Cam is hunched over the card table, surrounded by a circle of laptops. The light from the screens illuminates his face in an unhealthy blue. There’s a half-finished cup of coffee at his elbow with a new stack ofhand-scribbled notes on a legal pad. He looks up, his gaze giving me a mental check over. “Color’s better,” he grunts. “You still look like death, but less immediate autopsy, more lingering curse.”
“Feel the love, Cam,” I mutter.
“Love is an inefficient variable,” he says. “Speaking of inefficient variables…” He turns one of the screens toward me, a mess of email headers and routing info. It’s a spiderweb of addresses and timestamps. At the center, highlighted: a series of messages sent from an account tagged.
E.HAWTHORNE
“Her report log,” I whisper out loud.
“This is the address she used to send regular updates. The content's encrypted to hell.”
“Show me.” I lean closer, ignoring the pull in my ribs.
Cam taps a key, and subject lines start to scroll by, some generic, some chillingly specific.
WEEKLY DYAD STATUS – 001A/012B
INCIDENT – SUBJECT 001A UNSANCTIONED CONTACT
ENVIRONMENTAL STRESS TEST – CHARITY GALA
POST-OPERA BEHAVIORAL REPORT
My stomach flips. “She wrote reports oneverything.”
“Not everything,” Cam says. “These are the finalized ones that hit the central node. Some drafts were never sent, and that’s where things get interesting.” He pulls up a different window. A folder name is a string of nonsense characters, but inside, the file names are plain.
UNSENT_14, UNSENT_27, UNSENT_PHASE_IV
“Phase IV,” I read, pulse jumping. “What’s Phase IV?”
“Good question,” he says. “Evelyn never got that far in the official log. But she started writing it.” He opens the last unsent file. It’s a text page, partially corrupted. Gaps of gibberish. But the fragments that remain are clear enough.
SUBJECTS RETRIEVED.
BOND APPEARS STABLE UNDER EXTREME STRESSORS.
RECOMMEND PROCEEDING TO PHASE IV PARAMETERS.
My throat goes dry. “Stable, under extreme stressor.” I echo. “That’s the Nesting House.”
“And the opera,” Sterling adds quietly, continuing to list all the things that have happened over the last month. “And the gala. And every time they threw us into a situation and watched to see if we’d still orbit each other.” Cam scrolls further, showing more broken lines. Then, near the bottom.
UNRESOLVED VARIABLE: OFFSPRING POTENTIAL
DATA INCOMPLETE.
“Doesn’t mean anything just yet,” Cam says quickly. “It could be something theoretical or could be some sick long-term plan. The point is, she never hit send on this one. Either she ran out of time, or she changed her mind.”
“Or someone interrupted her,” Sterling says. “Like, say, us blowing up her workplace and dragging her out.”
I can’t tear my eyes away from the word offspring. Evelyn’s voice from last night echoes in my head:They wanted to know if what you feel is inevitable or engineered.
“Phase IV,” I say slowly. “That’s what comes after a stable bond under stress. After retrieval.”
“Yeah,” Cam says. “Best guess? Nesting House was at Phase III. Get you two together, push you, see if you still choose each other. Phase IV is… whatever comes next.” He doesn’t say it, but I can see it in his eyes. Whatever comes next is worse.
My hand finds its way to my lower abdomen without permission, pressing against the ache like I can smother the implications. I force my hands back to my side. “Is there anything about where they do Phase IV?” I ask, my voice is steadier than I feel.
