The rain had stopped.
For two full planetary rotations, it had fallen in waves—light, then torrential—pooling in the cracked soil, running through roots, seeping into the furrows of the broken stasis cradle. Now, only the sound of wind through wet leaves remained. The forest, saturated and still, exhaled steam into the gray dawn.
The child slept.
Not unconscious.
Not fevered.
Stabilized.
Temperature: approaching baseline.
Respiration: consistent.
Cellular cohesion: steady.
Neurological feedback: active but subdued.
The guardian stood over him, unmoving. Its frame still low and tense from sleepless monitoring. A fine layer of moisture clung to its fur, steaming slightly where warm systems met cold air. Its tail remained motionless, curled tightly to conserve energy. Its elongated skull tilted downward, nostrils flaring softly as it re-checked the boy’s pulse.
He would live.
The synthesis compound had worked.
The fever had broken during the night.
Reinforcement samples collected and administered had stabilized the internal imbalance. Viral replication was no longer advancing. There would be recovery. Slow. Monitored. But recovery.
The guardian remained there for several seconds longer than necessary.
Then something pulsed in its secondary routines.
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The biped.
It turned sharply.
Had it not checked since the rain began?
It had not.
It moved quickly, back toward the point of collapse. The ground still bore the faint indentation of the struggle—mud flattened, blood diluted and washed into the soil. The man lay where he had fallen, partially covered by a thick, low-hanging fern.
He was breathing.
But irregularly.
The guardian lowered its head, ears flattening slightly as it listened.
Pulse: elevated.
Breath: wet.
Depth: shallow.
It stepped closer and scanned again.
Wound sites had closed superficially—scar tissue formation was 15% complete. Internal clotting had held. But two of the lacerations were now seeping again, thin trails of blood threading down his side.
Reopened. Mild regression.
But more concerning was his breath.
Too fluid. Too heavy.
The guardian pressed its ear against his chest, angled its body to cut external noise. The sound within was unmistakable—low bubbling, soft rattling across the lower lung chambers.
Pulmonary saturation. Fluid accumulation.
Likely rain exposure while unconscious. Possibly partial drowning due to posture and shallow breathing during the storm.
Then it flipped him onto his back so his face was no longer resting near the damp ground.
The guardian retracted, then extended the same fine, bone-colored siphoning filament it had used on the bear. Its tip flexed with adaptive memory, reshaping slightly for use with human physiology. It pressed it gently between the ribs, bypassing major nerves and musculature.
With mechanical precision, it drew the fluid out—slow, rhythmic pulses—until the breath within the man’s chest began to level.
Still not clean. Still unstable.
But no longer in active respiratory failure.
The guardian retracted the filament and burned it clean inside its internal sheath.
Then it stepped back.
It watched him.
Monitored him.
And began running decision trees.
Should it continue?
The child was stabilized, but not fully safe. Energy reserves were low. Synth reserves: depleted. Its body remained incomplete—musculature bonded, but secondary growths unformed. Internal repair nanocytes still offline.
Helping the biped further would require more time.
More resources.
More risk.
And he was not its charge.
The man had fulfilled no part of the original directive.
He was external.
He was irrelevant.
But…
He had returned.
The guardian stood still, breath slow, systems in balance, while its mind ran through memory: the man’s charge against the bear, the wounds he sustained, the way he fell.
And the space he had carved between the child and death.
It waited.
And for the first time since its awakening…
It hesitated.
