Caleb shut the side-room door with his heel and pulled at the collar of the dress uniform.

The jacket looked good under camera light. That was the problem. It had been made for a stage, not for a body that had been torn open less than a day ago. The seam along his left side rubbed against the raised spiral marks every time he breathed, and the stiff fabric kept catching near his ribs like it wanted to remind him where the hole had been.

He unbuttoned the jacket and dropped it over the back of a chair.

The room was one of the arena’s private prep rooms, built for quick makeup checks, emergency uniform repairs, and sponsor-approved composure before walking back into the lights. A narrow examination cot sat against one wall. A medical cabinet hung above it with clean bandage packs sealed behind glass. A mirror covered the opposite side of the room, too wide and too polished for anyone who had just crawled out of a collapsing dungeon.

Caleb pulled the undershirt up enough to see the marks.

Purple ridges curved across his lower ribs and stomach, raised beneath his fingers. The skin around them looked healthy, but the pattern itself sat too deliberately across his body. It did not look like scar tissue. It looked placed.

He pressed two fingers against the edge of the first spiral.

The skin was warm.

Too warm.

His stomach stayed quiet.

Caleb waited for the hunger to come back, for the familiar bite under his ribs that usually followed every forced repair. Nothing moved. No pull toward food. No hollow pressure. No warning that his body had burned through everything and needed more.

That silence made his hand tighten around the fabric of his shirt.

The door opened behind him.

Caleb lowered the shirt.

Elara stood in the doorway with a medical tablet tucked under one arm. She had changed out of the ceremony jacket, but not fully out of command. Her black undersuit was zipped to her throat, and one glove was missing. The bare hand around the tablet showed faint pressure marks where the glove had been pulled off too quickly.

Caleb looked at her through the mirror.

"Door was closed."

"It was," Elara said. "The lock accepted my clearance." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

"That is not the same as an invitation."

"No, but if I waited for one, you would stand here pretending your ribs are not bothering you until the meet-and-greet started."

Caleb let the shirt fall over his side. "The medics cleared me."

Elara stepped inside and let the door close behind her. "The medics cleared you to stand long enough for the ceremony. They did not clear you to ignore every warning on the report."

"I did not read the report."

"I know. That is why I brought it."

Caleb turned toward her. "You are not a doctor."

"I am aware."

"Then why are you carrying medical results like you are about to tell me I have three hours to live?"

Elara looked down at the tablet, then back at him. "Because the people who are doctors are arguing with Tali outside, and every time someone asks you how you feel, you give them the same useless answer."

"I feel fine."

"That one."

Caleb rubbed the back of his neck. The room felt warmer than it should have, though the air vent above the mirror pushed out steady cold. "I am standing. My side is closed. My shoulder works. My stomach is quiet for once. Compared to yesterday, fine is a pretty honest answer."

Elara walked closer, holding the tablet out but not forcing it into his hands. "Your surface temperature has been sitting between one hundred three and one hundred four since they pulled you out of the thermal wraps. The medics thought the scanner was catching heat from the arena lights, so they checked twice with a contact probe. Same result."

Caleb looked at the display.

A red bar sat beside the temperature line.

CORE TEMP: 103.8°F

Below it, another warning pulsed.

INFLAMMATORY RESPONSE: UNSTABLE

A third line blinked in yellow.

LEFT THORACIC TISSUE ACTIVITY: ELEVATED

Caleb stared at the numbers. "I do not feel sick."

"That is the part they hate."

"I am supposed to feel sick?"

"With this temperature, yes. You should be shaking, sweating through the uniform, confused, weak, or on the floor. You should not be standing here arguing with me about doors."

He handed the tablet back. "Maybe the fever is from healing."

Elara accepted the tablet but kept her eyes on him. "That is what one medic said. Another said the marks may be producing heat locally. Tali said both of them were guessing and threatened to take the scanner apart with her teeth if they kept touching her harness data."

"That sounds like Tali."

"She was chewing gum while she said it, which made it worse."

Caleb almost smiled, but it faded when Elara did not.

She set the tablet on the counter beside the mirror.

"I trust the medics," she said. "I trust Tali more when it comes to your gear. I trust neither of them when it comes to you deciding something is fine because moving still works."

Caleb looked at the tablet again. "You came here because I have a fever."

"I came here because you have a fever you cannot feel, a wound that closed in eight hours, a pattern under your skin that reacts to contact pads, and a public event full of people trying to buy your next deployment." Her voice stayed controlled, but the control had edges now. "I came here because I watched the false body fall apart, then watched you walk across a stage before the blood had dried in the transport bay."

The words pressed into the room harder than the medical data.

Caleb looked away first.

Elara’s bare hand tightened around the edge of the counter.

"I saw the unedited feed," she continued. "Not the ceremony version. Not the clip they used for Kikaru’s recovery highlight. I saw her trying to hold that thing together. I saw the feed marker move after everyone thought you were gone. I saw Soma come back carrying you with your side closed and your skin marked like something had signed you."

Caleb’s fingers brushed the lower edge of his shirt.

Elara noticed.

"May I see it?"

He looked at her.

The question sounded too careful for the woman who had walked into the room without waiting for permission.

"You already saw it on the report."

"I saw the scan. I saw a heat map and three warnings. That is not the same."

Caleb let out a slow breath. "Elara."

"I am not asking because I think I know more than the medics. I am asking because I need to see if you are hiding pain from me. I am asking because you have been doing that since we were kids, and I am tired of finding out after the damage is already done."

That landed closer than he wanted.

His hand fell from the shirt.

"You remember too much."

"I remember the right things."

He hesitated for another moment, then lifted the undershirt.

Elara’s eyes went to the marks.

She did not move closer right away. That pause mattered more than any gasp would have. Her face stayed composed, but Caleb saw the shift in her breathing. She had fought Scorpion-class monsters, commanded evacuations, and stood beneath Vane’s death clip without flinching. This stopped her for half a second.

The purple spirals curved across his left side, starting near the lower ribs and turning inward across the healed flesh. The skin around the pattern looked too smooth. The mark itself was raised and warm, a hard ridge beneath softer tissue.

Elara set the tablet down fully and stepped closer.

"Does it hurt when you breathe?"