"You didn't."
"Something about institutional failures."
He looks at me sideways. Looks at the door. Looks back. Doesn't ask.
That's also a Leo thing — knowing when not to ask.
***
I find Dalton in the east corridor twenty minutes later.
He's coming back from wherever he went — I can tell by the direction and the pace, which has shifted from purposeful to managed, the controlled neutrality he puts on when he's folding something away. He sees me and doesn't stop walking.
"Walk with me," he says.
I fall into step. "Where did you go."
"Errand."
"Dalton."
"It's not relevant to you right now." He glances at me. "I need you to let it go."
I look at him for a long moment. He meets my eyes and doesn't flinch and I believe him — not that it's nothing, but that it's something that has to stay closed right now. I let it go.
"Then tell me what permanent classification means," I say.
He stops walking. I stop beside him.
"Where did you hear that," he says.
"Last night you said if they've already made up their mind the process moves faster." I watch his face. "Are they moving faster?"
He looks at the corridor. Then at me.
"I can’t tell," he says. Flat. Clinical. Like he's reading from a document he doesn't like. "I’ve heard permanent containment. Separate facility. That’s all I know."
I go very still.
I think about RJ in a room somewhere in this building right now. The centimeter-at-a-time progress. The common room visits. The fence and his thumb on the marks through the chain link.Sorry, sorry.The man who came back to himself and stayed with what he did and didn't run.
"I'm not going to let them do that," I say.
"Alex—"
"I'm not."
"It's not your call." He says it carefully. Not dismissively — he means it as a fact. "The review process is the board's jurisdiction. Gavin has input. You're a resident."
I look at him.
"Watch me," I say.
He goes still.
I can see something shifting behind his eyes — the recalibration, the adjustment of whatever model he's been running. A woman who stepped in front of a feral wolf for him. Who held that wolf while he shook. Who came back from it sayingwatch me.
He doesn't say anything.
