“The methodology is on the drives,” he says. “I can rebuild the system if I can source the right components.”
He leaves it. Takes the bag.
I carry him. Across campus, through the dark, at a speed his body wasn’t designed for. He grips the collar of my coat, keeps his eyes closed and his breathing controlled. When I set himdown at the compound’s south entrance, he straightens his coat and looks at the building.
“How far is the lab from here?”
“You’re standing in it.”
I brief Elena.She clears a workspace in the lower level within the hour, separated from the survivor intake by a hallway and a security door. Whatever medical equipment the compound has goes into the room.
Before Carson touches a cabinet, I take him to the medical wing. He needs to see what his work means.
He stands in the doorway. Forty-seven people in beds. IV marks on every arm. Children who have never lived outside a building.
“The man who sent those operatives tonight,” I say. “This is what he does. He captures humans and holds them in facilities. Drains their blood on a schedule and sells it as the only clean supply available. We rescued these people last night. There are hundreds more in facilities we haven’t reached yet.”
I let that settle.
“Your filtration technology makes his entire operation obsolete. If contaminated blood can be purified, no one needs to hold a human being in a cage to get a clean supply.”
Carson doesn’t speak. He walks the length of the wing. He looks at every bed.
When he comes back, his face is different.
“Show me the lab,” he says.
He walks into the workspace and begins inventorying the equipment. Opens cabinets, checks what’s inside, reads labels. He doesn’t sit down.
“This will do to start,” he says. “I’ll need a mass spectrometer within the week. And samples of contaminated human blood. As many sources as you can get.”
Elena takes over from there.
I leave them.
The medical wing corridor is quieter than it was an hour ago. Through the glass, Simone is sitting with the same woman from earlier. They’ve shifted. The woman is lying down now, turned toward Simone, and Simone’s hand is resting on the mattress between them. Close enough that the woman could reach for it if she wanted.
I watch for ten seconds. Then I walk.
Celeste is in the hallway outside our room. Leaning against the wall. Arms crossed. She’s been waiting.
She has the report. Where I went, that I went alone, that I came back with a human scientist whose research could end the farm monopoly.
“You went alone.”
“I did.”
“To fight an assassination team.”
“Three operatives.”
“Without telling me.” Her voice is even. Controlled. “Without a camera. Without a feed. Without giving me anything you made me promise to give you last night.”
The words land and I hold still under them because they’re precise and they’re earned.
I stood in this corridor and told her I wouldn’t survive being blind to her inside one of Konstantin’s buildings. I put cameras on her shoulders and watched every step she took through rooms full of cots. I made her carry my fear as equipment.
And the first time the positions reversed, I gave her nothing. No feed. No audio. No way to know if I was alive or dead until someone walked down to the medical wing and told her.
