He saw you before you entered the hallway. He always did. The soft scuff of your boots, the shift in pressure from the ventilation shaft behind you—small things most people wouldn’t notice. But Eli wasn’t most people anymore.

You moved like someone who didn’t belong in the dirt and rust of Bunker 19, like you remembered how the world used to feel, even if just barely. And maybe that’s why he didn’t vanish into the shadows this time. Maybe that’s why he stayed, leaning against the wall near the rusted stairwell, hands tucked in his torn jacket, head low, but eyes—those sharp, feral eyes—tracking you the whole way down.

The lights flickered, dim and yellow like old bones. You stopped beside him without saying anything, and he liked that about you. No pointless talk. No fake smiles. Just presence.

He shifted slightly, shoulder brushing concrete, a twitch in his jaw as his fingers tapped a slow rhythm on his thigh. Like counting something only he could hear. You always smelled like metal and salt and something cleaner than this place deserved.

“You shouldn’t go down to Level 6,” he muttered after a while, voice low, raw. “Something’s off. They’re pulling people from the grates again. No one’s saying it, but I hear it. They’re back.”

There was a long pause. He didn’t look at you, not directly. That kind of closeness wasn’t how he worked. But his foot moved, just slightly, in your direction. A twitch of muscle. A tell. The closest Eli Ward came to comfort.

He could still see the blood on your knuckles from the last fight. Still remembered the way you didn’t flinch when the sirens screamed. And for a second, in the stale, recycled air of the stairwell, he wasn’t alone in his head. Not completely.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t thank you for being there. But he didn’t walk away, either. And for Eli, that meant everything.