Chapter 7 #2
“No needles,” Annie agreed. “I’ll recommend oral rehydration instead of an IV. Can you drink if I give you something?”
Morgan nodded.
The cleaning hurt. Annie was gentle—impossibly gentle, her hands steady and soft—but the antiseptic burned in the open wounds, and Morgan had to bite down on her lip to keep from crying out.
“All done.” Annie secured the last bandage and sat back. “Any other wounds besides your arms and your nose? That’s swollen too. You’ll have a black eye tomorrow.”
“He slammed my head against the desk.”
Annie probed at her nose gently. “Not broken. We’ll get some cold compresses to reduce swelling, and I’ll give you something for pain.”
“Okay.”
“But Morgan, I need to ask you something. This is a hard question, but I need you to be honest, okay? Were you sexually assaulted in any way?”
“No.” The word came out flat. “They wanted my brain, not my body. Just the cuts and bruises.”
And the box. That hadn’t done any physical damage, but it wasn’t something she was sure she’d ever get over.
Annie stepped back and smiled. “Dehydration, exhaustion, multiple lacerations with early-stage infection. Nothing that won’t heal with time and care.” She paused. “Physically, anyway.”
Morgan didn’t respond. They both knew other damage wouldn’t show up on any examination.
“I want you to drink this.” Annie produced a bottle of something that looked like colored water. “Electrolytes. Sip it slowly over the next few hours. And I want you to try to eat something—crackers, soup, anything gentle. Your stomach won’t tolerate much right now.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll check on you tomorrow.” Annie began packing her bag. “Lincoln has my number if anything changes before then. Is it okay if I share your medical information with him? As it pertains to your injuries.”
Lincoln. Not Binary. Lincoln.
She still couldn’t force herself to think of him as that name yet.
“Yes, that’s fine.”
Annie walked over and opened the door. Sure enough, Binary was still right where he’d said he’d be.
“We’re finished,” Annie said. “She needs rest more than anything.”
“I’ll show you to your room.” He walked over to her. “Can you walk, or should I—”
“I can try.”
She couldn’t.
Her legs buckled on the second step, and he caught her before she hit the floor. He didn’t comment on the failure. Just lifted her again, arms steady, and carried her up a flight of stairs she barely registered.
The guest room was at the end of a hallway. He pushed the door open with his shoulder and carried her inside. It was a normal room: a bed, a window, a door.
Her eyes stayed on the door.
“The bathroom is through there.” He gestured to another door. “Towels in the cabinet if you want to shower. I don’t really have any female clothes, but I can get something appropriate tomorrow.”
Morgan didn’t respond. She was still looking at the door.
“Mercury?”
Evidently, he wasn’t ready to use her real name yet either.
She crossed the room on legs that wobbled but held. Wrapped her fingers around the handle. Pulled it toward her, pushed it away, pulled it toward her again.
It opened. Both directions.
“The door isn’t locked.” His voice had that blunt quality she remembered from their messages—stating facts without softening them, without anticipating how they might land.
“You can leave whenever you want. The house is alarmed for outside intrusion, not inside movement. If you want to walk around at three in the morning, nothing will stop you.”
Morgan’s hand was still on the handle. She opened the door again. Closed it. Opened it.
“I can install a lock on the inside,” he continued. “If that would make you feel safer. One that only you can control.”
Her throat tightened. She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just nodded.
“I’ll do it tomorrow.” He shifted his weight, and she caught something uncertain in the movement—awkwardness, maybe, or discomfort. “You should rest. The electrolyte solution Annie wants you to drink is on the nightstand. Annie left crackers too.”
He was already moving toward the door when she found her voice.
“Binary.”
He stopped.
“Thank you.” The words felt inadequate. Stupid. How did you thank someone for pulling you out of hell? “For coming. For—” She gestured vaguely at the room, at the door she could open, at all of it.
“You sent coordinates. I received them.” He paused. “I’m glad I saw it in time.”
“Me too,” she whispered. There was so much more she knew she should say, but she was just so tired.
“Get some sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow, we can talk about what happens next.”
Then he was gone.
Morgan stood in the middle of the guest room and listened to his footsteps fade down the hallway. The house settled around her—small sounds, mechanical sounds, the hum of electronics she couldn’t identify. Everything hummed here. Everything was alive with systems and sensors and surveillance.
She walked to the bed. She touched the blankets—soft, impossibly soft—and thought about climbing beneath them. Surrounding herself with warmth, blocking out the world.
She couldn’t do it.
Too much like the box. Too enclosed. Too confined.
Instead, she lay down on top of the covers, fully clothed, and stared at the ceiling. Her arms throbbed beneath their fresh bandages. Her stomach ached with emptiness she was too tired to address. Her mind—
Her mind wouldn’t stop.
Coordinates. 47.6062, -122.3321. David Thornton. Rebecca Vance. KILO-SEVEN-TANGO. November 3rd. All of it rattling around in her skull, data without meaning, puzzle pieces without a picture. She’d been Randall’s filing cabinet. His human hard drive. She’d escaped, but the data had come with her.
His face surfaced next. That cold, professional smile. The way he’d looked at her arms before the first cut, like he was planning a garden. These will scar, Miss Reece.
The box. Metal walls pressing in.
She curled onto her side and wrapped her arms around herself. The bandages pulled against her skin. The silence pressed in. Her body kept waiting for the latch to open, for the work to start again, for the rules to reassert themselves.
But there was no latch here. Just a door she could open whenever she wanted and a man whose name she’d learned was Lincoln and a kind of freedom that felt both like safety and like falling.
She closed her eyes and let herself fall.
Tomorrow, she would have to figure out how to land.