Page 59 of Dose

I know where this conversation goes before she takes another breath.

“No.”

She turns in my lap. “I haven’t asked anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was going to say that I reviewed Phoenix’s batch deviations for two years. I know the standard layout, maintenance-access logic, and pharmaceutical schedule. I can identify modifications that will not appear in the plans.”

“From here.”

“Some of them, yes.” She stands, and the loss of her warmth is immediate. “Not all.”

“You are not entering that facility.”

“You are not command.”

“Nikolai will reach the same conclusion.”

“Then Nikolai can hear my case before he reaches it.”

I rise carefully, keeping the left arm loose at my side. “Your face is on a program-wide retrieval alert. Korte knows your work. You have no field training, no extraction experience, and a conditioned freeze response that can still be triggered by ordinary choices.”

Her face closes by degrees.

I know the last point is cruel. I use it anyway.

“A panic attack over dessert does not tell you what I will do inside a facility,” she says.

“It tells me we do not know.”

“Then assess me. Train me. Build an actual model instead of treating fear as a veto.” Her voice stays low and controlled. “I am not asking to walk into Phoenix tomorrow. I am asking not to be excluded forever because you are frightened.”

“You have been free for twenty-five days.”

“And I spent eleven years learning the systems inside places like Phoenix.”

“As their prisoner, not an operative.”

“Exactly. Which means I see things your operatives don’t.”

I want to tell her that knowledge is not armor. I want to lock every external door and keep her in my laboratory until Korte is dead and the last Architect facility is ash.

That desire is real. It is also not an operational argument.

“You can help those children from the Archive,” I say.

“I may be able to cut the team’s exposure inside Phoenix. If I can, you do not get to dismiss that before Ezra measures it.”

“I want you alive.” The words break harder than I intend. “I want to come back to you. I want enough time to learn everything they did not take. I cannot have that if Korte gets your face on a Phoenix camera and sends every retrieval asset in the country through the door behind you.”

“Then be afraid.” Color rises in her face. “Your fear is not mine to obey.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

“No.” She steps closer. “I decide what risks I am willing to argue for. Nikolai decides what risks the team accepts. You do not decide both because you sleep with me.”

Every possessive instinct in me bares its teeth.