By the time the light dies and the sprinklers decide to stop arguing with the busted wiring, Sol is limp on the floor, curls plastered to her forehead, Forge jacket damp and scorched at the sleeves. Her comm band pulses an urgent amber at her wrist.
Rafe is already there, knees on the wet tile, one hand hovering over her shoulder like he wants to shake her awake and knows he really, really shouldn't.
"Vega," he snaps, too loud. "Sol. Come on. Open your—"
A hard-light shield snaps down between him and Sol with a sharp whumm, ringing in the air. He jerks back, blinking at the glowing barrier.
On the other side of it, Leo stands braced, one hand out, jaw clenched so tight it looks painful. His usual lazy grin is nowhere to be seen.
"What the fuck were you thinking?" he bites out, voice low and shaking. "Touching an Echo in a hallway? On the first day?"
Before Rafe can answer, another voice cuts through the crackle of fried circuits.
"Rafe."
Alice Navarro strides down the corridor, tablet tucked under one arm, tan skin gone a shade paler under the hallway lights and blue eyes blazing. Her black hair is pinned back in the same smooth twist as before, not a strand out of place as students instinctively step aside when she passes. Water splashes around her heels; scorched sigils flicker half-heartedly as she moves through them. She doesn't raise her voice. She doesn't need to.
"Mijo," she says, stopping just short of the shield. "What were you thinking. Touching an Echo? Confronting a first-year? A scholarship student who is just learning the ropes?"
The word lands heavy.
Scholarship. Not S-class. Not Archive. Just a kid who spent last week counting coins.
Rafe's jaw sets.
"I barely touched her," he grinds out. "It was just—"
"Barely is enough with an Echo," another voice snaps.
Professor Kaur is already dropping to one knee beside Sol as two Hearth students in medic armbands kneel on the other side, their hands glowing with soft, dampening light.
"Impact Current plus Archive classification?" Kaur says. "You've read the protocols."
"I read them," Rafe shoots back.
"Reading and following are different verbs," Kaur says flatly, already scanning Sol's vitals.
Leo lets the shield drop with a gesture and steps in closer, positioning himself at Sol's head like a guard dog.
"She's family, Rafe," he says, quieter now but somehow more dangerous for it. "Please tell me you weren't actually bullying her."
Rafe flinches like that hits harder than the blast did.
"I wasn't—" he starts, then swallows. "I was trying to warn her. She doesn't get what she's walking into, and no one warned us when we were—"
Alice moves in close enough to rest a hand briefly on his shoulder. It's not gentle, exactly, but it's steady.
"I know you were upset," she says, softer. "I know you didn't mean this. But cariño, you can't dump all that history on a girl who just figured out how to open her own door. Not like that. And definitely not with your hands."
He looks away, jaw working.
Kaur lifts her head, glasses pushed up with the back of her wrist.
"Her nervous system is overstimulated but stabilizing," she reports. "No burns, heart rhythm steady, brain patterns within safe deviation. She overcharged and passed out. She'll need observation in Medical."
Leo sags a little in relief. His fingers, where they hover near Sol's wrist, relax.
A ripple goes through the crowd as another figure appears at the edge of the cluster: Lía, perfectly pressed House Forge jacket, hair pinned, speech notes still in one hand. She takes in the flickering lights, the scorched wall, the puddles and blackened sigils.
Then she sees Sol on the floor.
The notes crumple in her fist.
"What happened," she says.
Not really a question.
No one jumps to answer. Kaur jerks her chin toward Alice.
"Navarro had eyes on it through the band. Summarize."
Alice's hand squeezes Rafe's shoulder once before she lets go. Then she straightens, sliding back into professional mode without ever fully dropping the mom.
"Rafe stopped Sol at the hall entrance," she says, calm but tight. "He was… expressing concerns about pressure and expectations. In the process, he made direct physical contact. Vega's Echo kicked in—first by reading my abilities earlier, then his. She imprinted his Impact Current and pulled more charge than he or the corridor could safely handle."
"Classic Archive uptake," Kaur adds. "Verbal classification, uncontrolled manifestation, collapse."
Lía's attention snaps to Rafe like a blade to a magnet.
"You touched her," she says quietly.
"It was a tap," he says. "I didn't exactly plug her into a generator. I barely pulled—there's no way she should've been able to take that much from the lines—"
He stops as the implication hits.
There's no way she should have.
"Exactly," Kaur says. "Which is why we do this in the lab and not in front of the auditorium doors."
The Hearth medics slide a sleek field stretcher under Sol; the material hums as it hardens, repelling the water and stabilizing her body. Her comm band light shifts from flashing to a steady amber.
"I'm going with her," Leo says immediately, moving in step with the stretcher.
"You're due in the Grand Hall," Kaur starts.
"I'm going with her," he repeats, more forcefully.
Lía's gaze flicks from Sol to Leo to the time glowing on her comm. She inhales slowly.
"I'll give the speech," she says. "Alone. The audience can withstand one assembly without Leo's attempts at smoldering."
He shoots her a grateful look; she pretends not to see it.
Kaur hesitates, then nods once.
"Fine. Navarro, we debrief after the ceremony. Rafe—"
Her eyes lock onto him, and whatever softness Alice brought to the table, Kaur does not share.
"You are on temporary hold," she says. "No training, no field exercises, no unsupervised contact with Echo-Blooded students until we've assessed this. You will report to my office after the assembly. We will be reviewing protocols and your apparent belief that they are optional."
Rafe opens his mouth, then closes it again. His shoulders are up around his ears.
"Yes, ma'am," he manages.
Alice reaches up and smooths a damp strand of hair back from his forehead, thumb brushing a faint soot smudge from his cheek. It's the kind of automatic gesture that says this is my kid louder than any title.
"We'll sort it out, mi cielo," she says quietly. "But for now, listen to Professor Kaur and stay put. We need you calm, not storming around making yourself sicker."
He swallows, nods once.
She leans in a little.
"And next time you want to 'warn' her?" she adds, softer still. "You do it with me or Lía there, and with your dampeners on. Deal?"
He huffs a breath that's almost a laugh, but not quite.
"Deal," he says hoarsely.
Meanwhile, the stretcher rises, cradling Sol a few inches off the floor, Hearth fields humming around it. Leo moves with it, one hand hovering over her arm like he's afraid she'll slip off the edge of the world if he lets go.
"I'll text you," he throws over his shoulder to Lía. "Break a leg. Not literally."
"I never do anything 'literally' on stage," she says, smoothing her crumpled notes back into some semblance of order. "Go."
He goes, following the medics as they maneuver through the parted crowd.
Lía watches until they disappear around the corner. Then she exhales, once, sharp, folds all the visible emotion into a tiny, controlled box, and turns toward the Grand Hall entrance.
"Top student address," she murmurs, mostly to herself. "Then damage reports."
Students start to disperse, buzzing with whispers: The Archive overloaded. Rafe set her off. Did you see the arcs? Hearth kids inspect the scorched sigils; Forge students exchange looks that are already half equations, half concern.
Soon it's just faculty, Alice, and Rafe left in the worst of the damage.
Kaur claps a hand gently on Alice's arm.
"We'll talk in my office after the assembly," she says. "We're going to need a new chapter in the Echo manual."
Alice nods.
"I'll be there. Let me check on Lía first."
She gives Rafe's shoulder one last squeeze, a silent stay, then turns and heads toward the hall.
The corridor feels much bigger once they start to move away, all that cracked energy fading into the usual hum of the building. Rafe stays where he is for a long moment, staring at the spiderweb pattern Sol's electricity burned into the floor. His hands flex; the scars along his forearms catch the light.
He sinks back until his shoulders hit the wall he'd been leaning on when she walked up, then slides down it, jeans soaking in the sprinkler puddles, and drops his elbows onto his knees.
"Fuck," he whispers, this time only for himself.
Then he folds his hands over his face and stays there, while somewhere above, the announcement chime for the first-day assembly echoes through the halls, and down in Medical, Sol's comm band keeps quietly pulsing amber, waiting for her to wake back up.
Sol Vega
The first thing I notice is the smell.
Not hospital antiseptic. Not laundry soap.
Warm and weirdly comforting and… a little wrong.
"Mmmm," I mumble, eyelids glued together. "Can I has toast pwease…"
My voice comes out all thick and babyish, like my mouth forgot how to be an adult.
Somewhere to my left, someone chokes on a laugh.
"She's talking," Leo whispers. "That's good, right?"
"She's awake?" Lía's voice, sharper. "Already?"
I try to burrow deeper into the pillow. The smell gets stronger. Toast. Totally toast. Except… under it… there's this faint tang of… burnt wiring?
My brain, bless it, tries to line things up: toast → burnt → oh yeah I blew up a hallway → …
Nope. Too much. The thoughts slide away.
I crack one eye open.
The ceiling is unfamiliar. The lights above me are dim, but they hum in a way that makes the tiny hairs on my arms stand up. There's a monitor beeping somewhere near my head, and when I shift, the sheets crackle like I've been rolling around in dryer lint.
I blink down at my own arms. Little sparks jump between my fingers and the blanket. Static. Harmless-looking, but still there.
"Oh, good," I say muzzily. "I'm a glowstick."
Leo makes a strangled sound.
"Yup," he says. "Definitely alive."
The door hisses open behind them.
"¿Qué pasa aquí?" a nurse demands. "She's awake?"
Two Hearth medics rush in, House colors peeking out under their scrubs. One of them—tiny, curly hair in a bun—takes one look at the monitor, then at me sitting up, and her eyes go huge.
"But the discharge levels are still elevated," she says. "Esto no es normal."
Her colleague, older, with a little silver at her temples, crosses herself automatically.
"Brujería," she mutters under her breath.
I blink at her, swaying a little.
"I can hear you," I mumble. "I speak brujería."
Leo snorts; Lía pinches the bridge of her nose.
"Ay, cállate, Rosa," the first nurse hisses. "She's a student, no una—"
I tilt my head, watching the way their House sigils pulse, the faint halo of warmth around their hands. Something in my brain… clicks. The gold creeps back into my vision, not bright this time—just a soft overlay.
"Support-type Hearth," I murmur, pointing vaguely at them, words slurring together. "Minor regen, pain dampening, fire ward. Good bedside manner, C-plus in patience. Grade B overall."
All three nurses gasp.
"Te dije," Rosa hisses. "Brujería."
The first nurse smacks her arm without looking away from me.
"¡Ay, por Dios, Rosa!"
I frown.
"Not brujería," I protest sleepily. "Archivito. Echo. Is different. I think." My tongue feels too big. "Also… still smell toast."
Rosa looks at the monitor again, then at my crackling fingertips.
"She shouldn't be conscious," she mutters. "Todavía tiene carga en el sistema. We left her under until the electricity dissipated, that was the plan—"
Her colleague follows the line of the IV to the bag hanging beside the bed. She freezes.
"Oh."
The word has weight.
Leo notices immediately.
"What 'oh'?" he demands. "I don't like that 'oh.' That's a bad 'oh.'"
The nurse winces.
"We, ah… may have… let the anesthetic drip run out," she says, voice very small. "And forgot to switch the bag. Se nos fue. The line's been clear for… some time."
There's a collective beat of silence. Even in my loopy state, I manage to squint at the empty drip bag, then at the tiny plastic clamp that's been nudged closed.
"Hah," I giggle weakly. "They turned off my nap juice."
Leo and Lía turn to the nurses in perfect slow-motion disbelief.
"Really?" they say together.
Rosa flails.
"We were dealing with the hallway damage, the alarms, the sprinkler malfunction, the registrar calling every five minutes—"
"And she was stable," the other nurse adds quickly. "Heart rate normal, breathing normal. We thought—just for a minute—that it wouldn't hurt if she came out of it on her own. The charge should have dropped by now."
"Should have," Lía repeats, very flat. Her gaze flicks to my fingers, where another tiny spark jumps to the rail and dies. "Clearly it has not."
"I feel… fizzy," I offer, because this seems important. "But not… boom. Just… bzzz."
Leo drags a hand down his face.
"So she woke up in the middle of being an overcharged lightning rod because somebody forgot to refill the nap juice," he summarizes.
"Accidentally," the nurse says, mortified. "Accidentally forgot."
Rosa, still half hiding behind her colleague, peeks at my hands.
"On the bright side," she ventures, "she hasn't zapped anyone yet. Eso es bueno, ¿no?"
As if cued, a little arc jumps from my fingertip to the metal bed rail again, then harmlessly to the grounding strip near the floor. It's tiny this time, more like a cat's static shock than a lightning bolt.
Lía watches the path it takes, eyes narrowing in thought.
"See?" I say, grinning dopily. "No people. Just… furniture. I'm being… considerate."
Leo glances at his sister.
"She's… kind of right," he admits.
"I am always right," I mumble into the pillow. "Except when I explode hallways. That was… suboptimal."
The first nurse groans softly and goes to fiddle with my IV, grabbing a fresh bag from the cart.
"No more sedative," Lía says quickly. "If she's stable and the output is that minor, we don't need to knock her out again."
"We'll switch to fluids only," the nurse agrees, relief obvious. "Help flush whatever's left. Monitor her and keep everyone non-conductive for a while."
Rosa makes a face.
"So no hugs from the Archive yet," she mutters. "Qué triste."
I pat the air vaguely in her direction.
"Hugs later," I promise. "When I'm less toaster."
Leo laughs outright at that, some of the tightness finally leaving his shoulders. He leans forward and brushes his knuckles very lightly against the blanket near my hand, making sure not to touch skin.
"Welcome back, Sol," he says. "Try not to identify any more powers while half-asleep, yeah? You're freaking out the staff."
I grin at him, eyes already drooping again.
"Can't help it," I mumble. "My brain's… nosy."
Lía exhales, long and slow, then pulls her chair a little closer.
"We'll talk about boundaries with your Archive when you're fully coherent," she says. "For now, just… rest. Preferably without detonating anything."
"'Kay," I sigh. "No boom. Just… nap."
As I drift back toward sleep, the burnt-toast smell fades under the softer scents of clean cotton and whatever spell Hearth uses to keep the air calm. Somewhere above me, I hear the nurses muttering about chart notes and new protocols; somewhere closer, Leo and Lía murmur quietly to each other in that twin shorthand I'm only just starting to understand.
The static under my skin hums a little, then settles, seeking out the grounding strips instead of the nearest heartbeat.
Maybe it's the fizziness. Maybe it's the residual sedative. Maybe it's just that I'm not alone in the room.
Either way, this time when I slip under, it feels less like falling and more like being tucked in.
⸻
The second time I wake up, it's… quieter.
No fizzing under my skin. No burnt-toast smell. Just the soft whoep-whoep of the monitor, the rustle of pages, and something that sounds suspiciously like someone trying to unwrap a snack very quietly.
I blink my eyes open. The lights are lower now—late afternoon? Early evening? The room's dim except for the monitor glow and the rectangle of softer light creeping in from the hallway. Leo is half-slouched in the chair again, book upside down in his lap, a crinkled snack wrapper on the windowsill behind him like evidence of a crime. Lía is in the other chair, tablet propped on her knee, stylus dancing in neat little lines.
They both look up at exactly the same time when I shift.
"Hey," Leo says, the relief in his voice not even a little subtle. "Welcome back, Glowstick."
"Please don't make that stick," I croak. My throat feels like I licked a battery. "How long was I out this time?"
Lía checks the little holo hovering by my bed.
"Three hours," she says. "The first wake-up doesn't count. You were… chemically compromised."
I groan, burying my face in the pillow for a second as mortifying memories surface.
"I asked for toast, didn't I."
"And announced the nurse's power profile like you were reading her Wikipedia page," Leo adds helpfully. "In two languages. It was very impressive and deeply unsettling."
"Brujería," I mumble into the pillow, remembering Rosa's scandalized gasp.
"Exactly," he says, delighted. "You have a reputation now."
I roll my head to the side so I can actually see them. The IV's still in, but the bag is just clear fluid now. My comm band has stopped flashing; the little icon on it glows a calm green.
"I feel… less fizzy," I report. "More… soggy."
"That would be the electrolyte drip," Lía says. "And the fact that your body finally finished dumping the excess charge into the grounding strips."
She nods toward the floor. I follow her gaze; a slim silver strip runs along the baseboard, faintly discolored near the bed where a few wayward sparks must have found their way out.
"Sorry about the hallway," I say after a second. The words tumble out fast. "And the lights. And the sigils. And any traumatized freshmen who now think I'm a walking EMP."
Leo waves a hand.
"Please, this school has seen worse. You didn't even hit a person. That's, like, an A+ on the Aeternum disaster curve."
"Not hitting a person was not an accident," Lía adds.
I blink.
"Huh?"
She shifts, pulling up a projection from her tablet—a three-dimensional wireframe of the corridor, little colored lines tracing the paths of the arcs I threw. Red for infrastructure, blue for shields, tiny green dots for heat signatures where students were.
"The cameras recorded the event from multiple angles," she says. "Kaur gave me access to the footage for analysis."
"Of course she did," I murmur.
"These are your discharges." She zooms in; the lines flare. "Every major arc deviated away from the nearest warm bodies. Not perfectly, but consistently. You curved around students and into walls, fixtures, floor plating."
She glances at me, eyes sharp.
"Even while panicking, even while overcharged, part of you was choosing safer targets."
I stare at the projection, watching a blue-white line bend away from a cluster of little green dots and slam into a sigil panel instead.
"I… did that?" I ask. "On purpose?"
"Not consciously," she says. "But your Archive recognized the environment. Infrastructure versus living tissue. It prioritized environmental damage. Given your state, that's… extraordinary."
"The healers wanted you to know," she adds. "No injuries beyond a few singed eyebrows and one Radiant with a bruised ego because your arc fried his hair gel."
"Tragic," I whisper.
We lapse into a little pocket of quiet. It's… surprisingly comfortable.
After a minute, I clear my throat.
"So," I say. "Am I… in trouble?"
Leo snorts.
"You? No. Rafe, on the other hand…"
Lía shoots him a look, but doesn't disagree.
"You are not in trouble," she says firmly, turning back to me. "You did exactly what your power does. You saw, you Echoed, you discharged. You were not briefed properly on the risks. That is on the adults."
"The adults are currently writing very long memos about it," Leo adds. "And by 'adults' I mostly mean Kaur and Mother and Alice. It's like watching three different flavors of terrifying competence collide."
I picture Kaur's sharp gaze, Alice's pinched worry, and some faceless League coordinator having a very bad day.
"Oh, God," I say. "They're making a new rulebook because of me, aren't they."
"Yes," Lía says. "And that's a good thing. The old one was theoretical. Now we have data."
"You say that like I'm a lab rat," I mutter, only half joking.
She softens.
"You're not," she says. "You're… a colleague. A student. And, unfortunately for you, a case study. But you will be at the table while we design the protocols, not on it."
"That's Kaur's line," Leo whispers. "I heard her practicing it."
The door whispers open again.
For a heartbeat my stomach swoops—Rafe?—but it's Alice this time, hair slightly mussed, jacket off, tablet still in hand. There are faint dark circles under her eyes, which is almost more alarming than the corridor explosion.
"Ah, you're properly awake this time," she says, relief plain. "Excellent. That saves me the ethical dilemma of whether to shake you."
"Please don't," I say. "I will spark on you. It'll be awkward."
"Most things with this family are awkward," she says dryly, then leans down to press a quick kiss to Leo's hair, then to Lía's temple. She glances at my monitor, scans it, nods.
"How do you feel?" she asks.
"Embarrassed," I say honestly. "Tired. Like I lost an arm-wrestling match with a thunderstorm."
"Good," she says. "The tired part. The embarrassed part we'll work on."
She pulls a chair over with her foot and sits.
"For the record," she says, tone shifting into that calm, careful cadence she used on the scholarship call, "no one in authority is angry with you. This was our failure to anticipate how quickly your Archive would imprint under stress. We've adjusted the training plan."
I make a face.
"More rules?"
"More support," she corrects. "Structured sessions, safe volunteers, dampeners. And," her eyes twinkle just a little, "priority access to some very interesting toys in Forge lab once you're cleared."
Leo perks up.
"See?" he tells me. "You blow one hallway and suddenly you're VIP."
"Please stop encouraging property damage," Lía says.
Alice hesitates, then adds, "Rafe will apologize. Properly. When you're ready to see him and when he's managed to get his head out of his own guilt long enough to use his words."
My stomach does a weird little flip at his name.
"He looked… mad," I say quietly. "And then scared. And then just… gone."
"He was mad," Leo says, surprising me. "At himself. At Mother. At the school. At the narrative that's been chewing on our family for a decade. He took it out on the wrong person in the wrong moment."
"And he is very aware of that now," Lía says. "Kaur and Mother made sure."
Alice's mouth twitches.
"Let's just say it was a… robust conversation."
I stare at the blanket, fingers tracing the edge of a seam.
"I…" I start, then stop, then try again. "I was excited to meet him. Before all that."
"I know," Alice says softly. "So was he. Underneath the bad choices."
She leans forward, elbows on her knees.
"You don't have to forgive him immediately," she says. "You don't have to forgive him at all if you don't want to. You decide your boundaries. But I would personally appreciate it if you did not write him off entirely because of his worst five minutes on your worst five minutes."
I huff a little laugh.
"That's a lot of worst in one sentence."
"We like efficiency," Leo says.
I think of the way Rafe yelled for people to move back, the way he'd lunged toward me when the arcs started, the way I'd half-felt his power through the panic—raw and crackling and… tired.
"Maybe…" I say slowly, "once I'm not tingly. So I don't accidentally turn his apology into a live demonstration."
"Fair," Alice says, satisfied. "We'll schedule 'family drama with minimal electrocution' for later in the week."
My comm buzzes softly, a tiny notification pulsing at the edge of my vision.
NEW MESSAGE: DIANA NAVARRO
SUBJECT: hi! pls don't zap me 💙
I blink.
"Um," I say. "Did my assistant just… DM me a heart emoji?"
Alice groans softly into her hands.
"Of course she did."
Leo snatches his own band up.
"Oh, excellent," he says. "Diana's here. Things are about to get interesting."
Lía sighs, but there's the ghost of a smile at the corner of her mouth.
"Rest," she tells me. "Then we'll introduce you properly to the chaos that is our cousin. She's been composing your calendar and at least three memes while you were unconscious."
I let my head sink back into the pillow, exhaustion washing over me again—but it's a soft kind, not the crackling overload from before.
"Okay," I mumble. "Family drama later. Meme triage now. Got it."
Leo laughs, and Alice shakes her head fondly, and Lía reaches out, very lightly, to rest her fingers on the metal rail near my hand—close enough to feel present, far enough not to risk a spark.
For the first time since the Assessment chamber, I let my eyes close without bracing for impact.
Whatever comes next—new protocols, team decisions, awkward apologies, whatever Diana is about to unleash—I won't be facing it alone.
Which, honestly, is still the weirdest, scariest, best part of all of this.
⸻
"Um," I say after a bit, blinking at the ceiling. "Classes start tomorrow, right? Will I be ready to go by then?"
Three heads swivel toward me like I just asked if school had gravity.
Leo answers first.
"Yes," he says confidently. "Or they'll just have to start school without their brand-new S-class Archive, and that'll be their problem."
"Leo," Lía says, but she doesn't actually contradict him.
Alice taps her tablet, pulling up something only she can see.
"He's not entirely wrong," she says. "The healers expect your levels to be normal by tonight. You'll stay for observation until tomorrow morning, just in case there's any rebound, and if everything is still stable, you'll be cleared."
"So… no 'you're banned from touching light switches forever'?" I ask.
"Not yet," Leo says. "Kaur did mumble something about posting a 'do not poke the Echo' sign, but I think she was kidding."
"She was not," Lía says, then relents a fraction. "But it was directed at certain upper-year idiots, not at you."
Alice leans in a little closer, tone gentler.
"Monday is realistic," she says. "You might be a bit more tired than usual, so we'll keep your schedule light in the afternoons for a week. No heavy lab work, no combat evaluations until Kaur says so. But you will go to class with everyone else."
"Like normal," I murmur.
"As normal as this place gets," Leo adds. "You'll take Hero Foundations, complain about the homework, get too many stares in the cafeteria. You know. Student stuff."
"And you won't be walking into it blind," Lía says. "We'll brief your instructors, adjust seating so you're not wedged between half a dozen volatile powers, and design your training sessions around what we know now."
"So the answer is yes," Alice sums up. "You'll be ready. And if you're not, we'll adjust the schedule, not you."
That… hits somewhere deep. I exhale slowly.
"Okay," I say. "Monday. First day of class. No exploding hallways. Low bar."
"Ambitious," Leo says solemnly. "But I believe in you."
I snort a laugh, the knot in my chest loosening a little more.
"Get some more rest," Lía says, standing to smooth my blanket like she hasn't been doing that in her head since the moment she walked in. "We'll be here when you wake up. And if the healers argue about releasing you, we'll… negotiate."
"Terrifyingly," Leo adds.
"Effectively," Alice corrects.
My eyes are already drooping again, but this time the thought of Monday doesn't make my stomach drop—it just settles there, warm and fizzy, like the start of something instead of the end of everything.
"Okay," I mumble. "Wake me up before homeroom."
"We will," Leo says.
"And this time," I add, half-asleep already, "don't turn off my nap juice."
All three of them laugh, and that's the sound I drift off to—soft and close and mine.
⸻
I wake up to the kind of quiet that only happens before dawn.
No monitor beeping, no whisper-fights, no snack crinkle. Just the hum of the building and the occasional squeak of someone's shoes way down the hall.
For one terrible second I think maybe I dreamed all of it—tower, suite, twins, hallway lightning, brujería nurses—but then my comm band pulses gently on my wrist and the bed sheets don't crackle when I move.
Progress.
I push myself up. The room's dim, lit only by a soft strip of light near the floor. The IV is gone; there's just a little round bandage on my hand. My monitor is on standby, a calm green icon glowing.
Someone's slumped in the visitor chair, chin on chest, Forge jacket half-draped over them.
"Leo?" I whisper.
The lump snorts.
"Not Leo," a sleep-rough voice corrects, and Lía pushes her hair back, blinking at me. "He fell asleep three hours ago and I made him go home. I stayed."
Warmth hits my chest way faster than my blood pressure does.
"You didn't have to," I say.
She waves that off like it's a bad hypothesis.
"Your levels stabilized around midnight," she says. "Healers wanted one more cycle before discharge. You've officially slept through it."
I glance at the clock floating near my bed: 05:12 in soft numbers.
"Early," I mumble.
"Before the chaos," she agrees. "Best time to move you."
As if on cue, the door hisses open and a nurse pads in—the silver-streaked one from earlier, not Rosa. She smiles when she sees me upright.
"Buenos días, Sol," she says quietly. "All green. You're free to go, as long as you're escorted."
She holds up a slim band—plain gray, a little thicker than my comm.
"Optional dampener," she adds. "Low setting. Just a safety net in case any leftover charge decides to get dramatic."
I eye it like it might bite.
"Will it… shut me off?"
"More like muffle the volume," she says. "You'll still be you, just… menos ruido."
I hesitate, then nod and offer my left wrist. She fastens it snugly; it warms, syncs with my comm, and the background hum I hadn't even realized I was feeling dips by a few notches.
Not gone. Just… quieter.
"Oh," I breathe. "That's… weird."
"Take it off later if you don't like it," Lía says. "For now, it will make the walk easier."
The nurse hands me a small bag—my folded House jacket, my shoes, the few things I had on me when I exploded a hallway like a very ambitious lightbulb.
"Alice already signed your release," she says. "She'll see you at breakfast. Vayan con cuidado, ¿sí?"
"We will," Lía answers for us both.
Five minutes later I'm on my feet, jacket back on, shoes laced, hair doing its best "electrocuted but trying" impression. Every muscle feels a little floaty, like I slept weird, but the bone-deep exhaustion is gone.
"Ready?" Lía asks.
"As I'll ever be," I say.