Relief lasts exactly four seconds.
Kael counted them.
One — the footsteps fading down the corridor.
Two — the stairwell door swinging shut somewhere below.
Three — the building settling back into its usual groans and complaints.
Four —
"Don't open the door for anyone tonight."
The voice came from down the hall.
Not loud. Didn't need to be.
The broader one had stopped at the top of the stairwell and turned back, just far enough to deliver it — not over his shoulder, but direct. Measured.
His eyes finding Kael's across the length of the corridor with an ease that suggested he'd known exactly where to look.
Not a suggestion.
Not a courtesy.
A warning.
The kind with weight behind it. The kind that meant we know where this door is. We will be back.
Kael held his gaze.
Gave one single, small nod.
The man turned and went down the stairs.
Gone.
Kael stood in the doorway for three more seconds, listening to the silence confirm itself — no more footsteps, no more voices, just the rain and the building and the distant roll of thunder moving east.
Then he stepped back inside.
Closed the door.
Deadbolt.
Chain.
He turned and pressed his back flat against it, and finally — finally — let himself breathe.
Not a gasp. Not a collapse.
Just a long, slow exhale that left him feeling hollow and slightly weightless, like something coiled very tight for a very long time had simply let go.
His eyes closed.
His head dropped back against the wood.
You did it, he thought, and there was no satisfaction in it.
Just a tired, disbelieving acknowledgment. You absolutely unbelievable idiot. You actually did it.
The silence stretched.
Rain.
The bowl.
The pipes.
His own breathing, slowly returning to something resembling normal.
And then Kael opened his eyes.
Turned back toward the room.
The man was still there.
Obviously. Of course he was. He hadn't evaporated in the last forty-five seconds. He was still tucked behind the turned chair, still under the grey geometric blanket, still doing that terrible shallow breathing that made Kael's stomach clench every time he clocked it.
Still bleeding.
Still alive.
Still — and this was the part Kael's brain kept returning to, with the persistence of a particularly unhelpful notification — here.
In his apartment.
On his floor.
The man whose existence had just required Kael to lie to two armed men, destroy his second-best shirt, sacrifice the lemon dish towel, and spend approximately four minutes in the closest proximity to a genuine cardiac event he'd experienced since his immigration review hearing two years ago.
You're involved, said a calm, quiet voice somewhere in the center of his chest.
Not accusatory. Just factual.
You were involved the moment you unlocked the door.
There's no uninvolved anymore.
Kael looked at the ceiling briefly.
At the water stain. At the slow drip catching in the bowl with its steady, indifferent rhythm.
I know, he told the ceiling.
He pushed off the door.
Found the small emergency kit in the bottom desk drawer — travel-sized, barely stocked, the kind you bought once because it seemed responsible and then never thought about again.
Antiseptic wipes. A roll of gauze. Medical tape. Two sad, individually wrapped bandages clearly designed for minor kitchen accidents rather than bullet wounds.
He looked at them for a moment.
Absolutely inadequate, he thought. Genuinely insulting. But it's what we have.
He crossed the room, crouched beside the man, and started unwrapping the soaked shirt from the wound.
It was worse up close.
Not catastrophic — he thought, hoped, couldn't be certain — but worse than he'd let himself register in the last twenty minutes.
The bleeding had slowed, which was either good news or the kind of news that came before very bad news, and Kael didn't have enough medical knowledge to tell the difference.
Pressure, he remembered. Consistent pressure. That's the thing.
He started there.
The lights flickered.
Just once — a brief, stuttering return of power that threw the apartment into sudden sharp relief before dying back to nothing.
Long enough to see the room clearly for half a second. The blood on the floor he hadn't fully cleaned. The blanket. The man's face, turned slightly upward, pale and still.
Thunder cracked, enormous and close, rattling the walls and shaking the window hard enough that Kael flinched.
The bowl jumped.
The pipes protested.
Silence pressed back in, heavier than before.
Kael exhaled.
Pressed clean gauze firmly against the wound.
Held it.
Okay, he thought. Okay. You're fine. He's — currently fine. Relatively. The door is locked. They're gone. You just need to get through tonight and figure out the rest in the morning, and in the morning this will all look —
Exactly as bad as it does now, said the honest part of his brain.
Thank you, he told it. Extremely helpful.
He shifted his weight, adjusting the pressure, and leaned closer to check —
The hand moved.
Not the faint, unconscious twitch from earlier.
Not the reflex grip on his sleeve.
Deliberate.
Fingers closing around his wrist, sudden and sure, with a strength that had absolutely no business belonging to someone who'd been bleeding on a floor for twenty minutes.
Kael's breath snagged.
He looked down.
The grip was firm. Grounding. The kind that knew exactly what it was holding.
Then, slowly — with the effortful quality of someone dragging themselves back from somewhere very far away —
The man's eyes opened.
Dark.
Unfocused at first. Then sharpening.
Blue.
Deep, cold, startling blue — finding Kael's face in the dark with an immediacy that suggested, despite everything, the person behind them was still very much in there.
And paying attention.
The grip on Kael's wrist didn't loosen.
Silence.
Just the rain.
Just the drip.
Just those eyes, looking up at him — and a hand wrapped around his wrist like it had already decided it wasn't letting go.
Kael stared back.
Said the only thing his brain produced under the circumstances.
"...Hi."