Alexander POV
I woke up before the sun had fully cleared the horizon. My body felt like it had been reconstructed out of rust and glass, but the routine of waking early was too deeply ingrained to break. For a moment, I looked at the intern sleeping beside me. She was curled into a ball under the emergency blanket, her face smudged with sand. She looked incredibly small. It was a reminder that I couldn't afford to fail. If I didn't find a sustainable way to keep us alive, she would be the first to go.
I crawled out of the shelter and went straight to the solar still we had built yesterday. I knelt in the damp sand and looked under the plastic sheet. My heart gave a small, rare thump of triumph. There, at the bottom of the plastic cup, was about two tablespoons of clear water. It wasn't m
