“Thanks.”
“I mean the gray. It’s spreading faster.”
I knew without looking in a mirror. My skin had taken on the color of wet cement, all the life leaching out of it as my organs began to fail.
My secure device buzzed on the bedside table, the screen lighting up. Unknown sender. Encrypted routing. My heart rate picked up.
Kate’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t open it.”
I reached for the device anyway. My fingers knew who it was from before my brain caught up. Only one person would contact me directly. Only one person would use this particular encryption path.
I tapped the screen. A video file loaded.
Dr. Helena Kovacs’s face filled the display. She looked different from the last time I’d seen her, when she’d beendragged away in federal custody. Healthier. More put-together. Her blonde hair pulled back in that severe bun, her lab coat pristine white against some kind of institutional backdrop. This wasn’t a prison cell.
“Hello, Subject L-7,” she said, and hearing that designation instead of my name made my teeth clench. “I see the degradation has accelerated. You have approximately four weeks remaining before complete systemic failure. Perhaps six with aggressive intervention.”
My fingers tightened around the device.
“Your condition is, of course, irreversible without my complete protocols. The Garnett data was intentionally incomplete. We built in fail-safes to prevent exactly the kind of theft your team executed.”
“Turn it off,” Kate said, her face tight with anger.
I kept watching.
“I’m prepared to offer you treatment,” Kovacs said, adjusting something off-camera. Behind her, I could see movement, other people in lab coats working at stations. “In exchange for information about Edge Ops operations. Or your cooperation with my ongoing research. Or...” She paused, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “We can discuss other arrangements when you arrive.”
The screen split, showing coordinates alongside a satellite image of mountains. The Carpathians. Romania.
“How the hell did she escape federal custody?” Alistair asked.
“Someone with serious resources wanted her out,” Kate said.
“You have ninety-six hours to reach this location,” Kovacs continued. “After that, the degradation will be too advanced for even me to reverse. The choice is yours, L-7. Come to me, or die where you sit. Those are your options.”
The video ended. The room felt suddenly too small, too hot.
Kate slammed her hand against the table. “It’s a trap.”
“Obviously.”
“She’s trying to lure you in. She has no intention of treating you. She wants to study the degradation process firsthand, document it for her research. And probably steal your genetic material to make more super-babies.”
I studied the coordinates Kovacs had sent. Romania, Carpathian Mountains. The location matched the intelligence we’d gathered on Innovixus’s main research campus. She wasn’t hiding. She was sitting in the heart of their operations, daring us to come after her.
“We need to call Ethan,” Kate said, reaching for her secure device. “Get a full team. Plan an extraction.”
“There’s no time.”
“We can’t go in without backup.”
“Four weeks,” I reminded her.
Kate’s face hardened. “So you’ll what, walk straight into their trap? Alone? Let them strap you to a table and continue their experiments?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You should die here,” she said fiercely, the words hitting me like cold water. “You should die here with people who care about you rather than give yourself back to them. Rather than let Kovacs turn you into a lab rat again.”
