“We’re going to need you to prove it.” The man’s voice was as flat as his eyes. “Prove your memory is what the article claims.”
Another man stepped into the room—heavier, rougher, with a tattoo of a snake coiling up his neck. “Ready when you are, Mr. Randall.”
Randall. She filed the name away automatically—first useful data since waking up.
“Fifty numbers,” Randall took a clipboard from the guard. “I’ll read them once. You’ll recite them back.”
Morgan’s mind raced. She didn’t know what they wanted. Didn’t know why her memory mattered to men who kidnapped women from parking garages. But every instinct she had—honed through a lifetime of making people uncomfortable—screamed at her to hide. To be less. To not let them see what she could really do.
She looked at the second man’s eyes. Just as flat and empty as Randall’s.
Randall began reading. “7. 23. 891. 4. 562. 19. 3847…”
The numbers flowed into her mind automatically, each one finding its place in the architecture of her memory. She couldn’t stop it any more than she could stop breathing. By the time he finished, all fifty were arranged in perfect sequence, ready to be recalled.
She deliberately scrambled them.
“7. 23. 562. 891… No, wait. 4. 19. 847… 3847?” She let her voice shake, let confusion creep across her face. “I’m sorry, I—the reporter, she exaggerated. I’m good with numbers but not like…It’s not like a recording?—”
Snake tattoo man snorted. “See? I told you that article was exaggerating. Nobody can do what that article said she could do.”
Randall’s demeanor shifted. The assessment in his eyes went cold, clicking over to a different calculation entirely.
“Then she’s useless. Kill her and get rid of the body.” He nodded to the guard.
The gun came out so fast Morgan barely registered the motion. Black metal. Barrel pointed at her forehead. The guard’s finger already on the trigger.
“Wait!” The word tore out of her. “Let me try again. I was nervous. Please. Let me try again.”
Silence stretched. The gun didn’t waver.
“One more chance,” Randall said quietly. “Fail, and you’re dead.”
He read a new sequence. Different numbers, same length, same flat delivery.
This time, Morgan recited them back perfectly. She didn’t have any other choice if she wanted to stay alive. Every digit in order, no hesitation, no mistakes. Her voice came out steady even though her hands were shaking behind her back.
When she finished, Randall smiled. It was a small expression, barely a curve of lips, but something about it made her skin crawl. The smile of a man who’d just confirmed an investment would pay off.
“Good.” He stood, brushing invisible dust from his trousers. “Don’t lie to me again. I find dishonesty tedious. Novak. Get her ready.”
Snake tattoo Novak cut the zip ties. Blood rushed back into her fingers, the pain sharp and prickling—she bit down hard on her lip to keep from crying out.
They sat her at a metal table with a laptop open in front of her—shipping manifests, routes, schedules scrolling across the screen. Digital files they could delete once she’d absorbed them.
They were using her as a human hard drive. A backup that no one could hack or trace.
Randall stood behind her, close enough that she could smell his cologne. Something expensive. Something that didn’t belong in this concrete hell.
“Memorize everything,” he said. “Every number, every location, every date.”
“What is this?”
“Shipment of twenty-three units arriving Tuesday.” He tapped a column of numbers. “Transfer points in three states. You’ll learn the entire network.”
Units. She assumed drugs. Weapons, maybe. Something illegal enough to require a human database instead of digital records.
She started reading. The information flowed in—dates, coordinates, names that were probably aliases, quantities measured in numbers she didn’t yet understand.
