Her last thought, before the dark took her:Nine p.m. I’m going to miss nine p.m.
Mercury would not rise to meet him.
Chapter 3
Eighteen months ago:
Mercury: Do you feel safe? In general, I mean. In your life.
Binary: Define safe.
Mercury: Protected. Certain that tomorrow will come.
Binary: Tomorrow is a mathematical inevitability. The Earth rotates. Time progresses.
Mercury: That’s not what I meant.
Binary: I know. But your question has no logical answer. Safety is an illusion we construct to function.
Mercury: That’s bleak, Binary.
Binary: Is it? I find it freeing. If safety doesn’t exist, we can stop searching for it. We can just…be.
Mercury: Sometimes I think you’re the sanest person I know.
Binary: That’s statistically unlikely, given our sample size of two.
Mercury: See? Sanest person I know.
Consciousness came back in fragments.
Concrete. Cold and rough against her cheek. A singlebulb swinging somewhere above her, casting shadows that moved like living things across gray walls. The smell hit her next—industrial, chemical, the particular staleness of a space that had never known fresh air.
Morgan tried to move and discovered her hands were bound behind her back. Zip ties. The plastic bit into her wrists when she tested them, sharp enough to draw blood if she pulled too hard.
Her blue dress was torn at the shoulder. She could feel the cool air against exposed skin, could see the ragged edge of fabric—one that didn’t actually match the Montana sky—in her peripheral vision.
A door opened somewhere behind her.
Footsteps. Measured. Unhurried. The click of expensive shoes on concrete.
“Miss Reece. You’re awake.”
It was the man from the garage. She forced herself to sit up, to turn, to face whatever came next with her eyes open.
He stood in the doorway like he was surveying a new office. Expensive suit, perfectly tailored. Calm demeanor. But it was his posture that unsettled her most: shoulders relaxed, hands loose at his sides, weight balanced. The posture of a man who had never once doubted a decision he’d made.
“Where am I?”
“Somewhere quiet.” He stepped closer, and she fought the urge to scramble backward. “Somewhere we can work without interruption.”
“Work?”
“You have a very particular skill set, Miss Reece. We’ve been looking for someone like you for quite some time.” He crouched down to her level, and his eyes were the worst part—not cruel, not angry. Curious. The way a researcher might examine a new specimen. “The articleabout you was quite illuminating. A memory that never forgets. Every number, every face, every detail—stored forever.”
Her stomach dropped.
The article. All those details she’d let them print—her abilities, her job, her face. She might as well have painted a target on her own back.
