Page 34 of Petrified

“He sent Lev there to test this.” I can hear my own voice dropping as the words leave me. “Lev could have been exposed. He could have been killed.”

“I know.” Amand keeps his grip on my wrist until I look at him instead of the page. “But if you destroy the office now and Gerald comes back before we finish, we lose whatever else proves what he was doing.”

I force my fingers open and pull my hand away from the desk. Crescent-shaped dents remain in the wood where my nails pressed through the finish, but the file is still intact.

We keep reading.

The next section is newer, and I know what it is before I reach the first full paragraph.

The Medusa case.

Gerald doesn't use my name in the header.

BONDED SUBJECT B-01: acute foreign magical contamination.

My stomach turns as I read the words beneath it. Gerald already has the healer’s findings documented: partial petrification of both lungs, involvement of the diaphragm and surrounding tissue, the damage left behind when the stone broke apart. He recorded Lev’s physical contact with me, the kiss, the timing of the reversal, and the fact that Lev’s magic protected my organs while dismantling the petrification.

The clinical language makes the memory worse. I can still remember the weight closing around my chest and Lev above me while breathing became something I could no longer make my body do properly. Gerald has reduced all of it to an outcome.

Threat to bonded subject produced immediate adaptive countermeasure. Chameleon response successfully disrupted foreign petrification magic while preserving compromised organic tissue.

Directly beneath it, separated from the rest of the report, is the line that makes every muscle in my body lock.

PREDICTED ADAPTIVE RESPONSE: CONFIRMED.

I stop breathing when I see the confirmation line, and for a second the words refuse to become anything more than black marks against white paper. Amand reaches for the page, but I flatten my palm over it before he can move it. “Look at the date.”

His eyes drop to the bottom of the report. The prediction was entered twelve days before I touched the snake, before any of us knew Lev could do what he did to me. Amand’s face changes almost imperceptibly, but I feel the tension move through him as clearly as if he had growled.

For several seconds, neither of us says anything. Then he drags the earlier pages closer and starts checking the dates against the projections, and I do the same because one prediction could still be explained away as Gerald knowing Chameleons better than we do. Two becomes harder. By the time we find the third, there is nothing left to explain.

Then I find the one involving us. It’s buried halfway down a planning sheet beneath several observations about bond development and magical exposure.

Extreme threat to bonded unit may provoke countermeasure development. Field confirmation required.

My vision darkens around the edges as I read it again. This was written before Medusa walked into Essence with a severed snake, before Gerald put the case in our hands, before I ended up on the floor unable to breathe.

“He wanted something like this to happen.” My voice comes out low enough that I barely recognize it.

Amand looks up sharply. “He didn’t petrify you.”

“I know he didn’t.” My Basilisk presses hard beneath my skin, and heat crawls along my arms where scales threaten to surface. “He didn’t need to. He knew what kind of case he was giving us. He thought something might threaten one of us badly enough to force Lev into another adaptation, and he sent us anyway.”

Amand doesn't tell me I'm wrong. He looks down at the prediction instead, his jaw tightening as he follows the date back to the beginning of the case.

I shove away from the desk before I break something and cross the office once, forcing myself to stop near the shelves instead of putting my fist through them.

When I turn back, Amand is already going through the remaining section of the folder. He pulls several pages free and lays them across Gerald’s desk beside one another. “There’s more. These aren’t observation logs.”

I come back to the desk and look down.

Case numbers run along the left side of the first page. Instead of the normal classifications Essence uses, Gerald has assigned each one another label.

Isolation stimulus.

Predatory threat.

Designation saturation.