The day Valentine appears, the room recalibrates before he even speaks.
He doesn’t wear a lab coat. Doesn’t carry a tablet. Doesn’t announce himself. He simply enters and the staff respond as if a higher protocol has been activated. That’s how you recognise real authority. It doesn’t need reinforcement.
“Vitals?” he asks.
“Stable,” the clinician replies instantly. “Compliance trending upward.”
Valentine nods once. He doesn’t look at me yet. That’s deliberate. Direct engagement creates relationship markers. He avoids those.
“How long since the last incident?” he asks.
“Nineteen days.”
Nineteen.
The first real number I’ve heard spoken aloud since the roof.
Valentine’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “And the others?”
Snow is “stabilised.” Honey is “responsive to facilitator presence.” Hatchet is “non-reactive.” Ghost is “unchanged”. Nightshade is “resistant.”
Valentine hums softly. “He would be.”
Then, finally, he looks at me. It’s not appraisal. It’s inventory. “Bones,” he says.
I don’t respond. Names still matter here. I don’t give mine away cheaply.
He turns back to the clinician. “Projection?”
“With consistency, we expect long-term stability,” she says. “Adaptation is occurring across the cohort.”
“Adaptation,” Valentine repeats. He doesn’t sound pleased. That’s when he asks the question that matters. “And the woman?”
The temperature in the room shifts. Not physically – psychologically. Every staff member reacts. That tells me everything.
Seytan is present when he asks. I hadn’t noticed her enter. She does that on purpose. “Not your jurisdiction,” she says smoothly.
Valentine turns his head. Slowly. “That’s changed.”
Seytan smiles. It’s controlled, but there’s heat under it. Territorial. Possessive. “So you keep saying.”
Valentine doesn’t argue. He never does. He notes instead. That’s the pivot. This is no longer Seytan’s operation alone. He doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t posture. He shuts it down with a look.
Power hierarchy clarified.
They talk in front of me like I’m furniture. That’s either a mistake or a test.
I listen.
Valentine uses the word assets. Plural. That’s when I understand. We are not being contained. We are being preserved. Prepared.
They need us functional, coherent, motivated. Nightshade is the lever – obvious, volatile, inevitable. Valentine knows it. Seytan resents it.
When Seytan calls Kayla a variable, Valentine corrects her.
“She is the priority.”
That’s not procedural language. That’s directive.
