I stood in the glass cell and looked around. The thick transparent walls reflected my own distorted image back at me under the harsh overhead lights. Mary was probably already in Bala’s office. As a shadow walker, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if she had simply stepped through the walls the moment she left.

I took the note out of my pocket again, unfolding the small, slightly creased paper between my fingers.

I know you don’t know me, Nadez.

I stopped there.

Nobody called me Nadez. This wasn’t a normal note. Whoever had written it had at least a glimpse of my real mission inside the walls. I needed to find out who, because something told me it tied directly into the revolution the system had just warned me about.

But trust me. Don’t stop Owen. He isn’t working against you. He’s for us.

I stopped again.

I thought about Owen as I read. There was nothing good in any memory I had of him. He had sabotaged the entire run to the Fallen City. And the second time I saw him, he had come to kill Mary Stam.

So why did this note want me to believe he was on my side. And why had the system marked the awakening moving closer the moment he died.

The two things wouldn’t fit together, and the wrongness of it stood in the cell with me, thick and heavy in the cool, sterile air.

We’ll meet soon.

The note ended there.

Who are you, I thought.

I needed to start moving. I didn’t want to be left behind by whatever was already in motion. I folded the note carefully and slipped it back into my pocket.

You know where to find me. Anything you need.

The doctor’s words came back to me, easy and unbidden, her voice still clear in my head.

"Anything," I said quietly, stepping out of the cell. "Anything."

I moved through the corridors toward the medical offices, the same wing we had been taken to after coming through the walls with the specimen.

***

The medical wing was quieter than the rest of CGI.

The deeper I went, the fewer people I passed. Most of the doors stood closed, heavy and unmarked, the corridor narrowing as if the building itself was trying to hide this section. Disinfectant hung thick in the air, clean and sharp enough to catch at the back of my throat. This wasn’t a place where people were treated. It was a place where CGI did its research.

"Hey." A thin man in a white lab coat stepped out of a side room and stopped me. His eyes narrowed behind thin glasses. "Looking for someone?"

His face made it clear that non-staff didn’t wander this far in. Then I saw the small sign on the wall confirming it, restricted access.

"Yeah," I said. "There’s a doctor with red hair—"

"Are you an agent?" he cut in.

"Yes."

"Lab two." He pointed at a door further down the hall and disappeared back into his room without another word.

The lab door stood open. I still wasn’t entirely sure why I’d come to her, but here I was.

The room was large, lined with long stainless steel tables set up for experiments, glassware and equipment neatly arranged under bright overhead lights. The doctor sat behind one of the desks, buried in files, reading from a tablet. Sunlight came through the narrow window behind her, catching the red in her hair and turning it almost copper, strands glowing like heated wire.

She looked up the moment she sensed someone approaching, and the smile arrived just as fast — quick, knowing, and a little hungry.

"Abram."

"Doc." I crossed the room.

Her smile widened. "Didn’t expect you here. Not now."

I didn’t answer. I pulled a chair from another desk, carried it over, and sat across from her. She set the tablet aside and leaned forward, elbows on the table.

"So I wasn’t completely wrong," she said, biting the nail of her little finger lightly.

"About what?"

"I knew you’d need me soon."

"Yeah. You weren’t wrong."

"So what do you want?" She leaned in further over the desk, voice dropping. "A quick fuck?"

[You’ll have to get used to how women respond to you now.]

"That’d be amazing," I said. "But that’s not why I came."

She smiled a little, tilting her head. Every word out of my mouth seemed to set off some reaction in her I couldn’t quite read.

"Then why are you here, Abram?"

It was the same question I’d been asking myself. She held my eyes while she waited, red hair falling slightly across one shoulder.

"You told me you’d help me with anything. Right?"

"Yeah." A small laugh. "Anything. Any style. Oral, anal. Anything."

The answer made me regret walking in. We were two people on completely different pages. I was looking for answers and she was looking for something else entirely.

"Not that," I said, standing, already reaching for another option.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"No," I said. "I thought you’d worked here long enough to have connections that could help me with something. But I think you—"

"Abram." She cut me off. "Please."

Something in her voice made me believe she actually might. That maybe she had a line to an investigator. And even if she didn’t, I had nothing to lose.

I reached into my pocket and took out the note, not to show her what was written, but to ask whether the ink or handwriting could be traced.

Her expression shifted the instant she saw the folded paper. Not fear. Interest. She leaned closer, eyes locked on it.

"Where did you get that?"

"What?"

"The paper." Her eyes were locked on it, hungry.

"The paper?" That caught me off guard. Her focus wasn’t on what the note might say. It was on the page itself. "What do you mean?"

"That’s old paper. Not many people have it anymore."

That pulled me back into the chair.

"Can you trace where it came from?" I asked, sitting again.

"Yes," she said. "But only if you let me feel it."

She held my gaze, and for the first time since I’d walked in, she wasn’t playing. The paper had her full attention now, and that told me more than anything else she’d said.