His mouth twitches. "You can write that. They'll flag it, but you can write it."
He slides the forms across the table. I don’t have your academic records, so I don’t know how strong your reading skills are – do you want me to read the surveys to you? It is no trouble.
I shake my head grab the forms and start filling in bubbles. Cal goes back to his desk. He's grading something — actual schoolwork, someone's essay, red pen in hand. The normalcy of it is disorienting. A man who was once a feral wolf, grading homework, while I fill out a trauma inventory ten feet away.
Twenty minutes in, the laptop chimes. Cal glances at it. His expression shifts — just slightly, a tightening of his jaw.
"Give me one second," he says. He clicks something on the laptop, and the screen fills with a face.
Video call. A woman. Professional. Lab coat over a dark blouse, hair pulled back, a background that reads institutional — fluorescent lighting, a whiteboard with charts I can't read from this angle. She's maybe fifty. Sharp features.
"Dr. Ashworth," Cal says. His voice has changed. Still polite, but the warmth has gone somewhere else. Tucked away. "I have the resident with me. We're mid-assessment."
"I'm aware of the timeline, Calvin." Her voice is clipped. Precise. The kind of voice that expects to only say things once. Her eyes move from Cal to me — finding me through the webcam. "Alexandra Jones."
"Alex," I say. Because I always say it and I'm not stopping for a woman on a screen.
She doesn't acknowledge the correction. Her eyes are scanning me — not the way Cal looked at me, not the way Gavin studies me. She's reading something. My posture, my face, the way I'm holding my pencil. Collecting data from two thousand miles away.
"Dr. Ashworth oversees the remote evaluation team," Cal says. To me, not to her. Giving me information she probably wouldn't. "She reviews all Panel submissions."
"I review the behavioral and physiological profiles that inform Panel decisions," she corrects. "I don't submit. I assess." The distinction matters to her. I can hear it.
She looks at something off-screen. Notes, maybe. My file.
"Your scent reactivity incident triggered a facility-wide marker elevation. Your proximity event in the yard resulted in a first-time shift in a previously stable resident. You have a documented nighttime containment breach." She recites them without emphasis. Data points. "Calvin, has she completed the emotional regulation inventory?"
"She's mid-assessment."
"I'll need those results prioritized. Along with the trauma screening. And I want a supplemental cognitive battery — the extended version, not the standard intake."
Cal's jaw tightens. Barely visible. "The extended battery takes three hours. She's been here twenty minutes."
"Then schedule a follow-up session." Ashworth's eyes come back to me through the screen. "Alexandra. The assessments you're completing will be interpreted by my team. I want youto understand that the results will directly inform the Panel's interim review. Accuracy is in your interest."
"I'm filling in bubbles honestly. That's the best I can do."
"It's not, actually." She leans forward. Slightly. Enough that the webcam catches the shift. "The best you can do is demonstrate behavioral stability. Regulated emotional responses. A pattern the Panel can interpret as manageable risk." She pauses. "What you've demonstrated so far is the opposite."
The room gets colder. Not literally. But the warmth Cal built — the coffee maker, the homework, the real smile — it's being overwritten by this woman's presence. Establishing that whatever this room feels like, whatever Cal makes it feel like, the decisions are being made by people who look at numbers, not faces.
Cal speaks. Quiet. "Dr. Ashworth, she's completing the intake. We don't need to —"
"Calvin." One word. She doesn't raise her voice. She doesn't need to. The authority in it is total and practiced and I watch Cal's mouth close and his hand flatten on the desk and I realize something.
She has power over him too. Not just over me. Over this program, over the assessments, over the file that determines what happens to every resident in this facility. Cal came back to be in the room. But the room has walls he can't move.
"I'll have the standard results sent tonight," Cal says. Measured. "The extended battery can be scheduled for later this week."
"Tomorrow." Not a request. "And I need the scent reactivity data cross-referenced with her behavioral profile. If there's a correlation between her proximity events and her emotional regulation scores, I need to see it before the interim review."
"Understood."
The call ends. The screen goes dark. Cal sits still for a moment. Then he presses his thumb and finger into his eyes, and exhales.
"She's fun," I say.
"She's thorough." He leans back. The warmth is retuning. Like a room that's been aired out and needs to reheat. "And she's not wrong about the Panel. They will look at your scores. They will use them."
