"Noted."
"And for the other record, if you hurt him, I'll sedate you in your sleep and leave you in a Walmart parking lot in your underwear."
Zain looked at him. Nate smiled, that easy, warm smile that hid a spine of absolute steel.
"He's been through enough, Zain. Whatever you're doing, figure it out. Fast."
The dinner happened on the third night of post mat avoidance.
Jack cooked. This was not optional. When Jack decided to cook a real meal, not the functional scrambled eggs and pasta of daily survival but an actual, multi-course production, attendance was mandatory by unspoken crew law.
Ghost arrived last. He stood in the kitchen doorway with a bewildered expression, like a man dragged from a cave into sunlight and wasn't sure how to function in fluorescent light.
"Sit," Nate said.
"I'm not. "
"Sit."
Ghost sat. He held his plate like it might contain explosives.
"When's the last time you ate something that wasn't Red Bull?" Jack asked, already plating lamb.
"Define 'ate.'"
"Put food in your mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. The process that keeps humans alive."
"Tuesday."
"It's Friday, Ghost."
"I'm aware of the day."
"Are you, though?" Jack set the plate in front of him with the aggressive tenderness that was his signature move, food as intervention, dinner as an act of war against self-neglect. "Eat. All of it. I'll know if you don't."
Ghost took a bite. His expression shifted, surprise, then something softer, what might have been pleasure if pleasure were a language Ghost still spoke fluently. He took another bite.
"Good?" Nate asked.
"It's... adequate."
"He just closed his eyes for a second," Elijah said from his corner. "That means it's better than adequate."
"I did not close my eyes."
"You did," said everyone, simultaneously.
Ghost cleared his throat. Everyone looked at him. Ghost never cleared his throat. Ghost barely made sounds that weren't typing.
"The lamb," Ghost said. "What spice is that? The one underneath the rosemary."
Jack stared at him. "You're asking me about spices."
"I'm asking about one spice."
"Ras el hanout. It's a Moroccan blend. Cardamom, cumin, cinnamon, about fifteen other things."
Ghost nodded once. Filed it away behind those dark eyes the way he filed everything, in a place where data lived and feelings pretended not to.
