“The Processing Room is no longer appropriate for your containment. This is a recovery cell. Different feeds, different access protocols.” He pauses, and something flickers across his face. “The surveillance here is... more easily managed.”
Different feeds. More easily managed. He’s telling me something without saying it. Something about privacy, about protection, about the lie he is constructing around us.
“How long was I out?”
“Several hours. Your body required rest after—” He stops. Starts again. “After the extraction.”
The extraction.Such a clinical word for what happened between us. For the way he took me apart and then held me together.
He pulls a chair to the side of my cot and begins arranging the tray. His hands are bare—no gloves. I stare at them, at the pale fingers, the scar across his left knuckle, the evidence of humanity he usually keeps hidden.
“The gloves,” I whisper.
He follows my gaze to his own hands. For a moment, he seems confused, as if he’d forgotten their absence.
“The barrier was no longer necessary,” he says finally.
I don’t know what that means. I don’t care what it means. All I care about is that his skin touched mine without latexbetween us, and something about that feels more intimate than everything else we did.
He begins feeding me—small pieces of bread dipped in the broth, cubes of cheese, slivers of meat that taste like smoke and pepper. Between each bite, he offers water from a cup he holds to my lips. The ritual is slow, careful. It is his version of care.
“The funeral video,” I say between mouthfuls. “You showed me my own burial.”
His hands still briefly, then resume their work.
“Viktor Petrenko held a service for his heir. Empty casket. Public mourning.”
“I’m a ghost.” The words come out flat. Factual. I’m not looking for comfort or contradiction. I’m stating what is true.
“My father buried me. My cousin replaced me. Everyone I knew before this room has moved on with their lives as if I never existed.” I pause while he offers another piece of bread. “I only exist here. In this room. Under these lights.”
He doesn’t respond immediately. His attention seems fixed on calibrating the next portion, ensuring it is small enough for my shrunken stomach to handle.
“I only exist because you see me,” I continue. “If you walked away right now, if you stopped watching, I would just... dissolve. Like I was never real at all.”
His hands stop moving. He looks up at me, and in his pale eyes I see something that might be recognition. The understanding of what it means to exist only in relation to another person’s attention.
“I see you,” he says. The words are quiet. Almost reluctant. As if they cost him something to speak aloud.
I feel tears forming again. My dehydrated body shouldn’t be capable of producing them, but somehow it manages. One slides down my cheek.
His bare thumb catches it before it can fall. The touch is feather-light, but it sends a jolt through my system.
He finishes the feeding in silence. When the tray is half empty, he removes it without being told—he knows my limits better than I do.
“I will need to report to Ivan,” he says. “The account codes require immediate action. The window for asset seizure is limited.”
I nod. I expected this. The intelligence I provided has to go somewhere.
“I will inform him that the asset remains under active analysis,” he continues. His voice has shifted into something more careful, each word precisely chosen. “Extended evaluation is required to ensure complete extraction of relevant intelligence.”
I blink. “That’s a lie.”
“Yes.”
“You already have everything. The codes, the locations, the vault. There’s nothing left to extract.”
“Yes.”
