"What does that mean."
"It means the registry and the operators were two different programs. The registry was the old one. The breeding research. They were trying to make hybrid children from compatible women. They were trying to do it for forty years and it almost never worked."
"And the operators."
"The operators are the Syndicate's mercenary program. Hybrid assets. Field contractors."
He turns a page. A timeline, hand-drawn, with two parallel lines that converge.
"Somebody combined them. Five years ago, maybe six."
"Why?"
"Because the operators started going feral."
The kitchen does not move.
"Different division," Dean says. "Different goals. They didn't start sharing data until the operators started failing. TheSyndicate's best assets were deteriorating. Field performance dropped. Containment costs climbed. They were losing their most expensive personnel and they did not have a fix."
"So they were going to —"
"Terminate them. Yes. Standard inventory math."
"Inventory."
"Their word. Not mine."
Harek's hand closes around the back of my chair hard enough to make the wood creak.
"Jesus fucking Christ."
I am on my feet.
I do not remember standing up. The chair is back from the table and my hands are flat on the wood and I am leaning forward and the kitchen has gone very still around me. The bonds are wide open. Crull's amber eyes are tracking me.
"Keep going."
"Jen —"
"Keep going, Dean."
Dean holds my eyes for a second. He nods once.
"Somebody at the Syndicate had an idea. The registry already existed. The compatible women already existed. The breeding program had been failing for forty years. What if you paired registry women with the operators who were going feral. See if the women stabilized them. Save the assets."
"They paired me with you," I say. To Thaw. "Specifically. Because you were going feral."
Thaw does not turn from the window.
"It seems so."
I look at him.
The man at the window. The man who has not turned around. The man who slept with one arm around me last night. The man who has held himself back every time his own body has beenthe thing I might need protection from. The man who has put himself between me and everything else.
Termination pending pairing trial.
Somebody at a Syndicate desk decided he was a piece of equipment that had outlived its useful service life. Somebody at a Syndicate desk wrote the paperwork. And somebody at a Syndicate desk decided to run one last experiment with him before they put him down, and the experiment was me.
