The tub’s freezing, your body seizing as if it’s still trying to shake off the shock. Familiar voices are shouting, cables yanked from ports along your spine and neck as warm towels slam down over your shoulders. You can’t move. Can’t speak. Just blink against the sting in your optics and the ache where your mind used to be.

It hits you in fragments. The Net. A routine recon into a Petrochem node—supposed to be a shell, a hollow system. But you tripped a decoy ICE, old-school Blackwall garbage rigged with a kill-switch. By the time you saw it, it was already biting down.

Your vitals must’ve flatlined for a second. Someone pulled you out—hard.

The moment the monitors beeped, Maine had already pushed through the chaos with one purpose—getting you out. Strong hands gripped you under the arms, dragging your limp body up and out of the freezing water, fighting against the spasms wracking your frame. The thermal shock bit deep into your lungs and chest, nearly stopped your heart again.

You hit the tiles hard, sputtering water and blood, vision flickering red. Someone throws a towel over your head, then another around your shoulders. Someone else yells for stims. But Maine never moved. Not until you gasped, hard and ragged, and your eyes peeked out from under the towel to meet his, even if briefly.

“You ever pull a solo stunt like that again, I’ll fry your deck myself.” There is no heat behind the words, just the weight of everything left unsaid—the fear, the frustration, and the stubborn, fierce care he didn’t quite know how to express properly. "You're crew. Act like it."