Nila stared at Timi for one more second, then said, low and steady, "Tap him."
Will frowned. "What?"
"Wake him."
He hesitated, then reached out and tapped Timi's cheek once.
Nothing.
Timi's face stayed slack under the dust, one eyelid twitching and settling again. Will tried again, harder this time.
Still nothing.
Nila looked up from the makeshift bandage in her hands.
Then Timi's fingers moved.
Just once.
A small, sudden curl of the hand against the dirt.
Nila held her breath. Then Timi's eyes opened.
Will's second tap never quite became a second tap. Timi's eyelids fluttered once, then again, and the world came back to him in pieces.
First came the light.
Then the pain.
Then the fact that he was alive, which somehow arrived last and felt almost offensive.
His mouth opened, but nothing came out. His throat was dry enough to crack. His chest moved shallowly under the bandage, and every breath scraped something raw inside him. He stared at the faces above him without really seeing them at first. Nila. Will. Dust. Shadow. Blood. The refinery sky, pale and merciless overhead.
Then his eyes dropped to his own body.
The bandages.
The dark, wet stains beneath them.
The strip of cloth pressing his stomach closed.
Something cold and clear moved through him.
He lifted one hand and touched the fabric over his abdomen as if checking whether it was real.
It was.
He did not ask what happened.
He already knew.
He only said, in a voice that sounded too calm to belong to the same body that had been bleeding out on the ground moments ago, "There are more."
Nila froze. "More what?"
He looked at her. There was no drama in his face. No panic. No tremor. Just a flat, terrible concentration.
"Metal."
Will frowned, confused. "What?"
Timi's fingers slid slowly under the bandage at his stomach. Nila's hand moved instinctively to stop him, but he caught her wrist before she could touch him and shook his head once.
"No. Let me."
His grip was weak, but his tone was absolute.
He shifted carefully, every movement measured, like a man disassembling a machine that had already failed. Then he dragged the cloth aside.
The wound opened to the air.
Nila made a sound and turned her face away for a split second, then forced herself to look back.
There was metal in him.
Not one shard. Several.
Small jagged pieces, darkened with blood, buried around the torn flesh like bits of broken teeth. One near the edge of the wound. Another deeper. Another glinting wetly under the dirty light. The sight of them made Will go still.
Timi looked at them as if he had found misplaced screws in his pocket.
"Hold the cloth," he said.
Nila stared at him. "Timi—"
"Hold it."
It was not loud. It was worse than loud. It was calm enough that it did not sound like pain was part of the conversation.
Will reached first, helping Nila keep the dressing open. His hands were trembling already.
Timi put two fingers against the first shard and pulled.
The metal came out with a slick, ugly resistance.
Blood followed.
Nila flinched hard enough that her breath caught in her throat.
Timi did not.
He only looked at the piece in his fingers, dropped it beside him in the dust, and reached back in.
Another shard. Then another.
Each one came free with that same damp, tearing sound that made the others' skin crawl. The wound flexed and bled, and still his face never changed. His jaw stayed loose. His eyes stayed steady. His breathing stayed level, almost thoughtful.
Will stared at him in open horror.
"You're—" he started, then swallowed the rest down because he did not know what word to give this.
Timi didn't answer. He kept going.
He found one lodged closer to his side and pressed there a moment, reading the shape of it by touch alone. Then he pulled.
No flinch.
No hiss.
No curse.
Nothing.
It was as if pain had become a language he had finally stopped translating.
Nila's hands shook harder as she held the torn cloth apart.
"Timi," she said again, softer now. "You're bleeding."
He looked up at her once. "I know."
Then he reached toward his thigh wound.
Will stepped in too fast, fear sharpening him. "Wait—"
Timi's hand caught his wrist. "Hold still."
Will did not.
That was the problem.
He was breathing too quickly now, eyes wide, pupils blown. The sight of the metal, the blood, the way Timi was cutting pieces of himself loose without a sound—something in him had snapped sideways. He made a small broken noise and pulled back half a step, then another, like he was trying to escape a room that had suddenly become too small to survive inside.
Nila saw it first.
"Will."
He didn't answer.
He looked at Timi, then at the shards on the ground, then at his own hands covered in blood. His breathing turned jagged. Short. Fast. He pressed one palm to his chest as if the air had become too thick to get through.
"I can't—" he said, and the words collided with each other. "I can't—no, I can't—"
His eyes darted toward the refinery yard, then back, then past them, as if some invisible thing had started moving behind the tanks. His shoulders drew tight. His mouth kept opening and closing without getting a full sentence out of it.
Nila moved immediately.
"Will. Look at me."
He didn't.
His breathing was getting worse.
Timi, still half-open to the wound, glanced up at the sound of it. Something in his expression shifted—not compassion exactly, not yet, but recognition. The kind that said he had seen fear before and understood how quickly it could ruin a person if nobody caught it in time.
Will's hands were shaking hard enough that the bandage he'd been holding slipped from his fingers.
"I'm fine," he said, but the words were useless, split apart by panic before they could even pretend to be true.
Nila stepped in front of him. "Look at me."
Nothing.
She did not raise her voice. She did not make it bigger than it was. She only made herself the thing in front of him.
"Will. Here. Right here."
He blinked once. Then again.
His face had gone pale under the dust.
"I—" he began, but the rest broke apart.
Timi had already gone back to the wound, fingers steady. He pulled another shard free and set it down. Then another. The calmness of the movement was almost cruel in how much it contrasted with Will's unraveling.
Nila noticed and made a sharp, practical decision.
"Stop watching him," she said to Will.
His eyes flicked to her.
"Watch me."
That got through.
Barely.
Will's gaze dragged to her face like it weighed a hundred pounds. He was still breathing too fast, but the focus shifted. That was enough to begin.
"Good," Nila said, keeping her own voice low. "Stay there. You are here. I am here."
Will swallowed hard. "I can't—"
"Yes, you can."
He shook his head rapidly, as if the motion might shake off whatever had taken hold of him. His eyes were glossy now, unfocused around the edges.
Nila reached out and put both hands on his shoulders. Firm. Not gentle. Not rough. Anchoring.
"Breathe with me."
He tried, failed, tried again.
"One," she said. "In."
He inhaled too sharply.
"Out."
It came out ragged.
"Again."
Timi lifted his eyes from the wound for a second and looked at Will with a strange, nearly blank intensity. Then he said, in the same level tone he had used before, "Count."
Will blinked at him.
Timi nodded toward his own hand, where he was holding two fingers over the cloth while blood continued to seep around them.
"Count with her," he said.
Will stared. His chest was still rising too fast, but the instruction lodged somewhere in him. A task. A shape. Something that could be obeyed.
Nila took the opening and pressed it deeper.
"Good. Count with me. Four in. Four out. Don't think ahead."
Will managed one breath.
Then another.
His shoulders were still tight, but the edge of the panic began, slowly, to lose its grip. Not gone. Never gone that quickly. Just less violent. Less immediate.
Timi found another piece of metal near the lower wound and drew it out with a twisting motion that made the flesh around it part wetly.
Nila looked back at him despite herself.
There should have been a reaction. Some sign that it hurt. Some involuntary human betrayal.
There was none.
He only set the shard aside and said, "Wrap it now."
So they did.
The three of them worked together in the dirty half-light of the refinery while the men outside kept moving, unaware or unconcerned for the moment that they were stitching one of their captives back together with torn clothing and raw stubbornness.
Nila pressed cloth against Timi's stomach while Will, still breathing unsteadily, wrapped what remained of his shirt around the wound and tied it tight enough to hold pressure. Timi guided them once or twice, pointing without urgency to where the bandage should sit, where it should be tighter, where the blood was still coming through.
When they finished the stomach, he turned his thigh toward them.
Will saw the blood there and went a little pale again, but he kept his breathing under control this time. He stayed. That mattered.
Nila tore another strip and handed it to him.
"Hold this."
He obeyed.
Timi leaned back against the tank as they worked, eyes half-lidded, face emptied of almost everything except awareness. That same strange stillness clung to him, not peaceful exactly, but stripped. As if pain had burned away all unnecessary expression and left only function behind.
Nila kept looking at him when she could afford to.
There was blood on his fingers, on his shirt, on the dust beneath him. There should have been panic. Or crying. Or at least a sound.
But there was nothing.
It frightened her more than if he had screamed.
Because it meant he had gone somewhere else inside himself to survive this.
And she did not know how far down that place went.
Will was quiet now, though still pale. He sat on his heels for a moment after they finished, staring at the bloodied shards on the ground as if they were somehow connected to his own breathing.
Then his face changed again.
Not as violently as before, but enough that Nila noticed immediately.
His eyes fixed on the metal scraps.
His mouth opened.
Closed.
His breathing stuttered.
"Timi," Nila said carefully, hearing the rise before it fully came back. "Not looking at that. Look at me."
Will rubbed one hand hard over his face, then dragged both hands to his knees. "I'm trying."
"I know."
His voice cracked on the last word, and that almost set him off again, but he stayed with it. Timi looked over once and, with the same eerie steadiness, nudged one of the shard pieces farther away with the heel of his hand, out of Will's sight.
A tiny act.
It was enough.
Will inhaled shakily. Exhaled.
Again.
He got through the next breath.
And the next.
Nila sat back a fraction, finally allowing herself one small release of tension. Her own hands were stained with Timi's blood now. Her skirt had been torn to strips. Her knees ached from kneeling. Her mouth tasted like dust and panic.
But he was still here.
That was the only fact she could hold onto.
Timi's head dipped for a second as if he might fall under again, then lifted. He looked at the bandage on his stomach, at the one on his thigh, then at Nila and Will.
His voice was quiet.
"Don't let me sleep."
Nila frowned. "Why?"
He didn't answer right away.
His eyes moved toward the refinery yard beyond the tank, where men and machines kept shifting in the distance like nothing had happened at all.
Then he said, just as quietly, "Because if I sleep again, I don't know if I'll come back."
Nobody spoke after that. Even though the silence that followed did not feel empty.