“How?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did you find out anything else?”
“Else?” I ask.
“How to enter the building,” he clarifies. “Plans, blueprints, anything.”
He doesn’t seem shocked. Not even slightly. I suppose I haven’t met many people like Cassian. Talon, for that matter, isn’t shaken either, though with him it’s harder to tell. His face turned blank.
I have met exactly zero people like either of them.
“Yes, actually,” I say after a while, and I can feel something shift in the room. Nobody wants to joke anymore. “I acquired information after leaving the hospital. The research wing has no functioning cameras. The official reason is ‘privacy protocol testing,’ but the cameras have been offline for years. Half the rooms still use outdated electronic locks. The building employs no night staff other than a janitor who leaves at seven-thirty. After that, the entire clinic is accessible only through badge scanners.”
No cameras. No staff. No record of who comes and goes.
Talon’s eyebrows shoot up. “That’s… sketchy.” He pauses, tilting his head like he’s running the math on something. “Wait, how did you find that out?”
“I used to be interested in hacking back when I was a teenager.”
He lifts both brows and nods, slow, like he’s impressed.
“Anyway,” I say. “According to my colleague, everything that happens at night is intentionally undocumented.”
Cassian leans forward slightly. “What about the people running the place? What do you know about them?”
I take a bite of my food, chewing slowly, buying myself a few seconds. It’s a strange thing, trying to describe people you once respected to people who might soon be breaking into their facility.
“Two attending physicians oversee the clinic—Dr. Harrow and Dr. Keene. I worked with them during my residency. They were competent, if eccentric.” I pause, turning over the memories. “Harrow has an obsession with metabolic regulation. Keene was always writing papers on sedation techniques, trying to optimize what he called ‘neuromuscular silence. Odd men, but not outwardly malicious. Back then, at least.”
Back then is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, and all three of us know it.
“Do you think they know?” Cassian asks.
I consider the question carefully.
“Before today,” I say, “I would have told you no. Or at least, unlikely.” I press my thumb against my temple, feeling the dull tick of a headache forming behind the bone. “They took unusual interest in experimental methodology, but both maintained reasonable boundaries. They wanted innovation, not infamy.”
“And now?” Cassian presses.
“Now I suspect those boundaries have deteriorated. Whether out of ambition, desperation, financial incentive, or moral decay, I cannot say. But Marisa saw things.” I stop. “And if she did, they would too.”
Talon whistles. “Nice friends you got, Doc.”
I wouldn’t call them friends. I don’t bother correcting him.
“What do you want to do?” Cassian asks.
I breathe in. Hold. Release.
“I want to verify what is happening inside that clinic,” I say. “Of course.”
Cassian nods once. “I’ll join you then.”
Talon wipes sauce from his mouth with the back of his hand. “So we break in, do our little near-death experiment on me, and then go snooping around a spooky illegal lab?” He grins, wide and reckless. “Sounds like a fun night.”
So he’s in as well.
