Page 122 of Dose

The blast door unseals.

Beyond it waits the empty elevator vestibule, not a handler, not a guard, not a punishment.

Nikolai’s voice comes through the panel. “Release test confirmed. Do you want the elevator?”

I could say yes.

“No. I’m staying.”

“Understood.”

I close the door myself.

The sound still reaches my teeth. My body still hates it. Choice does not make the metal lighter.

It makes the release mine.

We build the day’s workspace from things already here.

Marcus mirrors the live Archive feed onto three screens. I map the Montana deliveries against Vale’s infrastructure ledger. Structural steel arrives through two shell contractors. Medical gases are ordered in quantities too large for an empty storage property. The backup generators can support independent ventilation, server cooling and a small clinical wing.

It could hold children.

It could hold prisoners.

It could be built to make us assume both.

I mark all three possibilities.

Theon works beside me on the pharmacy data from Seattle, occasionally setting food or water within reach. When his palm presses against mine, it is contact rather than restraint.

At fourteen hundred, Dominic reports that both possible vehicles were false leads.

At sixteen ten, a hospital check returns nothing.

At eighteen thirty, the contact route produces a partial image of a woman whose height matches Marchant’s old file and whose face remains turned from the camera.

No Ezra.

No confirmation that the woman is Marchant.

The absence stays an absence. We do not turn it into a conclusion because conclusions feel better than uncertainty.

At twenty-two ten, I step away from the Montana model and cross to the blast door.

I press my palm to the reader again.

The lock disengages.

The panel offers an escort. I cancel it and leave the door open for five seconds, looking into the quiet vestibule. Then I close it and return to the screens.

The room is still underground.

The door is still heavy.

It opens when I ask.

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