"That question has not been resolved by the forensic evidence."
"Then resolve it."
She looks at me. Direct. Cold. Not cruel — efficient.
"Alex. Do you remember the events of that night?"
"No."
"Do you have any memory — partial, fragmented, sensory — of the incident?"
The wall. The blackout wall. The four hours sealed behind it. I've been pressing against it for weeks — the flashes, the fragments, the shapes I can almost see.
I push.
Not cautiously. Not testing the edges. This time I push because a woman behind a table is asking me to account for the worst night of my life and I am tired of saying I don't remember.
Something shifts. Behind the wall. The pressure changes. Like a door being pressed from both sides — my side and the other, the memory pushing back, wanting out as much as I want in.
I see —
Dark. Cold floor. The smell of blood. Hands — smaller, younger. The pressure in my fingertips, the splitting —
Pain. Sharp. Behind my eyes. The wall slamming back with a force that makes me gasp. My vision whites. My hands grip the chair and the room tilts and for one terrible second I'm not here, I'm in the dark, I'm on the cold floor —
"Alex."
Tomlinson's voice. Concerned. Human.
I'm in the chair. The evaluation room. Five people watching a girl grip a chair and shake.
"I don't remember," I say. My voice is wrecked. "I've tried. The memory is there. Behind something. It pushes back when I push in."
"First-shift trauma in a child can lock the memory completely. It's intact. It's in there. But her mind sealed it to survive, and it will only open when she's ready. Pushing it risks breaking her." Lumy says from behind me.
The woman writes. The compact man flips a page. Gavin closes the James file.
"The forensic evidence is inconclusive," Gavin says. "The James case remains open. It informs the risk assessment but does not determine placement."
Tomlinson nods. He's been watching me with an expression I can't fully read — not assessment, not judgment. The expression of a man who approved a facility because something had to be done and is now sitting across from the human consequence.
Cascade risk. Len takes this one.
"The scent destabilization events. The dominance-register vocalizations. The involuntary shift triggering. The micro-blackouts." He reads with the careful precision I've come to associate with his voice. "These indicate a cascade risk that exceeds the current compound's management capacity."
"Lumi has proposed a controlled bonding protocol," Cal says.
"I've reviewed it. It has merit." Len sets his notes down. "It also has risk. Supervised bond facilitation with multiple activemates, one of whom is a long-term feral in containment. If the bond escalation triggers a full shift during a supervised session —"
"Then we manage it. The way Alex managed RJ's breach."
"The way Alex managed it by breaking every protocol this compound has."
The impasse is visible.
"If the Board approves continued placement — and I'm recommending that it does — the current staff structure needs support," Len says. He looks at Tomlinson. "Someone with experience managing female shifter transition. I'll submit a name for vetting."
Tomlinson turns to me. The room shifts. Something in the air says: this is the part where the subject speaks.
