Chapter 25
Selina
I hunched over the laboratory desk, fingers pressing into my temples. Files smeared into one another, clinical language swimming before exhausted eyes. Subject experienced neural cascade failure. Operative demonstrated resistance to reconditioning. Words that meant nothing and everything.
My hand reached for the pen. Stopped. Reached again.
The tremor wouldn’t quit. Twelve hours since they dragged me from that parking garage. Half a day since Specter’s gaze went vacant, since his hand hung limp in mine. Since Dresner carved him out and left a shell.
I picked up the pen. Too heavy for something so small. My grip faltered and it rolled away.
“Subject demonstrates emotional attachment override.” The line scraped out of me. My voice cracked on the last word. The irony landed hard. That was us—an override, a glitch in their perfect system. Now he was just another vessel waiting for orders.
The pen felt cold between my fingers when I lifted it again. All I had to do was write. Analyze. Hand Dresner what he wanted. Maybe then I could bargain, find a way back from what they had done. If there was anything left to reach.
One note. One observation about their protocols, and maybe…
“I can’t do this.”
Behind me, Blackout shifted, the slightest redistribution of weight after hours of statuesque stillness. It sounded like a gunshot.
I turned in my chair. His green eyes tracked to mine, reading me like data.
“The Director expects progress.” His tone held no inflection, no threat. Just fact.
“The Director can burn in hell.” The words came out raw, scraped thin by crying I didn’t remember.
Something flickered across his face. Not emotion, exactly—recognition of defiance, maybe. Then nothing.
I stood too fast. The room tilted, dark flecks swarming at the edges of my vision.
The laboratory door slid open with a soft hiss. I straightened, bracing for whatever new tactic Dresner had planned. Nothing prepared me for who stepped in.
Dresner entered first, immaculate in a three-piece suit. The figure behind him froze my blood.
Specter.
Or what wore his face. The hair cut close, a clean shave. Tactical gear matching Blackout’s—black, unmarked, mercilessly uniform. His eyes hollowed me out. Gray once warm with humor, heat, fury—now flat as winter sky.
I gripped the edge of the desk to keep from swaying.
“Good morning, Dr. Crawford.” Dresner adjusted his cufflinks, then gestured to the two operatives flanking him. “I thought you might appreciate seeing the results of last night’s demonstration.”
I couldn’t look away from Specter, searching for a curl of the man I knew. Perfect stillness, posture a mirror of Blackout’s.
“I have business that requires my attention elsewhere today.” He smoothed a nonexistent crease. “Blackout and our newly improved Specter will ensure your productivity in my absence.”
At the threshold, he paused. “I expect significant progress by my return, Doctor. The consequences of further defiance… Well, you know now what I’m capable of.”
The door sealed behind him, quiet as a breath, leaving me alone with Dresner’s twin monuments to obedience.
I forced my attention to the files. The ink blurred, meaningless. My gaze drifted back. Specter hadn’t moved since stepping in, standing at parade rest. Eyes fixed above my head.
“Specter?” His name lodged in my throat, thin and ragged.
No blink.
I pushed up on unsteady legs and took a step. “Specter, it’s me.”
His gaze didn’t track. No flicker of awareness. Nothing.
Clinical thought collided with raw need:
Pupillary response within normal range. Breathing regulated. No micro-expressions.
No. Stop. This isn’t a subject. It’s Specter. The man who kissed me and took his time about it. Who saved children. Who fought his conditioning.
I moved in close, near enough to touch. My hand hovered beside his face, not quite committing. “Can you hear me at all? Wolfe?”
Not even a quiver at his real name. The name that once sent him into seizures meant nothing now.
“They said the Reset Protocol was experimental.” The words came out low, more confession than question. “Neurological damage can’t be permanent. There has to be a way to undo this.”
I pivoted to the desk, desperation focusing me for the first time all day. The files had to hold something—recovery protocols, reversal pathways, anything. Paper rattled under my hands as I flipped, unable to land on a single page.
“Come on.” My breath snagged. “There has to be something.”
The first warning signs crept in quietly: tightness under my sternum, fingers refusing precision. Clinical recognition arrived a beat too late—panic building. Even knowing what was happening didn’t stop it.
Pressure hammered in my chest. I pressed my palm to my breastbone, trying to regulate each inhale.
In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.
I couldn’t finish the first cycle before lungs demanded more.
The white walls seemed to contract. Had they always been this close? I shoved back from the desk. The chair’s scrape was loud against the floor. Air. I needed air.
I staggered to the window, feet uncooperative. My fingers clawed at reinforced glass that didn’t give. I knew it wouldn’t open; I’d tried every day this week. Reason fled, drowned by the animal need to be anywhere else.
“I can’t…” I gulped shallow breaths that went nowhere. “I can’t breathe.”
Behind me, Blackout shifted again, almost imperceptible. “Return to your assignment.”
I set my forehead against cool glass, trying to ground. “Water.” The word scraped out. “I need water.”
Neither of them moved.
I turned, leaning on the pane. Specter and Blackout stood in matching stances, watching with the same vacancy. Twins in programming, if not blood.
“Please.” I hated how the word sounded coming from me. “Just water.”
Blackout crossed to the desk where a pitcher waited. He poured and set the glass down, leaving it there. Message received: return to work.
I pushed off the window and forced myself toward the desk. My legs felt detached, lungs failing to catch a full breath. The room tilted sideways, then righted itself.
I reached. Water sloshed as my hand trembled. The glass might as well have weighed fifty pounds. Instead of lifting it, I sank to my knees beside the desk, one hand splayed on the floor to stop the spin.
The spiral tightened, chest cinching until each inhale became a fight. Dark motes freckled my periphery. Hyperventilating, and no control.
“I know you’re still in there somewhere.” The strain in my voice flagged my lie. “Conditioning can’t erase everything. I’ve studied this. I know—”
A sob cut the words in half. Professional detachment broke, clean and merciless. I curled in, arms wrapped around myself.
“You promised.” The sound was almost nothing. “You said you’d come back to me.”
Blackout stepped forward and stood over me. “Your distress is disrupting productivity.”
A laugh ripped out, wrong and sharp. “My distress? You hollowed out a man, turned him into a puppet, and you’re worried about my productivity?”
I forced myself upright, swaying. Panic chewed through me, breath stuttering, pulse too fast to count. Beneath it, something caught fire—reckless and bright.
I made for Specter and stopped in front of him.
“Look at me.” My voice steadied by force. “Really look at me.”
Nothing. Gray eyes stared through me, as if I were another wall.
“Your name is Wolfe Lennox.” I held his gaze as if I could drag memory back by will alone. “You were a contract killer before Oblivion found you. You saved children at St. Elisabeth’s Orphanage. You broke your programming because something in you refused to bend.”
Not even a tremor.
“You held me on that train.” My tone dropped. “You told me I made you feel human.”
I lifted my hand again, fingers hovering near his cheek. The tremor worsened. “Please. Remember something. Anything.”
My chest seized, ribs straining. The room spun. I gulped at air that didn’t help and stumbled back until the glass caught me.
I faced the door where Blackout waited. “Bathroom.” The single word cost more than it should have.
He stepped aside without argument. I lurched into the corridor on instinct, mind split between the clinician naming each symptom and the woman who couldn’t stand another second of this.
Two sets of footsteps followed—Blackout and Specter, silent as shadows.
I didn’t turn. I couldn’t look at Specter’s emptiness again.
Each breath thinned, oxygen refusing to satisfy.
Tears blurred the pristine hall. I dragged my fingertips along the wall for balance.
Thoughts fractured like glass: Focus. Training.
Count your steps. Five things you can see.
Four you can touch. Three… All I saw were gray, vacant eyes; all I heard were parking-garage screams; all I felt was the crush of failing him.
I veered away from the bathroom without planning, angling toward my room.
Their synchronized tread adjusted behind me, a quiet escort I couldn’t shake.
The corridor stretched too long, the ceiling dropping with every footfall.
Escape was a fantasy. They wouldn’t let me go.
The elevator appeared, a metal box I refused to share with them.
Panic surged harder. I cut for the stairwell and shoved the heavy door with a shoulder that didn’t feel like mine.
Just get to your room. Just breathe. Hold it together.
The mantra snapped as the darkness at the edges thickened.
My foot hunted for the first step and found air.
For a suspended heartbeat, I floated—caught in the instant before impact. The world slowed. The clinical part of me clicked on with brutal clarity.
You’re falling. Reach for the railing.
The command was clean and simple. My limbs refused. My hands hung uselessly at my sides instead of grabbing hold.
Gravity claimed me. As I tipped forward into nothing, one last coherent thought surfaced—not about concrete or bruises or damage.
Specter.
Not the blank operative behind me. Him.
The crooked half-smile on the train when morning light found him. His fingers finding mine in sleep, twining as if I might drift away. My name on his tongue—not Dr. Crawford, not a title—Selina, spoken like it mattered.
Then the dark rose up fast and final, and I let it take me. Unconsciousness slid in, a tide that washed away the unbearable fact of him missing from his own body.