Page 32 of Petrified

Something cold settles low in my stomach as Amand goes still beside me. He doesn't reach for the folder immediately, and that hesitation tells me more than anything he could say. “Open it.”

I pull it free and carry it to Gerald’s desk. The folder is thicker than it looked in the drawer, with dividers inside, handwritten notes clipped to printed reports, charts folded behind summaries, and enough dated entries to make it obvious Gerald didn't start compiling this recently.

I open to the first page and feel my jaw lock.

It is not a case report.

SUBJECT: CHAMELEON-02

Beneath that, in smaller type:

PRIMARY BONDED VARIABLES: BASILISK-01 / BASILISK-02

For several seconds, I do nothing but stare at the words while Amand steps closer until his shoulder nearly touches mine. Not Lev. Not Rowan and Amand. Subject. Variables.

“He numbered him.” My voice comes out lower than I mean it to, and Amand’s gaze drops to the second line.

“And us.” His expression hardens as he looks back at the page. “Keep going.”

I turn it.

Lev’s name is there, but it's not where it should be. It sits halfway down beneath designation classification, scent profile, baseline camouflage response, magical sensitivity, known limitations, and a long list of observed abilities with dates beside them.

I run my eyes over the first few entries and recognize almost all of them: camouflage, designation detection, scent reproduction, visual displacement. Gerald has recorded each one with dates, durations, trigger conditions, and notes about how long Lev took to recover afterward. Amand leans closer over my shoulder as I turn another page and find entries reaching back farther than Gerald ever admitted his interest in Lev went.

“This isn’t personnel documentation,” he says.

“No.” I keep reading, and the cold feeling in my stomach gets worse. “It’s a fucking study.”

My Basilisk pushes harder beneath my skin as I look back at the second line. Gerald has reduced Lev to a subject and the two of us to whatever effect we have on him. I have to unclench my jaw before my fangs drop completely.

Amand’s jaw tightens as he looks from our classifications back to Lev’s. “Keep reading. We need to know how far this goes before Gerald knows we found it.”

I do because if I stop now, I'm going to tear Gerald’s office apart before we know what else he has hidden. The early entries are familiar enough to make the later ones worse. Lev’s camouflage is documented almost from the beginning, followed by his ability to scent magic and the first time Gerald observed him reproducing another designation’s magical signature. There are notes about how long Lev maintained each change, how exhausted he was afterward, what triggered the response, and how quickly he recovered.

The farther I read, the less the file resembles observation. Gerald starts comparing events instead of simply recording them, and our names disappear almost entirely from the notes until Amand and I are nothing but Basilisk exposure surrounding the Chameleon he actually cares about studying.

Exposure to Basilisk venom produces measurable stabilization following acute Chameleon fluctuation.

I turn the page and find another entry beneath a list of dates.

Repeated proximity to bonded Basilisks correlates with reduced involuntary displacement episodes.

The next one makes my hand stop against the paper.

Separation increases instability. Reintroduction of bonded contact restores baseline significantly faster than solitary recovery.

Amand is close enough to read over my shoulder, and I feel him tense before he speaks. “He knew the separation was affecting Lev before he told any of us how dangerous it could become.”

“He knew and kept watching it happen.” I scan the dates again, checking them against what I remember from those first weeks. “He wasn’t figuring it out alongside us. He already had enough information to call it a pattern.”

Amand pulls the next page free, and both of us go quiet.

There are charts now. Dates run down one side beside times Lev left Essence, times he returned, fluctuations in his magic, and notes about which of us had been with him. A notation at the bottom identifies the readings as coming from Lev’s agency tracker and the passive magical scans built into Essence security. Gerald wasn't watching what happened inside our home. He was measuring what Lev looked like magically before he left and what he looked like when he came back.

I read one twice because the wording refuses to settle into anything less invasive.

Post-bond contact produces temporary increase in designation stability. Effect strengthened following prolonged physical contact. Sexual component probable.