Page 76 of Dose

Jenna waits.

“For perhaps two seconds, I considered hitting him a second time. He was down. His weapon was under the cart. I knew another strike could make certain he never got up.” I look at my hands. “Then I put the weight down and checked his breathing.”

“Why?”

“The children were leaving. He was no longer stopping them.”

“Good.”

“It didn’t horrify me that I could have killed him.”

“That may come later. It may not.” Jenna’s gaze stays level. “The question isn’t whether you feel the approved emotion afterward. The question is whether you can still tell necessity from appetite while it is happening.”

I think about the satisfying weight of the steel in my hand. I think about choosing to set it down.

“And if I stop being able to tell?”

“Then someone needs permission to say so before you become too frightening to hear it.”

“Theon?”

One corner of her mouth lifts. “Theon will help you bury a body and explain the chemistry of decomposition while he digs. Choose someone less compromised as well.”

A laugh escapes me. “You?”

“Me. Raphael. Damon, if you enjoy being judged in silence.” She sips her tea. “Preferably all three.”

“You make this sound very organized.”

“We put violence on checklists because the alternative is letting it become personality.”

That sentence earns a place in the museum.

I find Theon in the lab twenty minutes later, recalibrating a pH meter that does not need it. The closure strips across his left shoulder are hidden beneath his shirt. His movements are careful enough that Raphael would probably approve and irritated enough that I know he is thinking about me.

“You’re angry,” I say.

“I’m checking the instrument.”

“You checked it yesterday.”

“Then the result should be reproducible.”

I lean against the bench. “Full planning access.”

“I heard.”

“Mission-specific field clearance.”

“I heard that too.”

“You stopped crushing the chair, which I interpreted as progress.”

He sets down the calibration solution and turns to me. “You want congratulations because your plan involves putting your signature in front of the woman trying to retrieve you?”

“An obsolete signature reconstructed from archived documents.”

“She will still think of you.”