Page 28 of Dose

I brace one hand against the tile and take my cock in the other, jaw tight, cold water striking the back of my neck. It doesn’t take long. It never does anymore, which is humiliating in its own right. Isla at the bench, her ponytail sliding loose. Isla’s pulse jumping beneath my fingers when I hold her wrist too long. Isla looking at me as though she knows exactly what I am trying not to feel.

I finish with my forehead against the tile and her name caught behind my teeth.

“You’re compromised, Kovač,” I tell the wall.

The wall offers no argument.

When I come out, dressed, my hair dripping onto my collar, she is already at the bench with tea she made herself. She has memorized where everything lives. Of course she has.

She looks up. “Someone is coming today.”

“How do you know?”

“You reorganized the glassware twice last night.” She takes a sip. “Also, someone has been outside the door for ninety seconds without knocking.”

The door opens without a knock. Marcus normally knocks. Today, he doesn’t.

He fills the doorway, all restless muscle and focused attention. His pupils are uneven, which means he has been pushing his hearing. His eyes fix on Isla. He inhales.

“Cortisol elevated. Heart rate seventy-one. Respiration steady.” He tilts his head, listening. My hands curl at my sides. “She showered with your soap.”

“There’s one soap,” Isla says. “The alternative was solvent.”

“She isn’t lying about the soap.” Marcus starts to circle her.

I step between them before he completes the arc.

His mouth twitches. “Easy, brother. I’m reading, not touching.”

“Stay by the door.”

“Her heart rate hit eighty-two when I entered. Then she checked the exits and your position. It returned to seventy-one once she confirmed you were between us.”

“I’m aware I’m being evaluated,” Isla says. “I’d rather you do it thoroughly. Incomplete threat assessments get people killed.”

Marcus gives a short, genuine laugh. “Her pulse didn’t move when she said killed.”

Isla shrugs. “The word stopped meaning much around age nine.”

Nobody asks why. In this building, nine is young enough to be an answer.

Ezra arrives eleven minutes later with a tablet. He barely looks at Isla before fitting her into whatever model he has been refining since I carried her out of Ashford.

“Isla Summer,” he says. “On day four of the audit, you flagged lot seventeen of the D-40 as your reference standard. Why that lot?”

“Most uniform excipient concentration. Maximum deviation of point-three percent across the sampled units.”

“The batch certificate says point-four.”

“The certificate is wrong. Korte’s previous auditor used the balance in bay two after the June power fault. Its calibration drifts with humidity. I reran the samples on the bay one balance and got point-three.” She sets down her tea. “Check the maintenance dates against the humidity records. They explain the discrepancy.”

Ezra’s thumb moves across the screen, then stops. One eyebrow shifts. From him, it is practically applause.

“Kessler’s file says she recruited you at six,” he says. “But your synthesis style contains self-taught elements. Improvised heat management. Program training discourages improvisation.”

“Program chemists who don’t improvise die when equipment fails and handlers refuse to replace it.” Her voice remains level. “Improvising kept the work running. Naming the equipment kept me sane. Both helped me survive.”

“The probability that Project Architect engineered her capture to place her here was eleven percent when you brought her home,” Ezra says to me, as though she isn’t standing beside us.