mean, I am, but only because it's true."
He pushes off the cabinet, slow and stiff, a man pretending he isn't running on nothing but stubbornness and instinct. The ruined clinic stretches around them, shattered tiles, sagging shelves, walls painted in that institutional gray every abandoned place in this frozen world seems to share. A cold draft snakes through the broken window paneling, brushing the back of his neck.
"This place is a damn tomb without power," Kaius mutters, scanning the dark hall beyond the open doorway. "I'm going to check for the server bank or whatever geothermal interface they used. If we can't get systems online before the group freezes, this heat source is just a pretty idea."
Solan doesn't lift his head, but his shoulders tighten. "You n-n-need to stay w-within range of the makeshift monitor. If-If your pulse spikes, I need to know."
Kaius glances back with a sharp, humorless curl of his lips. "I handle myself fine. That's sort of my whole thing." He steps into the corridor, swallowed by the dim. His gait is practiced silence, the kind that belongs to someone who learned long ago that being unheard is the closest thing to safety.
The darkness takes him one breath at a time, until he's gone and the clinic feels colder for it.
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