"What?"
"The session is over." I set down the tablet. "Take the rest of the day to process what surfaced. We'll continue tomorrow."
"But I was just—you were getting somewhere. Why would you stop?"
Because you asked me to and because you said please. Because watching you break is doing something to me that I don't understand and can't control.
Because for one horrible moment, I wanted to reach across the table and touch you. Comfort you. Tell you it would be okay, even though nothing about this situation is okay and I don't even know how to comfort another person.
"Pushing too hard risks permanent damage to your cognitive function," I say instead. "You're more useful to me intact."
He stares at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, that mocking smile creeps back onto his face.
"Careful, Harrison. That almost sounded like you give a shit."
"I don't."
"Sure you don't." He stands, and he's unsteady, catching himself on the back of the chair. "That's why you stopped when I asked. That's why you keep feeding me and not torturing me and looking at me like I'm amusing instead of a gnat you want to squash."
"You're reading too much into basic asset management."
"Am I?" He moves toward the door, then pauses, looking back over his shoulder. "You know what I think? I think you're scared of what I might remember. Not because it'll hurt me, but because it'll tell you something you don't want to know."
He's too close to the truth. I keep my face blank, my voice flat.
"Rest. Eat. We continue tomorrow."
"Yeah." He opens the door. "We'll see which one of us breaks first."
He leaves. The door clicks shut behind him.
I sit in the empty room, staring at the tablet, at the notes I made, at the fragments of memory he pulled from the wreckage of his mind.
Harrison Protocol. Pineridge. Westpoint. Project Omega. The Bonaccorso mafia family.
All connected. All pointing to something I've suspected for weeks but haven't been able to prove. The closest I’ve gotten is that the Pineridge boys were supposed to complete their hunts and become Board members. When they rebelled, it opened the way for a new generation. They went their own way and created a split in the way Westpoint was run. I don’t know how that connects to my brothers and I… we are close to the same age as the Pineridge boys.
We weren't recruited. We weren't saved from the streets and given purpose.
We were made. Designed. Manufactured like weapons on an assembly line.
I have a feeling the Pineridge boys were too, but I can’t prove it. I can’t prove any of this myself.
But Jonah Doe, with his broken brain and his sharp tongue and his relentless fucking defiance, might be the only personalive who can. He’s seen documents that don’t exist in our databases. At least none that I can access.
I close the file. Pull up the security feed. Watch him collapse onto the bed in the guest room, one arm thrown over his eyes.
He's right. I am scared of what he might remember.
But not for the reasons he thinks.
I'm scared because if he proves what I suspect, then everything I've built myself into—every wall, every defense, every carefully constructed identity—becomes a lie.
And I'm even more scared of how much I want him to prove it anyway.
I watch him until he falls asleep. Then I keep watching, telling myself it's surveillance, telling myself it's strategy, telling myself anything except the truth.
The truth is that Jonah is getting under my skin. Burrowing into cracks I didn't know I had. Making me feel things I was designed not to feel.
