Page 34 of Dose

They are not getting her back. I do not debate it. The certainty was already there, waiting for the question.

I wake her by switching on the kettle. She wakes to its click like an alarm she chose. By the time I cross the room, she is sitting up and assessing my face.

“Something happened.”

“Council meeting. You’re coming.”

“I’m not cleared for council meetings.”

“I’ll answer for it. The meeting is about you.”

The Chamber holds all nine brothers. Isla makes ten. A holographic document tree fills the center of the room: transfer orders, funding authorizations, and a personnel alert bearing Isla’s Site Nine identification photograph. She is younger in it, her hair scraped back and her expression empty.

Marcus stands beside the projection, mask off, one pupil blown wider than the other after a night spent monitoring intercepted channels.

“They pieced Ashford together in nine days,” he says. “Faster than we modeled. A guard survived with enough memory intact to describe the masks. They matched those descriptions to footage from our previous operations, then inventoried everything removed from the site.” His eyes flick to Isla at my shoulder. “A case of pharmaceutical samples. The protocol archive and dosing histories. Forty-one subjects. One specialist.”

“The bounty,” Nikolai says.

“Significant. Retrieval preferred. But the operative language is—” Marcus hesitates.

“Say it,” Isla tells him. “I’ve read my own file before. It’s never flattering.”

“Confirmation of death acceptable. Korte signed the requisition. She has pulled two field teams from other assignments and routed them through Cleveland. She isn’t delegating the search.”

“Of course she isn’t.” Isla’s voice stays level, although I am close enough to see the tension in her jaw. “I audited her chemical operation. I know the stockpile, the synthesis routes, the supplier chain, and the security architecture. Alive and outside the program, I’m a major exposure.” A beat. “She always did hate loose glassware.”

“Probability they trace her here,” Nikolai says to Ezra.

“To this facility, under four percent. To Chicago, thirty-one and climbing.” Ezra does not look up from his tablet. “They’ll model her as captured, work backward from our known operational signatures, and start pulling threads in every city we’ve touched. Give them three weeks and thirty-one becomes fifty.”

“Then they don’t get three weeks.” Nikolai stands, and every conversation stops. “Full defensive posture. Marcus, map their search teams before they finish assembling. Ezra, trace the bounty funding. Whoever pays for the retrieval may lead us up the chain. Dominic, you’re inside their Cleveland logistics by Thursday. Damon, Darius, counter-surveillance on every approach to this building. Lucien, Raphael, walk every safe route again. No one moves around Chicago alone. No one deviates from the defensive protocol without clearance.”

Around the table, my brothers shift from family into what the program trained them to be. I watch Isla see it happen. Darius’s warmth drains into focus. Damon begins listing sight lines from memory. Raphael, who handed her lemon dessert two nights ago and told her to eat whatever she wanted, quietly recites the equipment he will carry on the route checks. It is not a short list.

Her hand finds my sleeve. Not only fear. Recognition.

“They’re not improvising,” she says under her breath. “This is a protocol they’ve run before.”

“Seventeen times since we escaped. Now we’re better at it than the hunters.”

“You’re what the program was for.” She speaks slowly, testing the conclusion. “This is what they were trying to build. A room like this.”

“No.” Ezra answers without lifting his eyes. “They wanted weapons that point where they’re aimed. We aim ourselves. That distinction is the entire war.”

Nikolai looks at me last.

“Theon. She goes below until the search pattern resolves. If a retrieval team gets within a hundred miles of Chicago, I want her behind the deepest set of doors we own.”

“Agreed.”

“That was not a request.” Something in his expression softens, which is more alarming than anger. “You’ll stay below with her. You’re compromised past the point of usefulness on the perimeter, and I would rather have you guarding the person you’d abandon your post for.”

Darius makes a sound suspiciously like a swallowed laugh. Damon elbows him without looking.

“Understood,” I say.

“I doubt it,” Nikolai says. “But you will.”