Page 98 of Dose

“You were brilliant. They decided what your brilliance was for.”

“Sometimes I gave them more than they asked for.”

He does not deny it. He does not rush to cover the sentence with something kinder.

After a moment, he lifts one hand from the wheel and opens it over the console between us.

He waits.

I put my hand in his.

We land at the Nexus at 1740.

Dominic takes the secure drive directly to the Archive. He promises to send the Site Nine directory to an isolated terminal in our quarters once the files have passed the first scan.

Cascade has transmitted no alarm. Its afternoon production logs look normal. Seattle remains behind the seventy-two-hour gate while the pharmacy records, customer routes and hidden archive are reviewed.

It should feel like success.

Instead, I can still taste Kessler’s cake.

Chocolate, with a layer of cherry filling I did not like but ate anyway because she was watching. She stood beside my bench while the others applauded. I remember thinking I had finally become too useful to discard.

I remember being happy.

Theon goes to the Chamber to brief Nikolai. I go to our quarters and wait for Dominic’s message.

The directory arrives at 1823 with read-only restrictions. I open the first report on the isolated tablet, then draw a table on paper: facilities down one side, implementation dates across the top, population snapshots in the few cells where they exist.

I begin with the storage protocol.

Nine facilities.

The first two have overlapping subject codes. The third has only annual counts. The fourth records transfers but not destinations. I mark each uncertainty instead of choosing the answer that hurts most.

Theon returns while I am cross-referencing the seventh facility.

“Seattle?” I ask.

“Still closed.” He removes his jacket and places it over the back of a chair. “Persistence doesn’t call home until tomorrow night. No decision before we know whether it survived.”

I nod toward the empty space beside my table. “Ezra?”

Theon sits next to me. “Nikolai and Raphael are telling him tonight. The C-11 file stays restricted until he knows what we found.”

“And Marchant?”

“They knew the name as a possible alias. This is the first evidence tying her directly to his conditioning.”

I look down at my own reports.

The archive stored both versions of us together. Ezra’s mind turned into a cage. Mine turned into a production tool. Different protocols, same purpose: take whatever a child does best and make sure it belongs to someone else.

Theon draws the tablet closer.

“Show me where you are.”

I do.