She moves toward a bank of screens on the wall, and I watch the data scroll across them.My data. Heart rate, blood pressure, neural activity patterns that pulse and shift across a map of my brain, everything I am reduced to numbers and graphs.
“Speaking of what’s coming,” I say, “what happened to Paragon? You mentioned a malfunction.”
Her fingers pause on the tablet, just for a second. “A minor glitch in his response protocols. He’s been recalibrated.”
“Recalibrated how? Like me just now?”
“The technical details wouldn’t interest you.”
“Try me.”
She turns, studying me with those pale eyes. “Why the sudden curiosity about Paragon?”
Because he was supposed to be there when thirteen people died, but instead, he ‘malfunctioned’, which is a pretty weird word to use to describe a person.
“He’s my partner,” I say. “I should know what’s going on with him.”
Julia’s voice is clipped and impatient. “Paragon is functioning within acceptable parameters. That’s all you need to know.”
Acceptable parameters.The same phrase she uses about me.
The restraints click open.
I sit up slowly, rubbing my wrists even though the padding didn’t leave marks. My head is still foggy, thoughts moving through molasses, my body still feels heavy, and there’s a strange taste at the back of my throat that I don’t normally get from these appointments.
“We’re done here,” Julia says. “Danny’s waiting to take you home. Get some rest. Eat something.” A pause. “And Nate? Think about what I said. About the government contract. About your purpose. You were built for more than publicityappearances and charity galas. It’s time you started acting like it.”
Excuse me?
I stand and try to say something in response to that jab, but for a moment, the room tilts. I catch myself on the edge of the chair, and Julia doesn’t move to help. She just watches, clipboard in hand, noting my momentary weakness the way she notes everything else.
“I have a question,” I say, steadying myself. “The headaches. Are those part of my ‘calibration’ too?”
She frowns. “What headaches?”
“I had a headache in Montana. Sudden, severe, like someone was driving a spike through my skull. Not too long after that, you showed up. It’s happened before, too. More often lately.” I gesture to the screens. “Seems like something you’d easily be able to see.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. “Stress, most likely,” she eventually says.
“The enhancements put significant demand on your neural architecture. When you’re emotionally heightened, the strain increases.” She makes a note on her tablet. “I’ll have the team look into it, adjust some parameters. It should resolve.”
Adjust some parameters.Like I’m a machine with faulty code.
I walk toward the door on legs that feel steadier than they should, given what just happened. But I stop at the threshold, one hand on the frame, because there’s something else, something that surfaced during the sedation, flickering at the edges of my consciousness like a half-remembered dream.
“There was a man,” I say slowly. “During the procedure. I saw…I don’t know if it was a memory or something else, but there was a man with a mustache. Grey, I think. Distinguished. He was wearing a white coat, like yours. And he was—” I closemy eyes, reaching for the image. “He was looking at me, but not like you look at me. He was full of regret.”
When I open my eyes, Julia’s face is carefully blank.
“Sedation can cause hallucinations,” she says. “Fragments of dreams, subconscious imagery. That sort of thing. Nothing to be concerned about.”
“Who is he?”
“No one. A phantom. Your brain filling gaps with random data.” She gestures toward the door. “Go home, Nate. Rest. I’ll see you at the press briefing on Thursday.”
She’s lying. I know she’s lying the way I knew when my parents were lying. When you know someone long enough, you learn their tells. But I also know pushing won’t get me anywhere—not here, not now, not when I’m still foggy from whatever they pumped into my veins.
So, I turn and leave, that bitter taste still in my mouth.
