Page 30 of Dose

I nod. “Understood.”

“I doubt you do.” For a moment, he looks tired. “But you will.”

He leaves. The others follow one at a time—Marcus with a final, knowing look; Ezra already adjusting his model; Dominic as quietly as he arrived. Raphael gives Isla a small nod before going. Darius leaves last, pausing in the doorway to blow her a kiss solely to watch my jaw tighten.

Then it is just the two of us and the hum of the equipment.

Isla exhales. “I passed.”

“You passed.”

She looks at my fingers, still curled toward my palms, then at my face. The corner of her mouth lifts.

“You grabbed his wrist.”

“I’m aware.”

“You didn’t think through it first.” She turns back to the bench and reaches for the flask. Her voice softens. “I’ve decided to find that interesting.”

I stand there with my pulse misbehaving and understand with clinical certainty that tonight’s shower will be very cold and entirely useless.

13

ISLA

The common level has a couch called Henrietta.

I named her within four minutes of being allowed up here. She is enormous, sagging, and upholstered in fabric that surrendered its dignity years ago. Giving her a name reduced the room to something I could begin to understand.

The room needed reducing. The open common level is almost the size of my entire sublevel at Site Nine. It contains a kitchen, a dining table with an unspoken seating hierarchy, a television the size of a garage door, three gaming consoles, a wall of vinyl records, and between five and nine of the most dangerous men on the planet, depending on the hour.

Nikolai’s permission came down two days ago like a weather report: common areas, monitored hours, Theon stays with her. Now I stand at the edge of this warm chaos every afternoon and catalog it, because cataloging keeps my feet under me.

Exhibit one: Darius and Damon making dinner.

Darius talks the entire time, delivering a monologue about a client who deserves everything coming to him. Damon says nothing. He passes Darius the knife half a second before Darius reaches for it and catches the pepper Darius knocks from the counter without looking. They move with the coordination of long practice.

“You’re staring,” Darius calls without turning.

“I’m observing. It’s in my profile.”

“Observe how he burns garlic,” Damon says.

Darius reacts as though he has been shot. The argument that follows is the happiest sound I have heard in a building since Beatrice’s hum.

Exhibit two: Lucien, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside Henrietta with his eyes half closed.

When Marcus comes in from the Archive at four with his jaw tight and his pupils mismatched after twelve hours of listening to the world, he sits near Lucien without speaking. Twenty minutes later, his shoulders have lowered.

I don’t know what Lucien does to a room. I know the room is better when he is in it.

Exhibit three: Ezra, who finishes dinner in fourteen minutes. On my first evening, he told me the seat I had chosen carried a seventy-percent probability of being contested and advised me to move one place to the left. He was correct.

He is also the only person here maintaining a numerical estimate of my trustworthiness. Last night, he passed me the salt before I asked. I have chosen to interpret this as improvement.

Exhibit four is the one I keep returning to.

Nikolai and Jenna sit at the far end of Henrietta. One of his hands rests on the curve of her belly while his other arm stretches along the back of the couch. Jenna is arguing loudly with Darius about a film. Nikolai watches the room instead of the television, but every few minutes his attention returns to her.