E L A R A

I wake up too warm and too cold at the same time, like my body can’t make up its mind about what it’s supposed to feel anymore. The ceiling is the same, the room is the same and I’m the only thing that’s different, and not in any of the ways that matter.

My eyes burn, that gritty sting of dried tears and no sleep, but I’m scared to blink because I know the second I do, I’ll see him all over again, Adrian in that hallway, with that wrecked look in his eyes before he turned away, and the sound of my own voice telling him we were a mistake.

God. I bury my face in my hands and breathe out something shaky and humiliating. I don’t regret choosing myself last night, or choosing sanity, or choosing the version of him who deserves more than being dragged into my mess, but I do regret how it felt. Like ripping my ribs open with my own hands.

I sat there for a long minute, the sheet twisted around my legs, hair stuck to my cheek, trying to convince myself that this ache would fade. That none of it meant anything. That he probably didn’t give a damn anyway, but it’s a lie, and I know it. I miss him, and I shouldn’t, but I do,  and that’s the whole problem.

I inhale once, slow and rough, and force myself to stand. Today I chose the island, not him or my heart or whatever broke open between us. Just the island, just Seraphine.
Something solid, and something that won’t shatter when I touch it.

The clinic is quiet when I step inside, but it’s the kind of quiet that feels like it’s waiting to collapse. Asha lifts her head from behind the counter, and the second she sees my face, her mouth softens.

“Rough night?” she asks gently.

I force a half-smile that fools exactly no one. “You could say that.”

She doesn’t push, thank God. Instead she hands me the morning reports, heat exhaustion from a sunrise jogger, a minor jellyfish sting, a kitchen prep cook who sliced his palm open and insisted on finishing his shift anyway. Seraphine doesn’t stop just because my heart did.

“Also,” Asha says, lowering her voice, “the west dock fridge failed overnight. The vaccines were stored there.”

Of course they were. Crisis never waits for the right moment. I shove my bag aside and roll my sleeves up. “Alright. Let’s sort this out.”

The next forty minutes slip by in a haze of counting supplies, adjusting settings, low curses under my breath, and that familiar, stubborn focus I thought I left behind in New York. By the time I’m wrist-deep in a cooler of vaccines that are just shy of room temperature, my pulse has finally settled into something close to steady.

I’m halfway through restocking the emergency cart when one of the kitchen stewards, Rafi shows up in the doorway, his palm wrapped in a towel that’s already soaked through.

“I’m so sorry, Doc,” he says, wincing. “It’s… deeper than I thought.”

I motion him in and guide him to the exam chair. “Sit. Let me look.”

He hesitates. “I didn’t want to bother anyone. I know things are tense.” Tense.  God, if he knew.

“I’m here,” I tell him. “You’re not bothering me.”

The second I pull the towel away, blood rises quickly. It’s a deep cut, but straightforward, an accident with a blade and nothing sinister.

“You should’ve come in earlier,” I say quietly, grabbing the sterile strips.

“I didn’t want Adrian thinking I wasn’t doing my job,” he blurts, cheeks reddening. “He’s been… off lately. Keeping an eye on everything, he’s restless, snapping at gear like he’s got something heavy on his mind.” My hands are still for just a beat.

I don’t ask what that means. i don’t trust my voice. I just patch Rafi up, give him aftercare instructions, and send him back to the kitchen with a note for his manager, but the moment he leaves, my pulse won’t settle.

Different, like he’s carrying something big. I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to feel it, but it rises anyway, stubborn as a tide: He’s hurting too, and I’m the one who made him bleed.

By late morning the clinic has settled into that fragile rhythm, quiet enough to pretend things are under control, busy enough to keep me from thinking too hard. But as I’m updating the incident log, the power flickers once, twice, then cuts out completely.

The overhead lights die. The AC stops humming. The fridge in the corner rattles to a dead stop.

“No, no, no.. don’t you dare..” I mutter under my breath. Asha pokes her head out of the supply room. “Backup generator?”

“Down,” I say, already moving. “I’ll check the breaker.”

It’s stupid, maybe, taking responsibility for something that should be maintenance’s job, but my legs carry me anyway, because someone has to, because patients don’t get to wait for perfect timing, because this island has become mine whether Adrian knows it or not.

The breaker room is humid and smells like metal. I push the panel open and wince, the surge tripped half the grid. I’m not an electrician, but I am stubborn, and sometimes that’s enough. I reset each switch slowly, deliberately, praying under my breath like the universe is listening for once.

The lights shudder back on and Asha cheers from down the hall. The fridge beeps alive. The AC kicks in. I press my palm to the warm metal of the panel and let myself exhale.

I turn around too fast and slam straight into a wall of heat, not a wall but Adrian. He’s standing in the hallway like he’s been there for a while, watching me, arms crossed, eyes dark, too dark. His hair is a little messy, like he ran his hands through it too many times. His shirt is wrinkled, his jaw looks tight enough to crack.

He looks… wrecked. Not physically but emotionally, in a way he doesn’t show anyone. For a full three seconds, neither of us speaks, the silence feels like a held breath.

“I didn’t know you handled electrical,” he says finally, voice low, almost careful.

“I handle what needs handling,” I answer, sharper than I mean to. “Someone had to fix it.”

His gaze flicks down my face, searching for something I don’t want him to find. “You shouldn’t be doing that alone.”

“Then don’t leave me alone,” I almost say. God, it’s right there, right on the back of my tongue, but I swallow it hard. He steps closer enough that I can feel the heat coming off him, close enough that if I breathed deeper, I’d inhale him.

“Elara,” he says softly, and it hits too hard. “Are you okay?” No one gets to ask me that.

“Fine,” I lied, just like he lied every time he pretended he didn’t want me. He flinches, barely, but I see it, and he doesn’t push.  He just nods once, tightly, like he’s holding himself together with his teeth. Then Ethan appears at the far end of the hall, calling his name, and the moment breaks like glass.

The rest of the afternoon moves strangely, like the island is holding its breath. People walk faster, radios chirp more often. Staff glance at the water every few minutes, like they’re expecting something to crawl out of it. By four o’clock, the tension has wrapped itself around my ribs so tightly I can barely inhale.

Asha notices. “Feels weird today, doesn’t it?”

“Storm coming?” I guess, even though the sky is painfully blue.

She shakes her head. “Not that kind of storm, Ethan’s been on the radio nonstop. Security keeps changing patrol routes, I think something’s wrong.”

My stomach knots, Seraphine doesn’t do wrong unless it’s intentional. Sabotage, patterns, a shadow limping across a camera feed. The memory hits me all at once, the skiff, the cave, the night water rising around my ankles while Adrian held the flashlight steady.

I rub my arms. “Have you seen Adrian?”

Asha gives me a look that’s too gentle. “He’s been everywhere. And… not himself. Like he’s distracted, or trying not to be.” My heartbeat stutters, off-rhythm, there’s a shift in the air. Something is coming, something big, something bad.

I force myself toward the charts, but the ink blurs under my hand. My chest won’t settle, and the clinic feels like it’s shrinking around me, the air too thick, too hot. Then Ethan fills the doorway, jaw tight, shoulders wound up, eyes sweeping the room until they land on me. Oh God. He only looks like that when everything is about to go sideways.

Ethan doesn’t speak at first, he just stands there in the doorway, breathing like he sprinted the whole way from the security office. His gaze flicks to Asha, sharp, warning and she quietly excuses herself, pulling the curtain between bays even though there’s no one in them. When it’s just us, he looks at me with this… calculation, like he’s trying to decide how much truth I can handle and how much will break me.

“Whatever it is,” I whisper, “just tell me.”

But he doesn’t, not yet, because right then, behind him, Adrian appears and the second our eyes meet, God! it feels like everything stops, like the air decides to freeze and listen. He looks devastated and determined, like he’s choosing something too big to say out loud, and something inside me answers him quietly and stubbornly.

Ethan clears his throat, bracing his palms on his knees like he needs the extra second before the words leave his mouth.

“We picked up movement on the outer perimeter,” he says finally, voice low. “A boat cutting its engine before hitting Seraphine’s cameras.”

My pulse stutters. “Tourists?”

“No.” His eyes flick to Adrian, then back to me. “This one wasn’t coming in. It was… skirting the boundary, using blind spots we didn’t think anyone knew.”

Adrian’s jaw locks. “Where is it now?” Ethan exhales once, slowly, like he knows this is the part that will stick a knife in the world we’ve been barely holding together.

“Mistral,” he says.
“Whatever’s happening, it’s happening off Isla Mistral.” The room tilts, Asha’s clipboard falls somewhere behind us. My throat goes tight and cold.

Mistral. The word feels like the opening of a fault line, and everything inside me knows, this isn’t just trouble. This is the next storm.