My face burned. He had to see it—the flush spreading down my neck, the way my breathing changed, the way my thighs pressed together under the desk. His eyes darkened, and his grip on my hand tightened fractionally.
"If you don’t want to talk to me—if it’s too weird or painful than promise me this. You’ll finish the file you're working on," he said, releasing my hand with obvious reluctance. "Then eat the rest. Then go to bed. Actual sleep, not staring at the ceiling cataloging all the ways you're failing."
He stood, that massive frame unfolding from the chair, and moved toward the door. At the threshold, he paused.
"The sweater looks better on you than it ever did on Sophie," he said without turning around. "She won't mind about the hole. She understands what it's like to need something to hold onto."
Then he was gone, leaving me alone with a plate of warm food and a body that was vibrating with need I didn't want to acknowledge.
I finished the file. Ate the stroganoff even though each bite reminded me of his eyes tracking the movement of my throat. Walked back to my room on legs that felt disconnected from my body.
But once the door was closed, once I was alone in the dark, my hand slipped between my thighs without permission. I was soaked, had been since he'd said "good girl" in that voice that promised rewards for obedience and consequences for defiance.
I pressed my fingers against myself through the thin fabric of my underwear and bit my lip hard enough to hurt, trying not to make a sound. But in my head, I heard his voice again—"Eat. Then finish."—and came so hard my knees buckled, myfree hand pressed over my mouth to muffle the whimper that escaped.
This was bad. This was dangerous. This was my body recognizing something my mind didn't want to admit—that I didn't just want to be held or comforted or protected.
I wanted to be owned. Commanded. Taken apart by someone strong enough to put me back together better.
I wanted Konstantin Besharov to tell me what to do, and I wanted to be good for him, and that want was going to destroy every wall I'd built if I let it.
I curled into bed wearing the sweater with its chewed hole, thumb pressed against my lips but not between them, and tried very hard not to think about what would happen when I finally, inevitably, gave in.
Sixty-three.That'showmanypeople Brand had harvested while I'd been hiding in basements, pretending stolen antibiotics and veterinary sutures could save anyone.
Their names blurred together on the screen. Maria Gonzalez, who I'd failed to save. Kateryna Bondarenko, whose kidney I'd discovered missing too late. Chen Wei, thirty-four, father of two, partial liver. Ashley Morrison, nineteen, both corneas taken during wisdom tooth extraction. Teenage girls who'd gone in for birth control implants and come out missing reproductive tissue for some billionaire's fertility treatments.
Each file was meticulously documented. Brand's surgical notes read like love letters to his own precision. "Extracted right kidney with minimal vascular disruption. Excellent specimen. Estimated value: $175,000." He'd written that about a twenty-three-year-old kindergarten teacher who'd been told she had endometriosis.
My vision started to blur around case fifty-eight—a seven-year-old whose bone marrow had been harvested during a tonsillectomy. Seven years old. Someone's baby had been opened up and emptied out while their parent sat in the waiting room reading magazines, trusting the doctors to fix their child's sore throat.
The screen wouldn't focus anymore. The letters swan together, medical terminology becoming incomprehensible static. My hands had stopped responding to commands from my brain, fingers stuttering over keys, typing the same word three times before deleting it.
"I need a break." The words came out strange, like my mouth had forgotten how to shape them properly.
Maks looked up from his bank of monitors, concern flickering across his features. "You okay?"
No. I was sixty-three stolen lives past okay. I was drowning in other people's violations while my own pressed against my ribs like broken glass. But I couldn't say that. Couldn't say anything past the white noise filling my head.
"Just tired," I managed, pushing back from the desk on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else.
The walk to my room was both endless and instant. One moment I was in the hallway, the next my door was closing behind me, and I had no memory of the steps between. My body was moving without me, a flesh puppet with cut strings, stumbling toward the bed.
The crack started in my chest—a physical sensation like ice breaking on a frozen lake. Then it spread, fracturing outward through ribs and spine and skull until everything that held Dr. Maya Cross together shattered.
I didn't decide to regress. The same way you don't decide to bleed when cut, don't decide to breathe when drowning. My body simply stopped being big. Stopped being capable. Stoppedbeing anything but small and scared and desperately needing someone to make it better.
My knees hit the mattress, then my whole body, curling into the tightest ball physics would allow. The sweater—Sophie's sweater with its chewed hole—swallowed me, and I pulled it over my knees, making myself smaller still. A creature made of cashmere and collapse.
My thumb found my mouth without permission or shame. Just need, pure and simple, the pressure against my palate releasing something that had been wound too tight for too long. The relief was immediate and devastating. Four days of walls crumbling in an instant.
But I needed more. Needed something to fill the silence that wasn't my own heartbeat or the echo of sixty-three names I'd failed to save.
The tablet was on the nightstand where Sophie had left it, already logged into someone's Netflix account. My fingers—clumsy now, uncoordinated in that way that meant I was deep into Little space—fumbled with the screen until I found it.
Bluey.
The theme music washed over me like warm water, bright and cheerful and promising that everything could be solved in seven minutes if you just had imagination and parents who loved you. This episode was about camping, the dad pretending to be scared of everything while the kids protected him. Simple. Sweet. Nobody was being harvested for parts.
