Simon called me down to his lab an hour after sunrise. I hadn’t slept. I couldn’t, not with the echo of her voice still caught in my ears, sharp and unfinished, a reminder I couldn’t get rid of.
Not after seeing the way she’d pressed her palms to the barrier with quiet, calculated focus, like she was testing it for weaknesses. She hadn’t been trying to escape. She’d been watching him. Studying him. Planning something I hadn’t had the tools to name.
When I walked in, Simon was already hunched over three monitors, sleeves shoved to his elbows, a half-drunk mug of something bitter and black sitting at the edge of the desk. His fingers moved with tense precision over the keyboard, adjusting timestamps and dragging data clips with medical urgency.
The lab was quiet in the wrong way. Too focu
