Page 53 of Dose

“This is good,” I say.

“I know.”

“Your humility is moving.”

“Eat all of it.”

The order is warm enough that I obey.

Jenna finds me later with Theon’s chemistry notes open on my lap and no memory of reading them.

She lowers herself onto Henrietta beside me, one hand braced beneath her stomach. “Waiting is awful.”

“Raphael already gave me the prepared speech.”

“Raphael gives excellent speeches. He also gets to remain busy sewing people back together when things go wrong.” She takes the notes from my hands and closes them. “The rest of us pace.”

“You pace?”

“I used to. Now Nikolai has made everyone terrified I’ll encounter an unsecured rug, so I sit aggressively.”

I smile, but it fades quickly. “How do you stand it when he leaves?”

“I hate it. I know the plan, memorize the abort conditions, and remind myself that silence means radio silence—not death.” Her gaze settles on me. “Then I hate it some more.”

“That is almost exactly what Raphael said.”

“We share notes.”

She tells me three stories about operations that went wrong. Not legends in which everyone behaves brilliantly. Real failures: a vehicle that would not start, a cover identity ruined by a misspelled surname, Nikolai trapped for forty minutes in a hotel laundry room while Darius impersonated housekeeping over the radio. Every story ends with them coming home because they adapted.

It helps. Not enough, but measurably.

The second day is harder.

The access team—Theon, Damon, and Darius—is already in position. Ezra remains in the Archive, receiving nothing because the plan requires silence until the Atlanta system is cloned or the mission aborts.

At fourteen hundred, I have run the same route model eighteen times without changing the result.

Lucien appears beside my workstation.

“Come with me,” he says.

He takes me to a small room behind the residential level. One lamp. Two cushions. No equipment to check and no screen offering false work.

“I don’t know how to meditate,” I tell him.

“Neither do I.” He lowers himself to the floor. “I know how to sit still.”

I sit opposite him.

He does not tell me what to feel or how to breathe. He simply stays. At first, the silence makes every thought louder. Atlanta. Guns. Alarms. Theon bleeding in a corridor while I sit half a country away.

I let each image arrive without building the next one for it.

Gradually, my breathing slows to Lucien’s rhythm.

“Better?” he asks when we stand.