His hands are warm, not rough. He holds me close, one arm behind my back, the other under my knees. The last person who carried me like this was my mother, but that’s a lifetime ago. She smelled of powder and warm skin; Jace smells like a man.
He carries me to the bedroom. The sheets are fresh. He sets me on the mattress and tucks the blanket up, not tight but just enough to cover.
He stands by the bed for a minute, watching my face, waiting to see if I will wake up or bolt.
But the drug is strong. My eyes blur. The ceiling pulses.
Jace turns off the light, closes the door.
In the dark, the only thing I feel is the lingering warmth where his hands were. It’s a different kind of pain. Not bad, but not good. Just a new thing my body can’t understand.
I drift, not back into the void, but into something soft, safe, and so unfamiliar it feels like a trick.
Before the world goes fully dark, I wonder if this is what it’s like to be breakable.
Maybe this is what it feels like to finally die.
Chapter Five: Jace
Idon'tsleep.
The chair outside Elliot's door is the same one from the night before, legs scratched from dragging it across the tile. I sit with my back straight, hands on my knees, feet flat. The pose is designed to minimize muscle fatigue during extended surveillance. I learned it at age nine, in the third month of Foundry conditioning, when they made us watch each other for seventy-two hours straight to identify who would break first.
The clock on the wall reads 0330. I've been tracking Elliot's breathing patterns for six hours. The sedative should have kept him under until dawn, but his system burned through it faster than expected. He's been awake since 0200, lying still, pretending to sleep. The rhythm of his inhales is too controlled, too deliberate. He's listening for me the same way I'm listening for him.
Elevated resting heart rate, micro-movements every four to six minutes, zero vocalizations since the scream that woke him at 0147.
The scream.
I replay it in my memory. Not the sound itself, but my response to it. I was in the kitchen, running a security diagnostic on my laptop, when his voice cracked the silence. My body moved before my brain registered the threat. Three seconds from chair to doorway. Knife in hand. Ready to kill whatever was hurting him.
There was nothing to kill. Just Elliot, thrashing in sweat-soaked sheets, hands clawing at his own throat.
I put the knife away.
I filed the reaction underanomalyand added it to the growing list of things I don't understand about myself when it comes to this man.
At 0415, my phone vibrates. Silent mode, but the buzz irritates my skin.
Jagger. Encrypted channel.
I pull it out, angle the screen away from the door. The message is short.
Forty-one hours. Director meeting scheduled for 0900. Prepare your case.
I don't have a case. I have an asset I cannot justify acquiring and a deviation I cannot explain. The Tribunal will want documentation. Purpose. A clear operational benefit that outweighs the breach in protocol.
I have none of those things.
What I have is Elliot Rowe, who flinches before contact instead of after. Who curls into corners like he's trying to disappear into the wall. Who looked at me last night with eyes that expected pain and found something else instead.
I don't know what he found. I don't know what I'm offering.
I type a response to Jagger:Acknowledged.
Nothing else. There's nothing else to say.
I pocket the phone and run a security sweep from memory. Building access logs, elevator usage, visitor manifests. I hacked the building's system three years ago; the data feeds directly to my laptop. I pull up the interface and scroll through the night's activity.
