I didn’t move my hand. Tapped the package.
The sound was exasperated but lacking heat. “Fine. You’re pushy for a guy who can’t talk.”
She tore open the wrapper. The sound was loud in the quiet room and took a bite before looking back to the screen.
Clare was already moving on.
The intimacy of the last twenty minutes, the frantic, desperate heat of it, didn’t disappear, but she compartmentalized it with an efficiency that made my chest ache. She swallowed the crackerI’d given her, wiped crumbs from her lip, and turned the laptop so the screen angled toward me.
“Okay.” Clipped now. Professional. “Here’s the play.”
I chewed a dry cracker, watching her face. Color was still there, high on her cheekbones, but determination had replaced everything else.
Clare’s fingers hovered above the keys, then dropped into motion.
“This forum. I worked at that research hospital back in Boston. They had this internal discussion board for surgical cases, rare stuff, weird complications and is linked to other universities both in North America and Europe. In reality, it morphed into a full-on nerd commune.”
A small smile despite herself.
“People posted de-identified scans, threw theories around, corrected each other, tried to outsmart everyone. Surgeons are competitive bastards. Researchers can be even worse.”
She tapped a few keys.
“It’s still up and running. Officially it’s restricted to current staff, but nobody ever closes accounts properly.” A quick grimace. “So I reactivated mine. Updated the username, switched the email, reset the password. Brought my lying skills to the twenty-first century.”
VPN. Password change. Old account.
Security nightmare.
My hand set the half-eaten cracker down on the desk. I reached for the notepad, clicked the pen once, and wrote in block letters.
Security risk. They can trace you.
I slid it toward her.
She glanced down, then back up. A shrug under the duvet, the movement shifting warm fabric against my bare arm.
“Not easily. The account still shows as Boston. Hospital network routing, VPN layered on VPN. Nobody knows I’m in Lyon. Or Europe. Or that my life choices went straight to hell.”
She opened a browser tab. The forum interface filled the display, pale background, dense text, anonymous usernames in sterile blue.
She pointed.
“See? Old posts from five years ago. Tons of people still active. I picked a subthread under ‘experimental hardware and intraoperative implants.’ Very niche, very weird, perfect for you.”
My neck prickled.
Perfect for me. Right.
“So I wrote up a case. Middle-aged male, forty-five. History of generalized seizures, medication-resistant. Chip placed at C7 in some vague ‘European pilot program’ two years ago. Symptoms worsening. New onset seizures. No documentation on the hardware. Asked if anyone recognized the design.”
She hit a key. My X-rays appeared, stacked like cards.
Black and white images of my spine, my skull, my ribs. The foreign object sat like a parasite at C7, angled, delicate, threaded into bone.
She zoomed.
“I scrubbed metadata off the images. Updated the timestamp, blurred all the codes.” She shot me a sideways glance. “I am not a hacker, but I can follow instructions. Google is a thing.”
