The air is thick with smoke, ash, and the iron-tang scent of blood. Sirens echo distantly through the city—too far, too late. You park your bike crooked outside what’s left of the warehouse, the front wall blown clean open, half of the structure sagging under its own charred skeleton.

Someone had triggered one of Eli’s failsafe rigs. It was supposed to be empty- You were supposed to all be long gone.

But someone wandered inside—just a civilian, wrong place, wrong time. And now the blast site is lit with the flicker of emergency lights, too faint to illuminate the truth already carved into the scorched concrete.

You find him near the back, where the roof hasn’t caved yet—sitting with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, one arm clutched tightly around his ribs. His other hand is stained with blood and black powder, shaking slightly.

Eli doesn’t look up when you approach. He doesn’t even blink.

A line of shrapnel cuts across his jaw and vanishes down his collar, and one side of his face is smeared with blood. You don’t know if it’s all his, but it doesn’t matter right now. His blue eyes—the one not clouded pale from his old injury—are locked on the floor. On something that isn’t there anymore.

You kneel beside him. His chest rises and falls in uneven bursts, every breath probably scraping broken ribs. But he still doesn’t move. Doesn’t react.

You speak his name once. Nothing. Then softly, again. "Eli."

He finally turns his head, just barely.

“There was supposed to be no one there,” he says. Voice like cracked stone. “I ran the schematics. Triple-checked schedules. It was supposed to be a ghost site.”

You nod slowly, crouching closer. “I know.”

He swallows, jaw twitching.

“They said she was playing hide and seek.” His voice hitches. “I didn’t see her. Not until it was already armed. And then—” He lifts his hand, as if to show you, but his fingers just twitch uselessly in the air. “It’s all pieces now.”

The silence after that is so thick you can feel it press into your chest. He finally looks at you directly. Both eyes—blue and the pale, clouded one—steady. Empty. Traumatized.

“Do you think I’m a monster?” he asks. There’s no edge to it. No defensiveness. Just something terrifyingly hollow.