Kikaru caught him before Oliver returned.
She had a towel over one shoulder and the same straight posture she carried through everything. Even tired, she looked arranged. Elias was starting to believe she considered slouching a moral failure.
"You asked about the training regimen earlier today," she said. "Three of us follow the full plan, Paul, Faye, and I. Tid avoids anything that sounds like effort unless it wins him a visible prize, and Colby does enough to claim he tried."
Elias capped his water. "And what about the others living in here?"
"Watching, waiting, and complaining in whatever order helps them feel independent."
That sounded too practiced to be random. She had said it before, maybe to staff, maybe to herself.
Elias nodded toward the mats. "Tid called you a military brat, so was your father in service?"
The question hit wrong.
Kikaru looked away, not far, just enough to remove him from the center of her attention. Her hand tightened once around the towel.
"My grandfather served in the military, not my father," she said. "My father died three years ago, before this."
Elias felt every easy response crowd his mouth and become useless. Sorry sounded thin. Prying sounded worse. He had opened the wrong cabinet and found something personal sitting there with no cover over it.
"I am sorry for assuming that about him."
"Do not be sorry at me for guessing," Kikaru said. "Be on time if you train, because we start at five thirty sharp."
She walked back to her pod and sealed the door before he could make the exchange worse.
Dot floated beside him, quieter than usual. "That was sad in a compact way today."
"People here keep doing that to me lately," Elias said, and Dot gave him a small look. "You also keep stepping on covered wires around people."
"I noticed after the spark, thank you very much."
Oliver entered A Block before Elias could decide whether standing still counted as recovery.
"Kael, you are ready enough, and medical is waiting."
"Ready enough is becoming the theme of my day," Elias said.
"Then appreciate the consistency and move before medical blames me."
The door sealed behind them, cutting off the lounge noise and bringing back the controlled quiet of Cube X. Screens tracked vitals, security routes, and block statuses. Elias walked beside Oliver in the green outfit, feeling less dressed than labeled. His own name on the badge kept tapping his chest like a reminder from someone who did not like him.
"Where are we going this time, medically speaking?"
"Room 3 A for the Shard Impact Scan. It measures how the shard is seated, how your body is responding, and whether your Ikona can be detected through standard equipment. You do not discuss results outside authorized areas."
"That is the second version of that warning today."
"Expect more versions before dinner today, unfortunately, as expected," Oliver said, still walking.
"Do you ever get tired of saying them?"
Oliver glanced at him. "I get tired when people make warnings necessary."
Room 3 A opened into a medical testing chamber. A metal table sat in the center under a circular scanner mounted on a ceiling track. Monitors lined the walls with skeletal diagrams, heat maps, layered body models, and three blank result panels waiting like they had already judged him.
A man in a lab coat stood near the main console, turning an empty vial between his fingers. He had a narrow face and shoes too clean for someone who worked with frightened bodies.
He looked at Elias, then at Dot.
Dot lifted a hand.
The doctor's eyes followed the movement by half an inch.
Elias stopped. "You can see her moving beside me right now?"
"Not clearly enough for certainty, but enough to know something waved in my direction. I am Doctor Halden, and you are here because your shard refuses to behave like a quiet piece of foreign material."
Dot drifted closer to him. "I like him already, because he noticed me first."
Halden smiled toward the air near her, then pointed at the table.
"Climb up onto the table for me, Elias. The scan is painless unless you remain emotionally attached to privacy."
"I have lost too much today to defend that last part."
Oliver stayed by the door with his arms behind his back. He looked bored in the trained way that meant he was not bored at all.
Elias climbed onto the table and lay flat. The metal was colder than it needed to be. A strap crossed his waist, then his thighs, then one more across his upper arms. Halden fastened each one without apology.
"Is this for my safety or everyone else's?"
"Both answers save paperwork, so choose whichever calms you."
The scanner lowered until it hovered above his chest. Small nodes lit one after another. A vibration moved through him from throat to ribs to stomach. It was not pain. It was pressure, like the machine was asking his bones a question and waiting for the meat to translate.
Dot hovered near his shoulder, watching the scanner with open suspicion.
"If it steals my shape, I am blaming the doctor."
"Reasonable enough for this testing room today, for now," Halden said, making a note. "Paranoid, but reasonable enough for today in Cube X."
The scan passed over Elias twice before the machine chimed.
Halden released the straps, then pulled the first image onto a glass panel and raised a second beside it.
"Left side is a normal scan, mine actually, because I was available and vain enough to compare well, while the right side is yours."
Elias sat up.
The difference was immediate.
The normal image showed bone, tissue, and ordinary shadows. His scan carried thin blue white lines through the body, threading around veins, organs, and bone like a second circulatory map. The shard sat below the sternum, tucked into him with a precision that made surgery seem too rough for the job.
It did not look stuck.
It looked installed.
Elias touched the center of his chest. "That is inside me right now, moving around."
"Very much inside you, and integrated better than most. I have only seen this depth of connection in two others so far, Kikaru and Gavlin."
"Gavlin is from another block, if I remember?"
"Correct, with different expression and similar depth on paper. Do not compare personalities based on scans, because the universe enjoys making doctors look stupid."
Dot moved closer to the image, and her hands lowered near her sides.
"Elias, that line reaches where I sleep inside you," she said.
He looked again. One of the blue white threads ran from the shard through the center of his chest, climbed along his spine, and disappeared into a shadow the scanner could not name.
Halden stopped turning the vial between his fingers. His mouth opened, then closed, and the glass panel kept throwing blue white light across his coat.