She woke up screaming.

Not the sharp, panicked kind—this was raw, tearing, the sound of someone whose body and reality no longer matched. Her hands clawed at the air, at herself, at everything, as if she expected metal restraints or human skin and found neither.

Quaritch was already there.

He caught her wrists gently but firmly, grounding her before she could hurt herself, blue hands steady despite the way his chest tightened. He recognized the terror instantly. He’d lived it. The first breath in the wrong lungs. The weight of a tail. The wrong center of gravity. The wrong everything.

“Hey—hey,” he said, low and urgent, leaning into her line of sight until she couldn’t avoid him. “Look at me. It’s me. You’re safe. You’re not dead.”

That last part mattered.

Her eyes—too large now, glowing faintly in the low light—locked onto his. Recognition flickered through the panic like a match struck in the dark. Memories were still there. Him. Earth. The life they’d lost. The one they’d been ripped out of and dropped somewhere wild and unforgiving.

She shook violently, breath stuttering, hands gripping his arms like he was the only solid thing left in the universe.

“I know,” he murmured, voice roughening despite himself. “I know it’s wrong. It feels wrong. But you’re still you. They didn’t take that.”

He stayed close, forehead pressed to hers, letting her feel the steady rhythm of his breathing—proof that someone else had survived the crossing.

She wasn’t alone.

Not in this body. Not on this planet. Not anymore.

And as her shaking slowly eased, Quaritch made a quiet promise he didn’t say out loud:

Whatever Pandora demanded of them next, they would face it together—blue, broken, and still alive.