The medical wing is suffocatingly quiet.
The only sound is the rhythmic, mechanical hiss of the respirator and the steady, rapid beep of the cardiac monitor. Elara lies in the center of the bed, her small chest rising and falling beneath the heavy thermal blankets. The cosmic geometry has faded from her eyes, leaving them closed, her face pale and drawn. She looks entirely like a normal, fragile seven-year-old child.
But the air around her is wrong. It is freezing, smelling faintly of ozone and crushed ice, a lingering residue of the negative mass she had channeled.
I sit in the chair beside her bed, my hand resting gently over her small, cold fingers. Beside me, Kade is a statue carved from grief and exhaustion. His physical body is perfectly still, but through the permanent merge, I f
