Day Three...
Cael came with him.
He didn’t ask. He just appeared at the cave entrance in the morning when Neve was leaving and fell into step beside him and that was that.
Neve didn’t argue. He had noticed that arguing with Cael about where Cael went was a largely theoretical exercise.
In the cave, Cael sat against the far wall and watched Neve work with the specific quality of attention that never interfered but never fully left either. Present without being in the way. Neve had gotten used to it. It wasn’t uncomfortable anymore. He has somehow gotten used to living in the beast world.
Today was the gold needles.
He took the slim case out carefully and opened it in his lap. Six gold needles, glinting differently from the silver ones. Gideon saw them immediately.
"Those are different," he said.
"Different job," Neve said.
"What job?"
"Uh... the central compression." Neve looked at Soren’s ribcage. The point he had identified yesterday. "Silver cleared the surface. This needs to go deeper."
Gideon looked at the needles. "How much deeper?"
"Relax," Neve said.
"I’m relaxed."
"You’re not."
"I’m professionally composed."
"That’s not the same thing." Neve positioned the first gold needle. "Talk to me about something. Tell me about when Soren was well. What was he like?"
Gideon was quiet for a moment.
"He was loud," he said finally. "He was so loud and he’s nothing like Cael. He laughed at everything. Hunted more than anyone in the tribe. He used to steal my hunt from my stores when he thought I wasn’t looking." A pause. "He was going to be chief. He was ready for it."
Neve placed the first gold needle with steady hands.
"Tell me more," he said.
Gideon talked.
The gold needles went in one by one while Gideon described his brother alive and loud and present, and Neve listened as he worked.
Cael said nothing from his wall.
But when Neve looked over once, Cael was looking at his oldest brother with an expression that had nothing of the usual nothing in it.
Neve looked back at his work.
’Tomorrow is the last day. I hope this will work.’
.
.
Day Four...
The village had gathered.
Neve hadn’t planned for that. He wasn’t even expecting anyone, except Gideon. He arrived in the morning to find people already sitting and standing outside Soren’s cave, more joining as the day went on. Word had spread... four days, the outsider had promised to revive Soren, and today was the fourth.
He ignored them and went inside.
The chief was already there. Sitting near the entrance, rod across his knees, doing a very good impression of someone who was simply in the vicinity for unrelated reasons.
Neve put his gloves on.
Today was the final placement. He worked through the morning without speaking, placing the last of the gold needles at the deepest identified points, completing the sequence his medical memory had mapped across four days. Every node is addressed. Every compression point accessed.
When the last needle was placed he sat back.
And waited.
The cave was full by now. Gideon beside Soren. The chief at the entrance. Cael behind Neve. And outside, through the straw curtain, the sound of the village present and waiting.
An hour passed.
Neve looked at Soren’s face, but there was nothing. Not even a single reaction.
Another thirty minutes.
Still nothing.
He could feel the energy in the cave changing. The held-breath quality was becoming something heavier. Gideon’s hands had gone still where they rested on his knees. The chief had stopped pretending he was there for unrelated reasons.
The beastmen hanging around were already starting to whisper.
"Are you sure he’ll be able to revive him?"
"I heard he was almost dead. That sickness is also incurable."
"Let’s just believe in the red fruit for now,"
Neve stared at Soren and felt, for the first time in four days, the cold edge of doubt.
’What if I missed something? What if the sequence was wrong? What if the compression was too old, too set, too...’
{Treatment Complete. Blocked meridians cleared. Shift function restored. Pheromone channels reopened.}
Neve exhaled deeply as he looked at Soren’s face.
Still nothing.
Ten seconds. Twenty.
The cave was completely silent. He wasn’t going to panic since the system had confirmed that whatever he did was right.
Then Soren coughed.
One deep and rough cough, like something coming loose that had been stuck for a very long time. His chest rose higher than it had in two years. His head turned sideways on the mat.
And his eyes opened.
Brown. Slightly unfocused. Blinking at the ceiling of a cave he hadn’t seen consciously in two years.
Nobody in the room moved.
Soren’s eyes moved slowly around the space. Found Gideon first. Then the chief. Then Cael.
"...Why," he said, voice rough and barely there, "is everyone staring at me?"
Gideon made a sound that came from somewhere that had been holding on for two years and had just been allowed to let go. He grabbed his brother’s hand with both of his and pressed his forehead to it.
The chief stood up from the entrance and walked to his son and crouched down and put one hand on Soren’s face like he needed to confirm he was real.
Outside someone must have heard something because the noise from the village shifted... a ripple of sound moving outward, voices building.
Cael put his hand on Neve’s shoulder from behind.
Neve looked down at Soren, awake and blinking and confused and alive, and felt something in his chest that he didn’t have a name for yet.
"Who..." Soren’s eyes found him. Unfamiliar face. Unfamiliar scent. Red ears. The mark on his neck. "Who is that?"
"That," Gideon said, voice wrecked but steady, "is the person who fixed you."
Soren looked at Neve for a long moment.
"Fixed me? The red fruit?" he said slowly.
Neve stared at him. Even a new person was calling him red fruit.
"My name," he said, "is Neve."