“Alexei.”
He pauses.
“The Kennel made you,” I say. “But it didn’t finish you. There are still pieces left.”
He stands there for three heartbeats.
Then he walks through the door and it closes behind him.
I am alone again with my amber light.
The Monster is a prisoner too. He just happens to be on the other side of the door. The Kennel built walls inside his mind that are stronger than any concrete barrier.
Until me.
I don’t know what I am to him. But I know that when he looks at me, something inside him is struggling to break free.
And I know that I want to be the one who helps him escape.
He showed me his scar. He unlocked my restraint. He gave me a choice.
That’s currency more valuable than any intelligence I could trade.
I close my eyes. The memory of his mouth on mine is warmer than the amber light.
He gave me a choice. He gave me a name. He gave me a scar.
I have three pieces of the puzzle now.
I will find the rest.
Chapter Eleven
ALEXEI
Pre-dawn.The biometric alert activates.
I am not asleep. I have not slept in meaningful quantities since I touched him. The questions he asked have disrupted systems I thought were permanently stabilized. It is not the questions that keep replaying behind my eyes—it is the salt of him on my fingers when I cleaned the evidence away.
I have compromised myself. The realization should produce alarm. Instead, I find myself examining my own wrist, tracing the raised tissue beneath my sleeve with fingers that remember his lips.
He saw too much. He understood too much.
The alert flashes red on my monitoring station.
Core temperature: 39.7°C. Elevated from baseline by 2.6 degrees.
Heart rate: 112 bpm.
Respiratory rate: 26 breaths per minute. Shallow. Irregular.
I pull up the infrared feed. The subject’s thermal signature has shifted dramatically, the white-hot bloom of fever spreading outward from his core. His body is curled in the chair, shivering violently.
The IV port.
The realization arrives with clinical clarity. The line I installed during his dehydration crisis—the site has become infected. Compromised hygiene in a subject with depleted immune function. The signs are consistent with incipient sepsis.
Protocol dictates immediate transfer to the infirmary. The medical wing is staffed with personnel trained to handle exactly this.
