“I saw the van go out.”
He waits. Turns a page.
“You didn’t stop it. You didn’t flag it. You stood in that bay and watched a containment subject leave the grounds without authorization, and your log shows nothing.”
“That’s right.”
“Explain it.”
“There’s nothing to explain. They left the way your records show.”
He lets it sit. Looks at Viktor. Viktor doesn’t move.
“You didn’t stop them.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I thought they should leave.”
Viktor breathes out hard through his nose. “That wasn’t your call, Decker.”
“It wasn’t going to be stopped.” It’s Nadia. Even. Her eyes on Viktor, not me.
“It was under control.”
“Was it?” She sits forward. “I sat with Sable that week. By the second evaluation, she was barely holding together. Dr. Fell had supervised access to Rafael—while he was strapped down. Can you imagine what that did to him? That monster was the one who tortured him for years.”
“He was safe from her.” Viktor doesn’t flinch.
“How could they know that? The Syndicate offer was still on the table. The way Aurora was handling him was forcing Sable’s hand, and the moment I walked out of that last conversation, I knew. She was leaving with him that night. Whether Decker stood in the bay or not, it didn’t change what was coming.”
Nobody speaks.
“In that moment, it was the right call,” I say. “I brought them in once already, and it got him locked up. I wasn’t going to do that to him twice.”
Davis isn’t done. “We’d already determined that subject three-oh-six-seventy was —”
“His name is Rafael.”
He clears his throat. “Of course. We’d determined that Rafael posed a potential threat to those around him, and we had a protocol in place to manage it.”
“Your protocol is what made him a threat. I told the director I didn’t approve of what was happening in that wing. His note’s on file. The healer made the call I’d already made. I didn’t stop thevan, and when I found them, I didn’t bring them back. I’d do it the same way tomorrow.”
Davis’s hand goes still on the page.
“You understand the position that puts the council in.”
“No. I understand the position you’ve put me in.”
His nostrils flare. “This isn’t the council’s first concern about your methods. Independent assets. Off-book contacts. The way you tend to —”
“Find people?”
He stops.
“That’s the job,” I say. “You want a clean ledger, hire an accountant. The methods that found those two in the mountains the first time are the methods you’ve got a problem with tonight. Same methods. You can have both or neither.”
