Page 58 of Dose

He applies a smaller dressing and dismisses us.

Back in my quarters, Isla sits me on the edge of the bed and checks the time written on Raphael’s instructions as though it may have changed during the walk.

“You were ninety-five minutes early,” she says.

“Ninety-two now.”

“That is not how restrictions work.”

“You express fear as administration.”

Her eyes lift to mine. “You express pain as an argument about definitions.”

Accurate. Irritating.

I pull her into my lap with my right arm. She settles carefully, keeping her weight away from the injury. The tension in her jaw has lived there since Atlanta. She no longer checks my dressing every hour, but she still looks at the shoulder whenever she thinks I will not notice.

“You are a terrible patient,” she says.

“I followed you to Raphael.”

“After threatening to summon him into an active lab.”

“That was your threat.”

“And it worked.”

I rest my chin against her hair.

This is what I did not know enough to want: someone who memorizes the minute my restrictions expire and will interrupt a validated assay to enforce them. Someone whose fear has teeth.

The door opens without a knock. Darius leans against the frame, his own left shoulder still moving with more care than usual.

“How is our difficult patient?”

“Noncompliant,” Isla says.

“Naturally.”

She looks at his shoulder. “Raphael said your mobility exercises were due at seven.”

Darius checks the time, mutters something uncomplimentary, and leaves.

I look down at her. “Weaponizing Raphael’s instructions against my family.”

“I am adapting to the culture.”

For a moment, she softens against me.

Then she says, “Ezra presented the Phoenix file this morning while you were debating your range of motion.”

There it is.

“I know.”

“Sixty-three confirmed children. Possibly more.”

The Atlanta archive gave us the route, staffing shell, and current pharmaceutical schedule. Phoenix is not a synthesis hub. It is an endpoint, one of the largest still active, built around a legacy storage, dosing, and verification system copied from Site Nine.