Page 95 of Dose

Her finger stops at the implementation note.

“Kessler brought me cake when it held.”

“Isla—”

“How many facilities?”

She opens another report, then another.

“We’re copying the whole directory,” I say.

“I need the adoption records.”

Her hands move across the keyboard. Four facilities used the side-chain modification. Seven used her faster sourcing method. Nine adopted the storage protocol. Several reports contain population snapshots, but not one contains a complete roster. Sites close, subjects move, codes change. The same child may appear under more than one facility and none at all in another year’s records.

“I made it better,” she says. “That was my job. I made all of it cheaper and faster and more stable.”

“They forced you into that laboratory.”

“They forced me to start.” Her voice drops. “Later, I understood. I kept solving the problems because solving them made Kessler proud of me, and when she was proud, I was safe. That was still a choice.”

“A choice made inside captivity.”

“A choice that hurt people.”

I cannot deny that without insulting her.

Dominic checks the clock. “Seven minutes.”

I put my hand against Isla’s back. Her muscles are rigid beneath the blazer.

“We cannot count them here,” I say. “The records overlap. If you rush it, you’ll count the same children twice and miss others entirely.”

“I need to know.”

“I know. We take everything first. Then we count what can be counted.”

She stares at the reports. The need in her face is terrible to watch because I understand it. A number would turn the thing into a boundary. It would tell her exactly where her guilt begins and ends.

But the data will not give her that kindness.

After two breaths, she steps away from the terminal.

“Full directory,” she tells Dominic. “Include the implementation returns and all subject-code tables. Preserve the metadata.”

“Already moving.”

Her field voice has returned. It is thinner now, but it holds.

“Go back,” I tell her. “I’ll finish here.”

She looks once more at her name on the screen, then returns to the storage room before Corbin can find her missing.

Dominic flags another folder before closing the partition.

NEXT-GENERATION PROTOCOLS

The directory has heavier encryption than the rest of the archive. He reaches only a preview cache, enough to expose one subfolder.