Page 134 of Dose

“C-11 burst came in during extraction,” he says. “Correct key. Language pattern matches Ezra. Duress is still possible.”

Nikolai joins us. “Read it.”

Marcus does.

“Marchant moved. Gamma access remains open. First ledger packet attached. Do not trace this relay. Next burst in six hours.”

“Relay terminates in Ohio. It tells us nothing about where Ezra sent it.”

The attached packet contains seventeen shell accounts, five research partners and current payments to two domestic transport companies. Enough to prove Ezra has entered part of Marchant’s financial network. Not enough to prove he controls it—or that she is not letting him see exactly what she wants him to see.

“Send return protocol,” Nikolai says. “Six hours is a check-in window, not permission to remain exposed. Forward the packet to Dominic. Recovery continues.”

Marcus transmits the response.

No answer comes.

Behind us, the first medical vehicle pulls away with four of the children inside. Korte is dead. Her Montana site is ours. Eleven children are leaving it alive.

Ezra is still somewhere we cannot reach.

Five hours and fifty-nine minutes remain until he promised to speak again.

35

THEON

The microcentrifuge reaches fourteen thousand times gravity and holds there. I watch the countdown fall through its final twenty seconds while Isla argues with one of Ezra’s old routing models on the tablet beside my elbow.

The tubes contain filtrate from a V-series stabilizer recovered in Idaho last week. Centrifugation will separate the precipitate. It will not tell me whether the remaining compound is stable; that requires chromatography and another twelve hours of thermal testing.

Six months with Isla has not made me less precise. It has given me someone who notices when I am pretending precision can control everything else.

“The western hub’s supplier chain still shows a ghost node,” she says. “Ezra flagged it before he left and never closed the loop.”

“Because Marchant gave him larger ones.”

“Or because she wants us to think the smaller ones are dead.” Isla enlarges a set of freight records. “This is the third closed route this month with one transaction surviving after the parent company disappeared.”

“Send it to Marcus.”

“Already did.”

The centrifuge slows. I wait for the rotor to stop completely before opening the lid.

The six-hour message Ezra promised after Montana arrived eleven minutes late. Its ledger packet was genuine. The northern Indiana site was empty by the time Dominic entered it, and the only useful print belonged to a freight clerk who had been dead for two years.

Ezra did not come home.

He kept transmitting.

At first, every six hours. Then every twelve. Now he checks in twice a week through one-time relays, never long enough for Dominic to reach him. Nikolai stopped calling the operation authorized after the first week. Dominic still calls it recovery. Ezra calls it work.

Marchant remains missing.

The information Ezra sends has nevertheless held up. It helped investigators and our recovery network close seventeen domestic sites in six months. Four hundred and twelve children have left Project Architect custody. We did not personally breach every door, and no building needed to burn. We found the routes, protected the medication records and put evidence where people with warrants could use it.

Every active facility we have identified remains in the United States. Foreign money still enters the accounts. Foreign manufacturers still sell precursors through intermediaries. None of that has required us to turn this into a war conducted across continents.