He found none.
“Of course,” he said. “We’ll need your report.”
“You’ll have it tomorrow morning,” I said.
And they would.
Just not the truth.
That night, I burned the original lab results in my sink and memorized the boy’s name instead.
I never wrote them down anymore.
Names were dangerous.
I looked outside the window of my office. The lamps along Whitechapel Road had flickered to life one by one, soft amber halos blooming through the smog. From a distance, the city almost looked peaceful, orderly even. As if children weren’t disappearing behind sealed doors. As if families weren’t being erased with a stamp and a signature.
I locked the clinic and stood in the darkness for a long moment, keys cold in my hand.
The boy was still asleep in the back room. The sedative would hold for another hour, no more than that. Enough time, if nothing went wrong.
Nothing ever went right though.
I went through the checklist again in my head, because that was how I kept panic at bay, by breaking it into manageable pieces.
False chart already submitted. Temperature logged as stress-induced fever. Watch alert delayed by six hours. Route cleared.
The last was the most dangerous.
The alley smelled of rot and rain and old oil. Somewhere nearby, a generator coughed and died. The darkness thickened, swallowing the sound.
I walked three blocks north, cut east, then doubled back, notbecause I thought I was being followed, but because assuming you weren’t was how people vanished in this city.
At the corner of a shuttered bakery, I stopped and knocked once. Then twice. Then once more.
The door cracked open.
A woman’s eyes met mine, guarded and suspicious. She took in my coat, my hands, my face.
“Doctor,” she said flatly.
“I need to move some goods tonight,” I replied.
She hesitated, then opened the door wider.
Inside, the shop had been gutted and repurposed. Flour sacks replaced with blankets. Bread ovens converted into crude heaters. Half a dozen people lay sleeping on the floor, bodies tucked close together, seeking comfort and safety in each other.
“Any trouble?” the woman asked.
“Not yet,” I said.
She nodded once, already moving. “Dock route’s clear for the next two hours. After that, patrols double.”
“Then we move now.”
She studied me a second longer, then said quietly, “You sure about this one?”
I didn’t ask what she meant.
