Page 78 of Dose

“Then it is my most reliable commitment.”

I rise onto my toes and kiss him once.

“You helped me remember that choosing doesn’t always end in punishment,” I say. “You cannot be surprised that I keep choosing.”

“I am not surprised.” His forehead rests against mine. “I am terrified.”

“Those can coexist.”

“Apparently.”

We stand between the bench and the fume hood, his hand warm at my neck and the recalibrated pH meter displaying the same result it gave him yesterday.

The western hub is at least two weeks away. Korte may be there. My decoy may never leave Ezra’s model. None of us knows enough yet to decide what my role will be.

For once, uncertainty does not feel like failure.

That night, Theon sleeps with his right arm around me and his injured side turned away. I remain awake, thinking about the weight in my hand and the moment after.

The program made me capable of violence. Phoenix did not reveal a new person hidden underneath. It gave me a choice without a handler standing behind it.

I chose the first strike because an armed man had isolated me and drawn his pistol while sixty-three children were still inside.

I chose not to make the second.

Both choices belong to me. So do their consequences.

The museum of tiny freedoms is still there. The rainbow. The seventh stair. Beatrice. A lemon dessert selected in terror and eaten anyway. It does not need to burn down to make room for larger things.

Tonight I add a one-kilogram calibration weight.

Not because I used it.

Because I put it down.

Beyond our room, Ezra and Marcus are testing branches of a plan that may never be used. Three recovery sites are learning the needs of sixty-three children. Somewhere in the western United States, a synthesis hub continues sending compounds to places we have not yet reached.

At least two weeks until an access attempt. Longer if the evidence demands it.

I close my eyes beside the man who calls me his and has learned that my choices remain mine.

Tomorrow, I help build the decoy.

24

THEON

The isolation-suite door seals behind us with a hiss I feel in my molars.

I stand with one hand around Isla’s for several seconds too long, listening to the pressure equalize.

“Theon.”

“I know.”

“My fingers went white four minutes ago.”

I look down. She is right. I release her immediately and watch the color return.