He doesn't cut. He just holds the blade there, cold against my skin, while seconds stretch into minutes.
"The anticipation," Moore says softly. "The waiting. The not-knowing. That's where the real pain lives. Not in the wound. In the space before the wound."
He holds the scalpel there for an hour. Doesn't cut. Doesn't move. Just holds as he talks me through everything that is expected of me. Sex with him. With his friends. Random programming. Obedience. I don’t move. If I move the blade will cut me.
By the time he finally sets it down, I'm shaking so hard the chair rattles against the floor.
"Good," Moore says. "You're learning."
He walks away.
He doesn't touch me again that night.
He doesn't have to.
The lesson is already carved into my brain: the waiting is the weapon.
I come back screaming.
My throat is raw, my body convulsing against the restraints, every nerve on fire with remembered terror. The headset feels like it's burning into my skull, drilling through bone to reach the places I've hidden from everyone, including myself.
"Stop," I beg. "Please stop, I'll tell you anything, I'll do anything—"
"I don't want you to tell me anything." Webb's voice is patient, almost kind. "I want to see. I want to understand what's inside you that made a perfect weapon break his programming."
"There's nothing inside me." I'm sobbing now, ugly and broken. "I'm nothing. I'm no one. He made a mistake, he—"
"Jace Harrison doesn't make mistakes." Webb leans close, studies my face like I'm a specimen under glass. "He calculated. Heassessed. He decided you were worth more than fifteen years of conditioning. That means there's something in you, Elliot Rowe. Something valuable. Something worth finding."
He straightens. Checks the monitor.
"We'll continue tomorrow. You need to rest. The brain can only process so much trauma at once before it starts to shut down, and I need you functional for the video calls."
He removes the headset, sets it on the cart, and wheels everything toward the door.
"Webb."
He pauses.
"Why are you doing this? What do you get out of it?"
He considers the question. For a moment, something almost human flickers in his hollow eyes.
"I built Jace Harrison from nothing," he says. "I took a privileged eight-year-old and turned him into the most efficient killer our organization has ever produced. That was my legacy. My contribution to The Silent."
He steps closer, looms over me.
"And then you came along, and everything I built started to fall apart. Fifteen years of work, undone by a broken boy who can'teven look me in the eye." His voice drops, turns cold. "I need to understand why. I need to know what weakness I missed, what flaw in the conditioning let this happen. Because if I don't, it could happen again. To other projects. Other weapons."
He turns away.
"You're not special, Elliot. You're a symptom. And I'm going to dissect you until I find the disease."
The door closes.
I lie in the silence and the cold and the lingering echoes of memories I've spent years trying to bury.
Jace...Jace, please hurry.
