"What caused the fight," he says.
I tell him. The look from the Gold House resident. Gray's growl. Torres catching it.
"And the shift."
"It was the fastest way to stop it."
"That is not—" He stops. Resets. "That is not your call to make. You are a resident. You do not have authority to intervene in a facility incident."
"The staff were behind it by eight seconds and someone was going to get hurt."
"Alex—"
The door opens.
Sven.
He takes in the room — me standing, Gavin behind the desk, the temperature of it — in one sweep. He doesn't apologize for interrupting. "The incident is contained," he says to Gavin. "Torres is back in Red House. The Gold House residents are being assessed. No injuries requiring medical."
"I'm aware of the status," Gavin says. "I'll speak with you after."
"I'd like to be present for this conversation."
Gavin looks at him. "That wasn't a request, Sven."
A beat. Sven's jaw is set, his hands loose at his sides, the contained quality of a man who disagrees and has already calculated the cost of saying so. "She stopped it," he says. "Whatever you think about the method, the incident ended because of her. That belongs in the record."
"I will determine what belongs in the record." Gavin's voice is even. The evenness of someone working to keep it that way. "Out. I'll find you when I'm done."
Sven looks at me. Then he goes.
The door closes.
Gavin is quiet for a few seconds. He looks at the file. Then at me. There's something in his face that isn't just institutional machinery — something that surfaces briefly and gets put back.
Then it's gone and he's Gavin again.
"I'm requesting an expedited review," he says. "The board was already scheduled for six weeks from now. I'm asking them to move it up." He sets his pen down with the careful deliberateness of someone managing their own hands. "I don't know what happened in that room today. I don't know if it was a loss of control or a calculated action or something that doesn't fit either of those categories. What I know is that I have forty witnesses and six incident reports and a dining hall that looks like a battlefield." He looks at me directly.
I hold his gaze.
"You are this close," he says. Flat. Precise. His finger and thumb a centimeter apart. "This close to being in a transport van to a facility in Montana. Do you understand me?"
"Yes," I say.
"The board will want answers I may not be able to give them. I need you to understand what that means — not for the facility, for you." He picks up his radio.
He keys the radio. "Reyes. Red House escort for Jones. From my office."
He sets it down.
"That's all," he says.
Reyes walks me back without speaking. The corridors have the post-incident quality I've come to know — the quiet of a building that has processed something large and is still digesting it. Residents we pass look at me. Not the threat-assessment look. Something I don't have a word for yet.
I go into my room. The door closes.
Chapter eighteen
