They found him in the aftermath of the storm.
The distortion had passed, leaving behind a strange stillness that made the world feel held, as if reality itself was waiting for something to settle. Gray was still weak from the collapse, his legs unsteady, his vision occasionally flickering with afterimages of the threads he'd seen. But when Elias proposed a supply run to assess the damage, Gray insisted on coming. He needed to see. He needed to understand what had happened to the sky, even if Mina thought he should be resting.
The subway tunnel was three blocks from the warehouse, a dark mouth in the ruins that had been flooded for weeks. But after the storm, something had changed. Water had risen to the entrance, pooling in the street, and the current that flowed from within was stronger than it should have been. As if the tunnel had become a spring, pushing water up from somewhere deep below.
"Stay back," Elias said, his hand raised to stop the group. "We don't know what's in there."
Gray's pattern-sight flickered, weak but functional. The threads around the tunnel entrance were strange, twisted in ways he'd never seen before. They spiraled inward, drawn toward something in the darkness, and the water itself seemed to glow with a faint luminescence that had nothing to do with light reflection.
Then something broke the surface.
A hand, pale and desperate, clawing at the air. A face followed, dark hair plastered to skin, eyes wild with something that wasn't quite fear. The figure was young, maybe Gray's age, maybe younger, and he was fighting the current as if it was trying to pull him back down.
"Help," the boy gasped, his voice ragged. "Please."
Elias moved first, wading into the water without hesitation, his arms reaching for the struggling figure. The current fought him, strange and resistant, but he was stronger, and he hauled the boy onto the concrete with a grunt of effort. The moment the young man cleared the water, the current subsided, as if it had been waiting for him to escape before releasing its grip.
He lay on the wet concrete, coughing, his chest heaving with desperate breaths. His clothes were soaked through, his skin pale from cold, but his eyes, his eyes were what caught Gray's attention. They were dark, almost black in the dim light, but there was something in them that reminded Gray of the ocean he'd seen once in a picture, depth upon depth, with currents moving beneath the surface that had nothing to do with the wind.
"Who are you?" Elias asked, his voice calm but firm. "How did you get down there?"
The boy pushed himself up to sitting, his hands trembling, his gaze moving from Elias to Gray to the others who had gathered. When he spoke, his voice was rough but steady, as if he'd been waiting a long time to say these words.
"Tala. My name is Tala." He swallowed, his throat working. "I was hiding. In the tunnels. When the water started rising, I thought I was going to drown. But then..." He stopped, confusion crossing his face. "The water didn't want to hurt me. It was like it was trying to show me something."
Gray's pattern-sight flickered again, and for a moment, he saw it. A thread of blue-green light running through Tala's chest, pulsing with the same rhythm as the water that had nearly claimed him. It was faint, barely visible, but it was there. An affinity. A connection to something that most people couldn't perceive.
"Show you what?" Mina asked, kneeling beside the boy, her hands already reaching to check for injuries.
"I don't know. A direction. A way out." Tala's eyes found Gray's, and something in them sharpened, a recognition that made no sense because they'd never met. "You see it too, don't you? The threads. The light that connects things."
The words hung in the air, heavy with implication. Gray felt the weight of every eye turning toward him, the question forming in the silence.
"I see them," he admitted.
Tala's face broke into a smile, bright and sudden, like the sun emerging from behind clouds. "I knew it. I knew I wasn't the only one." He pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly, and before anyone could stop him, he'd crossed the distance to Gray and Elias. "You're like me. You can see the patterns."
"We should get him back to the warehouse," Mina said, her voice cutting through the moment. "He needs rest, food, dry clothes. Questions can wait."
But Tala wasn't listening. His attention was fixed on Gray and Elias, his dark eyes moving between them with an intensity that bordered on desperate. When he spoke again, his voice was different, softer, almost reverent.
"You saved me. Both of you." He looked at Elias, then at Gray, and something in his expression shifted into something that looked almost like devotion. "I've been alone for so long. Hiding. Running. Trying to understand what was happening to me. And then you found me."
"We found you," Elias agreed, his tone cautious but not unkind. "But we're not—"
"Big brother."
The words were simple, but they carried weight. Tala said them without a trace of irony, without hesitation, as if he'd been waiting his entire life to say them to someone who might understand.
"You're like big brothers to me. I can feel it." He looked between them again, his smile widening. "I don't have anyone anymore. My family... they didn't make it. But you found me. You pulled me out of the water. That means something."
Gray didn't know how to respond. He'd never been called brother before, not like this, not by someone who meant it with every fiber of their being. But Ren had called him something similar, in his own way, and Mina had said the word like it explained something important about who Gray was becoming.
"We should get you warm," he said finally, because it was the only thing he knew how to say. "We can talk more at the warehouse."
Tala nodded, but his eyes never left Gray's face. There was something hungry in them, a need for connection that matched the void the group had been trying to fill without realizing it. He'd lost his family, his world, everything he'd known. And in the span of a few minutes, he'd decided that Gray and Elias were going to replace what he'd lost.
The walk back to the warehouse was quiet, but Tala stayed close to Gray and Elias the entire time, positioning himself between them like a younger sibling seeking protection. When they passed through the entrance, when the others emerged to see who they'd found, Tala's smile only widened.
"I'm Tala," he announced to the room, his voice carrying a confidence that seemed at odds with his recent near-drowning. "And I'm going to help you survive. Whatever it takes. Because that's what family does."
Gray watched him, this stranger who had emerged from the water like something born of the storm, and felt the threads of the warehouse shift to accommodate a new presence. The pattern was changing, growing more complex, and he didn't yet know if that was good or bad.
But looking at Tala's bright, hungry eyes, at the fierce loyalty already taking root in his expression, Gray thought maybe it was something they needed. A new thread in the web. A new connection to hold them together.
"Welcome to the warehouse," he said. "We'll figure out the rest together."
Tala's smile could have lit the darkest tunnel. "I know we will, big brother. I know we will."