The room dips a fraction. I lock my knees. “Because why break people slowly,” I scoff, “when you can speedrun it.”
Cam’s pen pauses, but he doesn’t look up. “Among other things.”
The kettle starts to scream, steam curling. Coffee hits the filter, and then the smell hits me. My mouth should be watering, but instead, my stomach lurches like it’s trying to crawl out. I swallow, the motion not helping. The scent wraps tighter. “Sit,” Cam says without looking, which is irritating as hell.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“You’re gray,” he says. “And you’re leaning.” I glance down. The floor isn’t exactly where I left it. The walls feel a little farther away.Damn him. I drop down into the chair opposite him before my body makes the choice for me. The S at my hip pulses, and something in my abdomen answers with a low, greasy twist.You’re fine. You’re always fine. You don’t get to not be fine.“You need water,” Cam says. “Food. And to sleep longer than twenty minutes. In any order, as long as the ignore-it part isn’t a part of the plan.”
“I’ll pencil it in,” I grumble, and another wave of nausea hits me.
Cam gives me a look that says he fully intends to harass me later. Sterling sets a mug in front of me—a cup of tea, steam curling up.Of course, he noticed the way coffee made my face do something it shouldn’t. “Start here,” he says.
“I’m not ninety,” I mutter, my fingers curling around the ceramic anyway. The heat is grounding me.
Cam’s already falling back into the pages, pen moving. Sterling hovers by the counter, pretending to be interested in the kettle he just emptied. Neither of them is looking right at me, but I can feel their lingering eyes.
My brain, the traitor that it is, starts running the math I didn’t ask for—timing, missions, stress, missed… things. The way every smell has been too loud lately or the way my body’s been slightly off-kilter for days, and I’ve blamed it on everything except the one possibility that I absolutely don’t have room for right now.No. Hard pass.I stand up too fast, causing the cabin to sway. The chair scrapes as I push away from the table. “I’m going to wash off the chapel,” I declare. “Dust, fake holiness, whatever that mold was. Don’t start the pop quizzes without me.”
Cam’s eyes flick up long enough to log my exit. “Don’t lock the door.” He clears his throat, “In case you fall.”
“Your concern is touching,” I say, backing toward the hall. “Truly, it is.” Sterling’s watching me more closely. He doesn’t say anything, but his weight shifts, like he’s ready to move if I don’t clear the doorway in one piece.
The bathroom light is too bright. My reflection in the mirror looks wrong—washed out, eyes too big, hair a mess even by my standards. There’s chapel dust on my neck, a smear of dirt along my jaw. I turn on the sink, splashing my face, and let it drip down my throat into the collar of my shirt. My pulse beats against the wet fabric. The rolling in my gut doesn’t care about temperature or logic or the way I tell it this is nothing.
It’s probably nothing; stress can mess with everything. Schedules slip, and bodies misfire. I know this. I’ve seen it in files, in other people. I am not special enough for the universe to pick this exact moment to get creative.
I brace my hands on the counter and stare at myself in the mirror. “Get over it,” I chastise myself. “You’re tired. You’re rattled. You’re not…” The word doesn’t come. I don't let it.
Instead, I reach for the drawer, where we keep all the things that aren’t officially sanctioned but always end up necessary—spare batteries, a burner phone with a cracked corner, and a number I haven’t dialed in months. My fingers close around cool plastic. Relief hits hard and ugly. I flip the phone open, thumb pressing the power button. The screen stutters to life. No network, obviously. We’re buried too deep. But the encrypted relay Sterling rigged to the nearest tower kicks on after a beat—a sliver of stolen signal.
The contact list is blessedly short. I scroll to the one that matters.DR. L.No full name. Just a number attached to a woman who once patched me up in a clinic two towns over and told me that if I ever needed discreet medical advice that didn’t end up in a government archive, I should call her and then forget she existed.
I should tell Sterling and loop Cam in, let him run his tests, attach his little electrodes, write it all down. That’s the healthy, team-approved option. Instead, I lock the bathroom door. The phone buzzes once it finds enough bars to make the call. I hit green. It rings twice, then clicks over so fast it feels like she was already waiting. “Kiera?” The voice questions, voice warm and sharp at the same time, like a blanket with teeth. “You do remember I exist.”
“Hey, Doc.” I sit on the closed toilet before my knees buckle under the weight. “Sorry to ruin your night. I needed a brain that doesn’t report to anyone I work for.”
There’s a rustle on the other end. “You hurt?” she asks—no small talk.
“Define hurt,” I say. “Physically, emotionally, spiritually, existentially…”
“Kiera.” Dr. L’s tone is sharp.Someone’s not in the mood for jokes.
I scrub a hand over my face. “Not a new hurt,” I say. “Just… weird.”
“Weird how?” she asks. “ I need symptoms, not your fucking poetry.”
“Nausea,” I say. “On and off the last few days. Smells are getting to me. Coffee tried to murder me just now. Dizzy sometimes. Tired, but that’s not exactly new.”
“Fever? Any sharp pain anywhere?”
“No fever,” I say. “Achy everywhere. Nothing that feels like I’m about to explode internally.”
“Any chance you picked up bad water, food poisoning, or a virus?” she presses.
“Been living on a steady diet of stress and questionable coffee,” I say. “So possibly. But nothing obvious.”
Dr. L huffs a tiny laugh. “You said smells are off. Everything, or just some?”