Chapter 19 - Seraphina
Seraphina
The podium was made for men three times my size.
The lectern edge bit into my pelvis no matter how I positioned myself.
Fluorescent lights bore down in tiers, throwing my shadow in triplicate against the cinderblock wall.
If I stared directly into the front row, the world became a grid of lenses and sweating faces, all packed shoulder to shoulder and exuding the tang of dollar-store deodorant and the fainter, more persistent chemical whine of institutional carpet.
A banner with the Los Alamos logo—atomic swirl, ominous blue—hung behind me, limp as an expired flag.
I could hear my own pulse in the inside of my mouth.
I could hear every cough and chair-squeak from the gallery, every accidental mic bump that sent a reverb shudder through the PA system.
The statement was supposed to be a nothing—a rubber-stamped reinstatement, a performance of normalcy for the research community and the local news, maybe a sound bite or two for the national feed.
The memo in my email called it “a brief opportunity for public reassurance.”
I wore my hair back in a bun so tight it gave me a headache.
I wore a blazer I had not picked for myself.
I wore glasses instead of contacts, even though the prescription was a lie.
I wore, in every visible way, the uniform of a woman who had survived her own abduction and could now be trusted to sign off on the nuclear data pipeline without setting off alarms.
There were four cameras, two local, one from Albuquerque, and one pointed at my left profile for the live webcast. I recognized the woman from the Santa Fe Post—steel hair, pencil poised like a tiny spear.
I recognized the university stringer. I recognized the newscaster who had, three weeks prior, described me as “delicate and surprisingly unassuming for the world’s leading expert in adaptive neural code.
” I could not see my own eyes, but I imagined them filmed over with the same gray that had crept into every reflection since the cabin.
I took a breath.
“Thank you for coming,” I said. The PA made my voice genderless, a text-to-speech rendering of human language. “This is Dr. Seraphina Dalton. I would like to begin by correcting the record regarding my recent absence from the Laboratory and the circumstances surrounding my return.”
A single bulb in the rear corner buzzed above the rest, like a mosquito circling a body about to expire.
I gripped the podium. I felt my knuckles go cold, then hot.
“First, I am aware of the official narrative that there was a ‘security incident’ and that the Department of Energy and Laboratory Safety recommended my leave. This is not inaccurate. However, it is incomplete. I am here to provide the rest.”
Every face in the front row twitched at once—predator sense. The notepad of the Los Alamos Post woman jerked up, as if guided by a seismograph.
“On the evening of May 18, I was abducted from my home by a group of four men. I have reason to believe these men were acting as operatives for a non-U.S. government, most likely the Russian government, although I cannot provide direct evidence at this time. I was transported to a secondary location in the Jemez Mountains, where I was held for approximately eleven hours and interrogated regarding both my work and Laboratory operations.”
A flash from the second row, then the third. I blinked. My eyes watered, but it was more from the lights than the memory.
“I do not recall all details of the interrogation, but I was subjected to threats, both of physical harm and of leverage against my family. During this period, I was coerced into revealing security protocols and technical details concerning Project Blue Spirit, specifically the fallback routines and the logic structures for automated self-repair. I gave them nothing operational. I cannot guarantee that I did not give them something they wanted. If I did, it was under direct and credible threat of death.”
Someone cleared their throat. Someone else coughed. I heard the clicks of a dozen pens in unison.
“I was extracted from captivity by a civilian. He is a decorated former Marine, specializing in EOD. His name is Seager Culberson, although he is better known by his call sign, Nitro.”
A flurry of camera shutters, the first true ripple of hunger.
“I want to be clear. Without his intervention, I would not be alive. I would not be standing here. He is not a criminal. He is not a suspect. He is the reason the laboratory’s work continues.”
I paused. The mic hummed, then settled.
“I know there have been questions regarding the involvement of local organizations, specifically the Bloody Scythes Motorcycle Club, of which Mr. Culberson is a member. I can only speak to what I have seen. In every interaction, the club acted as a force for stability, protecting both me and my work from external actors. I am aware of the rumors. I do not subscribe to them. I believe that if we are to survive as a scientific community, we must occasionally accept the help of those whose methods do not match our own.”
I felt the sweat pooling in the small of my back, soaking the waistband of the slacks I had borrowed from the department secretary. My vision blurred at the edges, as if the world was waiting for a reboot.
“I am aware that this account will not satisfy everyone. I am aware that there will be investigations and that I will be subject to scrutiny for the rest of my career. That is acceptable. I am not here for absolution. I am here to continue my work, and to ensure that the next time a woman is taken from her home, someone will come for her, too.”
I took my hands off the lectern. They left two ghostly smears on the polished black.
“There will be no questions.”
I turned from the podium, my peripheral vision flooded with white. The first step off the riser sent a spasm up my leg. I steadied myself with one hand on the plastic edge, then forced myself to walk, slow and upright, toward the exit behind the blue curtain.
The lights doubled, then trebled. For a second, I might vomit, or black out, or both. I reached the end of the curtain and pressed my palm flat against the cinderblock wall, waiting for my body to catch up to the noise I’d just released into the world.
***
I didn’t go home after the press conference.
I didn’t go back to the lab or to the hotel room that the Lab had arranged to keep the media from camping out on my porch.
I drove up and down the canyons, letting the Civic’s engine chew the silence, trying to decide whether to turn the wheel and go off the side, or just keep driving until the road ended and the forest took me.
By midnight, the only place left to go was the compound.
The temperature had dropped fifteen degrees since sunset.
The air above the canyon floor thickened into a slush of freezing mist, the kind that clings to the paint and finds every crack in the windshield seal.
I rolled the windows up and watched my breath condense on the inside of the glass, a spectral double of every exhale.
The heater in the Honda was a joke, just enough to keep the dashboard from icing over.
The drive to the compound was twenty minutes at posted speed, but I made it in thirteen, riding every apex with the grace of a dropped object.
At the gate, the guard shack was empty, but two bikes stood side by side under the lamp.
Both were idling, their breath visible, the men beside them wrapped in black parkas and hunched against the cold.
As I braked, both looked up in perfect unison.
One had a red scarf around his mouth, the other wore sunglasses despite the hour.
They didn’t bother with the hand signals or the pretense of checking credentials.
They saw me, and they just waved me through.
I drove past them and up the long drive, which was rutted worse than ever—mud frozen to ridges that slammed the shocks and made the Civic’s undercarriage protest like a dying animal.
At the top of the rise, the compound was a negative of itself: the main building dark, the windows like dead pixels, every other structure sealed against the night.
Even the row of bikes outside the rec hall had been pushed together, as if for warmth.
The only light came from the garage. A single rectangle, leaking gold onto the slush.
I parked under the awning, next to the bikes, and sat there with the engine running until the heater finally caught up and fogged the windshield into pure blankness.
The silence was so total I could hear the metal ping as it cooled, the settling of the frame, the tick of my own watch amplified by the Civic’s cheap acoustics.
Inside the garage, it was warm and bright.
The first thing I saw was a table, littered with the wreckage of a disassembled engine.
The second thing I saw was the back of Nitro, hunched over the frame of a bike, a ragged t-shirt stretched over a body that looked cut from the same material as the chain hoist above him.
His arms were bare, the tattoos gone pale in the work light, his hands moving with the rhythm of someone who had performed the same surgery a thousand times and could do it blind.
He didn’t turn around. Not at first. He kept working, socket wrench singing, until the noise of my shoes made him freeze in place. Then, slow, he set the wrench down, wiped his hands on the old jeans, and turned.
His eyes were two holes in the dark. He didn’t speak.
Neither did I.
I wanted to say something clever, or brave, or even cruel. Instead, I just stood in the doorway, the rectangle of warmth at my back, and waited for him to make the first move.
He looked at me, then at the car outside, then back to me. His face was unreadable, the scar on his jaw a white accent against the shadow.