Pain had a language of its own.
Kirion had learned it in anatomy labs, confirmed it in emergency field clinics, and now, felt it screaming through his ribs as he staggered down a back alley soaked in rain and blood.
His blood.
He pressed a hand against his side. Warm. Slick. The impact from the enforcer's shock baton had broken something. Maybe more than one rib. The air was thin in his lungs, sharp with every breath.
Still, he ran.
Because he had to.
The ambush hadn't been clever. Just brutal.
He had gone to deliver supplies to a burned-out sector on the south ridge—kids, elders, wounded workers. No surveillance there, he thought. No patrols.
But they were waiting.
Not uniforms this time—mercs, likely off-contract. Hired ghosts. Paid in silence and immunity.
Three of them surrounded him.
The first swing he blocked. The second landed under his eye. By the third, he realized they weren't there to question or capture.
They were there to make an example.
He fought back—not like a trained soldier, but like a father protecting what little he had left. A brick to the knee. A scalpel across a cheek. A syringe jabbed into a neck with a paralytic too diluted to kill but strong enough to end the fight.
He won.
But he didn't leave whole.
Back at the safehouse, he peeled off the soaked shirt and stood in front of the cracked mirror. The bruises bloomed across his torso like ink. Purple. Black. The cut across his brow had already crusted with dried blood.
His hands shook.
Not from fear—but from restraint. From fury bottled behind clenched teeth and fading patience.
He turned, limped to the cradle, and gazed down at her.
She was awake. Quiet. Watching him.
Her small eyes blinked up at him, calm as a moon. She reached one hand through the safety mesh and touched his knuckle with a kind of sacred certainty. As if to say, You're still here.
And he was.
Bruised, yes. Broken, never.
Later that night, he stitched himself without anesthesia.
Each pull of the thread was a reminder: pain didn't define him. Purpose did.
He logged into the darkline and left a message for the resistance contacts who'd reached out before.
> "I'm in. No ranks. No chains. I help who I choose."
He attached coordinates to the next food and med drop—and a warning:
> "If you come to hurt them, I'll come for you."
Pain had a language of its own.
And Kirion was learning to speak it fluently.
Not with screams—but with action.