Chapter 18 - Seraphina
Seraphina
Ididn’t go home, not at first. Instead, I took the long way up the canyon, then doubled back, hoping the cold and the empty night might cauterize something inside me.
I spent an hour idling at the overlook above the Los Alamos grid, headlights off, engine ticking as it cooled.
The town was lit up like a circuit board, every residential cell glowing and darkening in the rhythm of other people’s lives.
The world had already gone to sleep; I envied it.
I envied anything with a shutoff switch.
At dawn, I went to the Lab.
The parking lot was half-empty, as if the place anticipated a die-off.
I wore my badge on the outside of my coat, not because I wanted to, but because security had doubled every checkpoint since the “incident.” Cameras scanned the approach, slow and predatory.
The first guard was new: pale, military haircut, hands too soft to look real.
He checked my badge, checked my face, ran a wand over my wrist, then stepped aside with a practiced neutrality.
Inside, everything was cold—the tile, the air, the gaze of every scientist who passed me in the corridor.
I could feel the ripple effect—every conversation died as I walked past, every office door shut a little tighter.
Dev met me at the elevator, face blanched, eyes full of questions he didn’t want answered.
“You okay?” he asked.
I lied, nodding, and pressed the button for Sublevel G.
We rode down in silence. He peeled off at the server farm, muttering something about failed backups, and I continued to my office.
The air in the sub-basement was always damp, always two degrees below comfort.
My hands shook as I swiped in. Inside, the Adaptive Systems lab was dead silent except for the hum of the racks.
The Blue Spirit interface blinked at me from three different screens, each one demanding input I no longer had the will to give.
I tried to work. I tried to lose myself in the syntax and logic of the project, but nothing held. Every sound from the hallway—every closing door, every shuffle of shoes—sent a jolt through me. It was only a matter of time.
At 9:12 a.m., they came.
They arrived together, two men in government blue, suits tailored to look nondescript and failing.
The taller one, Agent Martinez, had the slow walk of an ex-athlete, shoulders hunched like he was ducking through a world that wouldn’t stop shrinking.
The other, Keller, was short, female, hair shaved to a bureaucratic stubble, face scrubbed of all warmth. She took the lead.
“Dr. Dalton?” Keller said, as if the question were a warning.
I nodded, kept my eyes level.
“We need a moment of your time. Preferably somewhere private.”
I locked my station, the motion practiced, and followed them through the corridor.
They said nothing, just moved in a wedge formation, her in front, him trailing.
Cameras watched us all the way to the security conference room: windowless, acoustically padded, air so still it felt artificial. There was a table. No chairs.
Keller gestured for me to stand, then leaned her hip against the metal.
“You know why we’re here,” she said.
I didn’t answer. In science, the first response is always to wait for more data.
Martinez closed the door, then posted himself beside it, arms folded in a way that made his wrists look thicker than my ankles.
Keller laid a manila folder on the table. She didn’t open it.
“There’s been an escalation,” she said. “Not just the break-in at your residence, but the incident at the ranger station. You were present for both.”
I nodded.
“We have witnesses,” she continued. “We have evidence. But what we don’t have is clarity.” She paused, as if waiting for the word to sink in, then slid the folder toward me. “You can open it, if you like.”
I did. Inside were stills. They were blurry, overexposed, every image stamped with a time and date.
The first showed my Honda in the liquor store parking lot, with a shattered window.
The next showed me in the ranger station, arms up, eyes wild.
There were shots of the men who’d taken me, bodies slumped, faces blotted out with careful marker.
Then there was Nitro. Clear as daylight, standing in the doorway with a rifle, expression unreadable, eyes fixed on something past the camera.
I closed the folder.
“You understand the gravity of what’s happening here,” Keller said. It wasn’t a question.
“I do,” I said, voice even.
“We need your help,” said Martinez from the wall, his voice lower than I expected. “We need you to tell us exactly what happened in that cabin.”
I shrugged. “I was kidnapped. They tried to force me to unlock my project code. The Russians, or whatever flavor they were. Nitro—Seager—he got me out.”
Keller’s mouth twisted, an almost-smile. “That’s not the version we have.”
“Then you have the wrong version.”
Silence. A stand-off, old as time. I felt the sweat cooling under my collar.
Martinez moved forward. He was less menacing at a distance, but only just. “Dr. Dalton, we’re not here to hurt you. We know about your work, about the importance of Blue Spirit. We just want to make sure you’re protected. But that only happens if you cooperate.”
I watched him, measured. “You want me to testify.”
Keller nodded. “Your testimony could put these criminals away for good.” She didn’t blink. “You’d be doing the country a service.”
I almost laughed. “Is that how you see it? A service?”
She shrugged. “You’re a patriot, Dr. Dalton. You work at Los Alamos. That means something.”
A chill ran through me, colder than the sublevel air.
“And if I don’t?”
Martinez leaned in, voice almost tender. “It gets complicated. For you, and for anyone you care about.”
The threat was soft, but it had weight.
Keller placed both hands flat on the table. “You’re in a unique position. You survived. Most don’t. All we want is the truth. The real truth, not some patched-over version.”
I nodded, the motion mechanical. “You’ll have it. Tomorrow.”
She seemed surprised. “You need time to remember?”
“I need time to process,” I said, and it was true.
Keller’s gaze narrowed. “We’ll be back at 0900. Don’t leave the facility.”
I stood, waited for them to clear the way. They watched me leave, as if I were a dangerous animal.
The walk back to my lab was a parade of shame. I felt every eye on me, every whisper. Dev hovered outside my door, trying and failing to look casual.
“You okay?” he asked again.
I almost said no. But I nodded, pushed past him, and locked the door behind me.
Inside, the lab was dead, the screens blank, the hum of the server racks now a dirge. I sat at my terminal, stared at the login screen, and let my mind go blank.
The government had made it clear. Tomorrow, I was supposed to hand over the only man who had ever tried to save me.
The office after dark was a ghost town. The cubicles were stripped to bone, vending machines humming like insects, the motion sensors on a hair trigger, flicking the overheads alive if you so much as coughed.
I lingered, made a show of work until the last wave of badge-outs, then waited fifteen minutes more.
I watched the clock on my monitor, the numbers rolling over with a pointless precision. 7:00, 7:01, 7:02.
When I was sure the floor was empty, I turned off the desktop and slid open my bottom drawer. The watch was still there, wrapped in a cracked antistatic bag. I pulled it out with both hands, the tremor barely noticeable unless you were looking for it.
It had been dead for days. I’d left it off to keep its location from pinging any of the facility’s silent alarms. When I pressed the button, it vibrated weakly, the screen booting to the last recorded time: 13:42, the exact minute I’d been hauled into the van behind the liquor store.
I slipped it onto my wrist, feeling the weight of it settle on the bone.
The audio logs were buried—encrypted and invisible to any casual query. But I’d written the damn firmware myself; I knew the backdoor. I tapped through the menus with practiced speed. File directory. Hidden. Voice logs.
There were four.
The first was a mess of panic, the microphone catching only static and the thump of my own pulse as I was thrown onto the metal floor of the van.
The next was worse: rough hands, someone muttering in Russian, the crack of a pistol whip, the sound of my own voice trying to remember the right words for “please” and “stop.” I listened, face blank, because the pain was old now, just another data point.
The third file was the one I wanted. It started with the sound of boots on linoleum, the wet snarl of a man struggling to breathe, then, unmistakable, Nitro’s voice. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t gentle. It was a string of profanities, then the sharp, clean order: “Get behind me, Doc. Now.”
I replayed it twice. The second time, I closed my eyes and let the echo play through the hollow of my skull.
The fourth file was short. “You’re safe,” Nitro said, and I remembered the way it felt, to almost believe him.
I set the watch on the desk, pressed both hands flat against the surface, and stared at the blinking cursor on my darkened monitor.
The plan wasn’t complicated. Not if you ignored the consequences.
I toggled the network back on, then brought up the list of contacts from the project directory. I scrolled past the chain of command, past Holloway and the rest of the security apparatus, and found the one name I hadn’t expected to need: Senator Carly St. James.
Her email was locked behind two layers of encryption and a phone number that rerouted through a switchboard somewhere in Maryland. But if you worked for the Lab, you could reach her office. And if you were scared enough, you could pretend the call was a matter of national security.
I hesitated, thumb on the call button.