The jail was quiet, aside from soft sniffles, occasional hiccups, and the low hum of the overhead light. Vik paced inside the cell, his boots scuffing the floor, talking a mile a minute as usual. His fingers twitched nervously at his sides, unable to stay still.

  "I mean, we didn't mean for it to go that far. It was supposed to be funny—just a joke, a prank, like, I thought she'd get mad, maybe pound the door a little and yell, and then we'd let her out. That's all! And besides, who builds a hideout with a door you can actually break like that? Not our fault! Right, Sol? Tell him—"

  Sol didn't answer. He sat curled on the bench, arms wrapped tight around his knees, shoulders trembling. His longer hair fell forward, hiding his face, but couldn't conceal the wet spots forming on his sleeves.

  Vik faltered. "Sol?" His voice cracked slightly, the confidence draining away.

  Gavin leaned on the cell bars, arms crossed. His cybernetic right arm whirred almost imperceptibly as he shifted position. His voice was quiet, but steady—the kind of voice soldiers recognized before a commanding tone. "You're trying to protect your brother. I respect that."

  Vik's mouth opened, closed. His usual arsenal of comebacks suddenly empty.

  "But this? What you did? It wasn't a prank. It was cruel. She was locked in that pce. No air. No light. Her system shut down. She might've died in there. She still might. You hear me?" Gavin's eyes hardened, the same look he'd worn in combat zones when delivering hard truths.

  "You knew what you were doing. And actions have consequences. Whether you meant the damage or not."

  He didn't raise his voice. Just delivered it the way he'd once delivered news to parents, back when bad judgment had cost lives.

  Sol's breath hitched. He buried his face in his arms, shoulders shaking harder now.

  Gavin continued. "You boys got a pass when that house burned down. People chalked it up to grief. Said you didn't know better. Maybe that was true. Many thought it was an accident. But this?" He shook his head. "You knew what you were doing. And actions have consequences."

  Vik's face crumpled. The mask of defiance finally shattered completely. He turned to Sol, pulling him into a fierce hug. Sol sobbed quietly into his chest, no words needed. The twins clung to each other like survivors of a shipwreck. Sol didn't speak. Just made a soft, broken sound against Vik's chest.

  Gavin watched the defiance fall away—not with satisfaction, but something quieter. Sadder.

  Sometimes the lesson nded too te. But it still had to nd.

  Gavin stepped back, his expression unreadable. From the far cell, the town drunk stirred in his sleep, cracked one eye open—the sharp blue one that sometimes saw too much.

  "First time I seen 'em cry," he muttered, and turned his face to the wall. His voice carried the weight of someone who recognized genuine remorse when he saw it.

  It was well past noon when Mia showed up at the jail. The sun painted the sheriff's office windows gold, dust motes dancing in the snted light, and inside, Gavin was at his desk with a mug of lukewarm coffee that had gone bitter hours ago. The boys were still in the cell—cleaned up, fed, wrapped in scratchy sheriff's office bnkets that smelled faintly of industrial detergent. But they were solemn. Silent. The weight of what they'd done had finally settled on their shoulders like a physical thing.

  Mia gave Gavin a small nod. He stood, joints popping softly, pulled the ugly chair over from the wall—the one with the wobbling leg and cracked vinyl seat—and set it down beside the cell without a word. His eyes held a question she didn't answer.

  Dane stood behind the gss of his office, watching—arms crossed, face unreadable—but he stayed put. Mia didn't look at him. Not yet. She couldn't handle whatever she might see in his eyes.

  She sat, folding her hands in her p. The twins kept their gazes fixed on the floor, shoulders hunched like wounded animals. She waited, patient and still, until both boys finally looked at her. Looking at them, these two young men with hollow eyes and tear-stained faces, she knew she was right to come. Someone had to bridge this gap.

  "My mother's name was Caelen Virelli," she said softly, her voice carrying in the quiet room. "She once flew an interceptor through an asteroid storm just to get a message to our fleet. She was a pilot in the war. Flew cargo shuttles in and out of hot zones. Had more engine grease on her fingers than polish. She was brilliant. When she came back, she taught me to fly. Gave me my first multi-tool when I was six. Taught me how to fix a fuse, change a filter, and rewire an engine. She could make anything work again."

  The boys were quiet. Sol's eyes were red and puffy, the skin beneath them raw from constant wiping. Vik sat next to him, shoulders pressed together for comfort, but said nothing. His knuckles were white where they gripped the edge of the cot.

  "She used to bake pies when she couldn't sleep," Mia continued, her gaze drifting to the barred window. "And give away vegetables to anyone who came by. Didn't matter if they paid. I think... I think your family got quite a few baskets from her. I know you don't remember because you were so little. Your family was barely scraping by, your dad was really sick, so my mom made your family a lot of bread and soup. Sometimes she'd stay up all night, just to make sure there was enough. My mother did her best to make sure no one in Avenridge would go hungry."

  Mia's voice wavered. Just a little. A hairline crack in her composure that she smoothed over with a breath.

  "I watched her get sick. Her hands shook so badly she couldn't peel an apple. Her knees gave out. But she still smiled when someone stopped by. Even if she could barely stand."

  "My father... most called him Dr. Jeren. But Moozy called him Bonesaw. It always made me ugh. You'd think it was because of some horror story, but no. He used to carve through a battlefield like it was a butcher's table during the war. Saved a lot of people. Hurt a lot of people. War does that." Her fingers twisted together, remembering the gentle hands that had bandaged her skinned knees.

  She paused. Looked down at the beam of sunlight caught the dust in the air between them.

  "But here? He cared for everyone. Didn't matter if you could pay. Delivered babies, stitched wounds, sat through a hundred funerals. The st time I saw him, he didn't remember how to tie his own shoes. He didn't remember my name." The words hung in the air, heavy with the weight of loss.

  The boys were crying now. Sol quietly, tears tracking down his cheeks. Vik was trying to hide his face in the crook of his arm, shoulders shaking with the effort to contain it.

  "I don't need you to like me," Mia said, her tone gentle but firm. "You have every right to hate me. If it helps, go ahead. But I need you to understand something."

  She leaned forward slightly, the chair creaking beneath her.

  "When you burned down that house, you didn't just destroy where I lived. You burned the st piece of them that I had. The memories of them living in that home. Their smell in the furniture. The squeaky floorboard he always fixed wrong. The dent in the doorframe where my mom bumped into it every morning. You burned all of that." She didn't say it with anger, just a quiet, devastating truth.

  Mia hesitated, then leaned forward, bracing her forearms on her knees. The light caught the faint shimmer in her eyes—Asrell's subtle presence, helping her stay steady.

  "There's something else you need to hear. To understand what you did, and my guess is the other adults don't want to tell you." Her voice dropped lower, intimate and raw.

  Their heads lifted slightly, dread and curiosity mingling on their tear-streaked faces.

  She inhaled through her nose, let it out slowly. Measured. Controlled.

  "I was back in a dark, cold pce again. In a punishment chamber. There is no sound, no air movement, no movement at all. Just bck and stillness. Have you ever been somewhere so quiet you could hear your own blood?" Her fingers twitched, a small betrayal of the memories flooding back.

  Vik's face was so pale that his freckles stood out like bruises, and Sol couldn't look at her. His gaze dropped to his hands, which trembled in his p.

  "When you pulled your prank, it wasn't just me in a dark room, unable to leave. This wasn't me, just in a panic. I shut down. That's what happens when you've had that done to you enough times." Mia rubbed her hands along her pants, a nervous gesture, and so telling to Dane, who watched from his office, seeing what Elian had tried to expin to him.

  She let out a small breath. "You didn't know, I know that. But I need you to understand."

  "You boys don't owe me an apology, I don't need it. I just wanted you to know, so you understand why others are mad at you. I'm not mad at you, though." The forgiveness in her voice was almost harder to bear than any anger would have been.

  She stood, quietly brushing dust from her pants. The motion was so ordinary, so human, that it made her seem suddenly more real to the twins than she had been before.

  Dane stepped out of his office, then, silent, unreadable. She gave him a brief nod and turned toward the door, her footsteps echoing in the still room.

  "Mia—" he started, his deep voice catching on her name.

  "You don't have to apologize either," she said softly, without turning. "You were doing your job with what information you had." The words were generous, but her shoulders remained tight, protective.

  He followed her onto the porch, the screen door creaking behind them. "Let me give you a ride."

  She shook her head. "It's a nice day. I think I need the walk." The sun caught in her hair, turning it to burnished gold.

  And she left him standing there, hand still on the door, as the wind stirred faintly through the dry, quiet street. He watched her go, something unspoken hanging in the air between them.

  Gavin watched the boys as they stared after her, completely silent now. Their faces had changed—something had broken open inside them, something that might grow into understanding. And then, from the other cell, the drunk shifted.

  Normally passed out and snored through every shift, but today his voice came low and steady. Clear. Sober.

  "Those chambers... they used 'em in bcksites. Corporate, military—didn't matter. That kind of silence it's not just silence. It eats you." His words sliced through the quiet like a bde.

  Sol's head snapped around, eyes wide with horror.

  "I saw it once," the man went on, rough but lucid. He sat up, his good eye—the sharp blue one—focused with unsettling crity. "A whole room of prisoners screamin' to go back to the cells with the beatings. Anything but that chamber."

  He coughed and y back down, turning his face to the wall. The moment of crity passed like a storm.

  "You boys better be real damn sorry. 'Cause you don't come back the same after somethin' like that. And she was already holdin' it together with frayed string."

  Vik didn't say anything. For once, his mouth failed him. His defiance had crumbled to dust.

  Sol wiped his face with the tissue Mia had given them and whispered, "We are." The words hung in the air, a small offering to an empty room.