He's seeing the girl. The little one from the fragment. The dark hair. The eyes that weren't afraid.
His eyes come back to mine. Confused. Searching. The memory slipping away the way it always does, fracturing at the edges.
“That little girl is ok RJ. Ask Lumi, she’ll tell you. You didn’t hurt her.”
"Alex," he says. My name. Clear.
“Are you mine?”
"Yeah," I whisper. "I am."
His hand tightens on my wrist. The gold pulses once. Settles.
Behind me, silence. Staff frozen. Sven standing with the restraint pole slack in his hands. Every person in the hallwaywatching a girl with a glowing wrist talk a man out of a containment breach with one touch and two words.
I step back from RJ. His hand releases my wrist — reluctantly, his fingers trailing along the mark as they pull away.
"RJ," I say. "Go with Sven. I'll be here."
He looks at me. Those pale eyes, human now, the fire banked. He nods. Once. The most human gesture he's made since I've known him.
He walks with Sven. Down the hallway. Past the ripped door. No chains. No restraint poles. Just a man walking beside his handler because I asked him to.
The hallway empties. The alarm stops. The emergency lighting reverts to standard fluorescent.
Gavin is at the end of the hall.
I don't know how long he's been there. He's standing, watching, his face the same mask it always is — precise, controlled. But something behind it has shifted. The way Sven looked at me after the growl. The way Lumi looked at me when I said the growl felt right.
They keep looking at me like that. Like I'm answering a question they haven't asked yet.
"You stopped a full breach," he says. "Through contact. No restraints. No sedation." Each sentence lands precisely. "He complied with verbal direction from you. Not from staff."
I don't say anything. My hand is still warm where it touched his chest.
He looks down the hall where RJ walked away. Then back at me. For a long moment, the administrator and something else fight behind his eyes.
"Go to your room," he says. Quiet. "I need to make some calls."
He turns. Walks away. His radio is already at his mouth before he rounds the corner.
I stand in the empty hallway.
My wrist glows faintly. The gold fading to warmth. Three arcs almost forming a circle.
RJ's face.
Chapter twenty-two
Gavin doesn't wait until morning.
Sven walks me straight from Red House to the admin building, across the compound in the dark, the ice crunching under our boots and neither of us speaking. My hand is still warm where it touched RJ's chest. The mark is still glowing faintly under my sleeve.
Gavin's office. He's already there. Already sitting behind the desk. Already has my file open — thicker now than the day I arrived.
Cal is there too. Standing near the window, arms crossed. He looks like he hasn't slept.
Sven closes the door. Stays inside. Stands against the wall.
