The only sound in the Medical Section was the rhythmic bubbling of the Re-Genesis tanks and the low hum of the ventilation system. Max sat hunched over in the metal chair, his elbows on his knees, his gaze fixed intently on Malina's sleeping face behind the glass.
The door to the medical bay slid open with a soft hiss.
Max didn't turn around. He assumed it was a nurse checking the vitals.
But the footsteps were too light to be a nurse, and too hesitant to be Jod.
A chair was dragged across the linoleum floor. It was placed directly next to Max.
Edy sat down.
He looked exhausted. His usually neat hair was messy, and he was clutching a cup of lukewarm cafeteria tea. He didn't look at the tanks. He looked at his hands, which were resting in his lap.
Max glanced at him sideways, expecting Edy to recite statistics about survival rates or the chemical composition of the healing fluid.
But Edy said nothing.
He simply sat there. He took a sip of tea, adjusted his glasses, and leaned back, settling into the silence. It wasn't an awkward silence; it was a heavy, shared solidarity. It was Edy's way of saying, I am scared too, and I am not leaving you alone with this.
For hours, the two boys sat side-by-side in the green glow of the tanks, watching over their broken friends, waiting for them to come back.
Five Days Later.
The Command Deck of HPF Headquarters was bustling with activity, but inside Commander Zog's office, the air was still.
Squad 5 stood in a line. They looked different than they had a week ago.
Eren stood on two legs, testing his weight on his right foot. The Re-Genesis tank had worked a miracle; the leg was back, the muscle and bone knitted perfectly, though the skin was a slightly lighter shade of pink than the rest of his body—new skin that hadn't seen the sun.
Malina stood straight, her posture rigid. Under her uniform, a thin, silvery scar was the only physical evidence that she had been nearly disemboweled.
Max stood in the center, looking tired but alert. The dark circles under his eyes hadn't faded.
Commander Zog sat behind his desk, flanked by Jod and Raina. Zog stared at them with his mechanical eye, the silence stretching on for an uncomfortable minute.
"Report," Zog grumbled. "Physical status."
"Operational, sir," Malina said instantly. "Ready for deployment."
"Leg feels a bit tingly, but I can run," Eren added, bouncing on his heels.
"Psychological status?" Zog asked.
"Stable," Max lied.
Zog leaned back, clasping his hands. "You engaged a mimetic anomaly. You suffered catastrophic injuries. You unlocked Level 2 capabilities prematurely. And you witnessed a civilian classification error."
He paused.
"You are not ready for deployment."
Max's heart sank. "Sir, we can fight. We just need—"
"You need a tan," Zog interrupted.
The squad blinked in confusion. "Sir?"
Zog pulled a file from his desk and tossed it toward them. It landed with a slap. The cover read: SECTOR 7 - COASTAL RECOVERY ZONE.
"You have been running on adrenaline and trauma since you left the Academy," Zog said, his voice surprisingly weary. "A blade that is never sheathed will eventually rust. You are ordered to stand down for seventy-two hours."
"You're sending us to... the beach?" Edy asked, looking at the file as if it were a bomb.
"It is a private HPF resort," Zog said. "Secure. Secluded. No Guuts. No training. Just sand and water."
Zog looked at Jod and Raina. "And you two are going with them. You look like corpses. Jod, if I see you checking a mission log, I will demote you to sanitation."
Raina's face lit up. "A paid vacation? Commander, you're spoiling us."
"Get out of my office," Zog grunted, turning his chair around to face the window. "Before I change my mind."
The Azure Coast
The transport dropped them off at a location that looked like it belonged on a different planet.
Gone were the grey steel walls of the HQ or the neon grime of the Rose District. The Azure Coast was a paradise of white silica sand, turquoise water that stretched to the horizon, and towering palm trees that swayed in a warm, salty breeze.
The resort was a massive, open-air villa built into the cliffside, overlooking the private beach.
"Okay," Eren screamed, dropping his duffel bag on the patio. "LAST ONE TO THE WATER IS A ROTTEN GUUT!"
The heavy mood of the last week evaporated instantly.
Eren didn't even bother changing. He stripped off his shirt, kicked off his boots, and sprinted.
Max watched him go. It was the first time in five days he had seen Eren run without a limp. The Golden Fluid user was a blur of joy, hitting the surf with a splash that sent water spraying ten feet into the air.
"He is an idiot," Malina sighed. But there was no venom in her voice. She was smiling—a genuine, soft smile.
"Go," Jod said, walking past them in a pair of dark sunglasses and—to everyone's shock—a floral print shirt that looked ridiculous on his muscular frame. "That's an order."
The afternoon was a blur of chaotic joy.
For the first time since they met, they weren't soldiers. They were teenagers.
Edy, predictably, refused to go into the water immediately. He found a spot under a large umbrella, slathered himself in SPF 100 sunscreen until he looked like a ghost, and began constructing a sandcastle.
But it wasn't just a castle. It was a mathematically perfect fortress.
"The structural integrity of wet sand relies on the surface tension of the water," Edy muttered to himself, using a plastic protractor he had brought. "If I create a hyperbolic arch..."
"CANNONBALL!"
Eren, dripping wet, launched himself from a nearby rock. He didn't land in the water. He landed directly on Edy's fortress.
SPLAT.
Sand flew everywhere. The hyperbolic arch was annihilated.
"Eren!" Edy shrieked, wiping sand off his glasses. "That was a scale replica of the Citadel!"
"Now it's a scale replica of a ruin!" Eren laughed, scrambling away as Edy chased him with a plastic shovel.
Further down the beach, Raina was lounging on a sunbed. She wore a black bikini that was just as daring as her combat uniform, sipping a colorful drink with an umbrella in it. She watched the boys running around with amusement.
"They have energy," Raina commented.
Jod was lying on the sand next to her, a hat pulled over his eyes, looking like he was dead to the world. "Let them burn it off. Better the sand than the city."
Max was in the water, floating on his back. The salt water stung his eyes slightly, but the weightlessness was incredible. He looked up at the blue sky. No roofs. No domes. No dark clouds.
He felt a splash near him. He treaded water and saw Malina standing waist-deep nearby.
She wasn't wearing her usual armor, obviously. She wore a simple, navy-blue swimsuit. She looked strong, her shoulders defined, her arms muscular. But she had her arms crossed over her stomach, unconsciously covering the spot where the scar was.
"Water's good," Max said, wiping his face.
"It is... acceptable," Malina replied, shivering slightly. "The salinity is high."
Max swam over to her. He didn't ask if she was okay. He just splashed her.
Malina froze. She looked at the water dripping from her nose. She looked at Max, her eyes narrowing.
"You have made a tactical error, Maxwell," she said deadpan.
"Oh yeah?" Max grinned.
Malina didn't use her Titan strength, but she didn't need to. She lunged, tackling him into the waves. They went under, tumbling in the surf, coming up sputtering and laughing.
"Truce! Truce!" Max yelled, coughing up water as Malina held him in a headlock.
"Surrender acknowledged," Malina smirked, releasing him. Her hair was plastered to her face, and for the first time, she lowered her arms. She wasn't hiding the scar anymore.
As the sun began to set, painting the sky in hues of orange and purple, the group gathered around a fire pit Jod had built on the beach.
They had raided the villa's kitchen and were roasting sausages and marshmallows on sticks. The smell of woodsmoke and cooked meat made their stomachs rumble.
Eren was sitting on a log, vibrating with energy. "Okay, okay, listen. Next time we see a Mimic, I say we just feed Edy to it. He's full of math. The Guut will get a headache and explode."
"Very funny," Edy said, peeling a burnt marshmallow. "If I get eaten, who's going to calculate your jump trajectories? You'd phase into a wall within ten minutes."
"I'd phase through the wall," Eren corrected with a mouthful of food. "I'm Level 1.5 now, baby."
Raina leaned forward, the firelight dancing in her eyes. "Speaking of levels. Max."
The conversation died down. Everyone looked at Max.
"You hit Level 2," Raina said, her tone serious but impressed. "Do you know how rare that is for a rookie? Most agents don't hit Level 2 for five years. Some never do."
"It felt..." Max looked at his hands. "It felt like I wasn't me anymore. It felt cold."
"That's the Void," Jod said from the other side of the fire. He poked the logs with a stick. "It's not a warm power like Eren's or Malina's. It's hungry. You have to be careful, Max. If you let it swallow you, you don't come back."
"I won't," Max said quietly. He looked at Malina. She was watching him across the fire. "I have reasons to stay."
Malina looked away, her cheeks flushing slightly in the firelight.
"Alright, enough gloom!" Eren shouted, standing up on his good leg. "We're on vacation! Who wants to see if I can run across the water?"
"You can't run across water," Edy argued. "Surface tension requires—"
"Watch me!"
Eren bolted for the ocean. He got about ten steps out, his feet slapping the surface rapidly, before physics caught up with him and he face-planted into a wave.
The group erupted in laughter. Even Jod chuckled, a deep, rusty sound.
Max sat back in the sand, listening to the sound of his friends laughing. The horror of the Rose District, the image of the man in the crater, the missing pages of the book—it was all still there, waiting for him back at Headquarters.
But for tonight, under the stars and the sound of the ocean, the darkness felt far away.
"You okay?" Malina asked, sliding onto the log next to him.
Max looked at her. He saw the firelight reflecting in her eyes. He saw the strength in her posture.
"Yeah," Max smiled. "I'm okay."
He looked up at the moon.
"Just charging the battery."