Page 112 of Dose

“Recent enough that we keep moving.”

He connects the capture drive. Marcus begins the remote copy.

I start on the cabinets.

The filing system is familiar: year, site code, document class. My hands know where acquisition records will be before I read the labels.

Site Nine occupies an entire drawer.

Six years of my production work sits in gray folders, originals of reports I recovered from Cascade and dozens I did not. I photograph the index and move on. The operation does not need me to read my own handwriting again.

The next cabinet contains personnel files organized by subject code.

S-C-P

The folder is three inches thick.

I open it.

Subject S-C-P. Female. Acquired age six. Biological parents deceased following engineered vehicle incident. Civil records closed under fatality designation.

The words refuse to become meaning.

I do not remember a vehicle. I do not remember parents. My first memory is still a corridor and a woman telling me that crying wastes water.

The file continues where my memory does not.

Isolation response. D-40 trials from seven through eleven. Aptitude testing. Procedural memory above cohort threshold. At thirteen, transfer to Site Nine and accelerated pharmaceutical training. At eighteen, placement in V-series production.

Eleven years at Site Nine. Six in production.

Both numbers survive the truth of what happened before them.

A photograph is clipped inside the cover.

The girl appears six. Her hair has been cut blunt at her jaw. Her feet do not reach the floor. She looks into the camera with my eyes and no visible expectation that anyone behind it will help her.

Dissociative episodes within acceptable limits. Subject remains functional.

Functional.

Not frightened. Not drugged. Not six years old and alone.

Functional.

“Isla.”

Darius is beside me.

“I’m working.”

“I can see that.” His voice is quiet. “Photograph the file. Flag the appendix. You do not have to understand it in this room.”

My hands obey before the rest of me catches up.

Front page. Photograph. Acquisition report. Photograph. D-40 schedule. Photograph. Transfer order. Photograph.

The engineered-incident appendix is missing.