Three months after the Spire Break, Elijah Marris sat in the dark, in the back row of a rundown movie theater in Anchorage.
The place smelled like old popcorn and sticky soda, but Eli loved it.
He loved everything about it.
The sound system rattled when the bass kicked in, and the projector flickered sometimes, but none of it mattered. It was the people — their emotions — that kept him coming back.
Tears during the romance scenes. Gasps during the jump scares. Laughter that bubbled like champagne at slapstick. Fear, delight, longing, sadness — it was all there, swirling in the air like steam.
And Eli? He soaked in it like sun on skin.
The theater manager thought he was a superfan. Maybe an autistic savant with a cinema fixation. No one questioned the barefoot kid in the hoodie who never spoke and sat through five screenings a day.
In that week, the old theater made more money than it had in two years.
"Never seen crowds like this," the manager whispered to a reporter. "Everyone just… feels more when they're in here now. Movies hit harder. Make you cry. It's magic."
But Elijah didn't stay.
He never did.
When he wasn't in the theater, he slept in the cold.
No shelters. No stolen motel keys. Just the streets. Concrete. Ice. Frostbite.
To him, the biting chill wasn't suffering.
It was real.
Frostbite bloomed on his fingers like black petals. His lips cracked. Sometimes his eyes wouldn't open fully from the freezing wind.
And yet, every night, Elijah Marris opened his eyes with a soft smile.
The homeless who slept nearby started whispering about him.
They left coats for him. Blankets. Nothing ever stayed. The boy wouldn't use them. It was like he wanted the cold.
One old vet asked him once, "Why you doin' this to yourself, kid?"
Elijah just looked up at him, his chromatic eyes sparkling like frost crystals.
"So I know I'm alive."
The old man nodded.
Didn't understand.
But he nodded.
It all changed on a Tuesday.
Gray sky. Snow falling like powdered silence. Eli was wandering downtown, just walking, trailing fingers across glass windows and metal poles, tasting the loneliness left in the empty air.
Then he saw it.
Down an alley.
Blood.
A body.
He blinked and moved closer, bare feet crunching snow.
A girl.
No — a woman. Nineteen maybe. Purple hair matted with blood. Cracked visor. Costume torn. A deep gash in her side. Burn marks across her ribs. Her leg was twisted under her like a broken twig.
She was beautiful in that broken way Eli understood too well.
He tilted his head.
She was still breathing. Barely.
Kailean Opeol — alias Opal — coughed blood, her vision blurring. Her mentor had turned on her in the middle of their training mission. Left her to die. She thought she knew what betrayal felt like, but this?
This was betrayal laced with power-dampening gas, a broken communicator, and a ruptured lung.
"Is this it?" she whispered to the sky, tears freezing to her cheeks. "I tried to be a good person…"
She thought of her father. Of her training. Of the academy.
Then — footsteps.
A figure. Barefoot. Hoodie. Wide eyes.
He knelt beside her like a curious fox.
And said, "Are you a liar?"
Kailean blinked. "What?"
The boy repeated, more gently. "Are you a liar?"
She coughed. "No. I don't think so. Not about the important stuff."
"Then maybe you deserve to not die today."
She couldn't even process it — not before he pressed a trembling hand against her chest.
Warmth spread through her.
Gentle. Then blinding.
She gasped.
Pain dissolved like sugar in tea. Her leg snapped back into place. The burn scars smoothed. Her lung reinflated. Her ribs realigned. The blood flow stopped.
And Eli was sweating like a pig, eyes glazed, teeth clenched.
"Ghh—hehe," he muttered. "At least… at least you were honest."
Kailean couldn't speak.
She'd never felt healing like that.
It didn't just fix her.
It touched her.
Then the suits arrived.
Four armored black-suit agents came around the corner, weapons raised.
Kailean pushed herself to her feet — still stunned by the fact she could — and held up a hand. "Don't shoot!"
They froze.
She wiped the blood off her lip. "This kid just saved my life."
The agents hesitated.
She walked over to Eli, who was barely standing now, knees wobbly.
She picked him up with a small grunt — light as a feather, too light — and threw him over her shoulder.
"Come on, kid," she said. "We're going to see my dad."
The suits looked at each other, then nodded silently.
The car was warm.
Eli curled up in the back, still sweating, staring at the world through the tinted windows.
Kailean sat next to him, phone to her ear.
"Hey, Dad," she said dryly.
"(What happened?)"
She sighed. "What do you think happened? I nearly got killed."
"(No, I mean what happened — how'd you survive? There weren't any reinforcements.)"
"Some kid helped me. Healing power. Or something."
"(...We'll talk when you land.)"
"Sure. Love you."
The line went dead.
Kailean looked down at the boy, who was blinking slowly, watching the city lights roll past.
He looked content.
Then his stomach growled.
Loudly.
Kailean smiled. "Get us something to eat," she said to one of the suits.
Ten minutes later, a suit returned from the local McDonald's with two bags full of burgers, fries, and sodas.
Kailean passed a burger to Eli.
He took it with reverence, like it was a holy object.
He sniffed it. Nibbled.
And then he devoured it like a wolf.
Kailean chuckled.
"You really are weird," she said.
Eli, with a mouth full of fries, smiled at her.
"Not weird," he said, soft and happy. "Just free."
The car drove through the snow toward the private airstrip at the edge of the city.
The world didn't know it yet.
But something had just changed.
A broken boy with a borrowed power.
A bleeding girl with a shattered trust.
And a bond stitched together with blood, burgers, and a strange, dangerous warmth.