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Direct.

His body jerked.

For one horrible second, he stayed upright.

Then blood spread across his chest, dark against the gray of his suit, and he took one more step toward the pod as if nothing had happened at all.

“Veyr!”

He fired once.

The Veil operative dropped without a sound, a neat hole through the center of his mask.

Then Veyr collapsed into the transport chamber, coming down hard on the deck plating, and the weapon skittered from his hand and bounced off the wall.

I screamed his name.

No response. His eyes were half-open. Silver light moved under his skin in ragged, stuttering pulses, like a lamp fighting a bad connection.

The doors began to close.

A Review officer lunged, fingers reaching for the gap.

I hit emergency seal.

Metal slammed shut. The officer’s glove vanished. Something thudded against the outside of the door once. Twice. Then nothing but the hum of engines winding up.

The pod moved.

Fast.

Too fast. The brackets rattled. I fell to my knees beside Veyr, catching myself with both hands before my face hit his shoulder.

“Veyr.”

Nothing. His breathing came in short, wet pulls, each one smaller than the last.

I pressed my hand to his neck. My fingers found the pulse there—a thin, uneven flutter against my fingertips, like a moth trapped behind glass. It was there. It was there, but it was wrong, and I couldn’t make it be right by pressing harder.

“Okay.”

My voice shook. I heard it shake and did nothing about it because there was nothing to do.

“Okay.”

It wasn’t okay. I knew it wasn’t okay. He knew it wasn’t okay, probably, wherever he’d gone inside himself to wait this out—if he was waiting at all.

The new wound sat high near his chest, below the shoulder. Blood ran from it in two separate streams and joined somewhere near his ribs before soaking into the fabric of the suit. Silver-white lines crawled toward it—the ŭre working—but they moved slower now, sluggish, like they’d forgotten what they were supposed to do. Half of them died before they reached the torn flesh and simply went out, little fading sparks under his skin that left darkness behind them where there should have been light.

I tore open the medical kit attached to the wall.

Pressure seal. Coagulant strip. Stabilization foam. The labels came back in my own language, half-translated, and I read them twice to be sure.

Finally something I understood.

I worked. My hands knew what to do before I did. Press the seal against the wound. Hold it until the adhesive takes. Unwind the coagulant strip and layer it over the torn flesh where the blood is still coming, slow and dark. Check pulse at his neck—thin, fast, wrong. Check airway—clear, barely, his breathing wet and shallow. Check bleeding—the foam goes on last, and it hisses where it meets his skin.

His ŭre glowed under my hands like a dying circuit.