Chapter 24
Clare
I woke up choking.
Not on water. Not on blood. On nothing. Just the phantom pressure of hands around my throat that weren’t there, crushing a windpipe that was working fine.
My eyes snapped open to darkness.
Wrong darkness. Wrong smell. Wrong everything.
Panic slammed into me before conscious thought. Where was I? What happened? How did I get here?
Xavier.
His name cut through the terror like a flare.
I tried to sit up. Couldn’t. My body jerked against resistance, wrists yanking backward with a sharp bite of pain.
Restrained.
The word dropped into my brain like ice water.
Medical-grade cuffs, the kind I’d used a hundred times in the ER on combative patients. Padded but unyielding, designed to immobilize without causing tissue damage.
My ankles too. Locked down. And across my chest, a strap, wide and tight, pinning me to whatever surface I was lying on.
I yanked harder. The cuffs bit deeper. My breathing accelerated, shallow and fast.
“No. No, no, no.”
The words came out strangled, barely audible over the roaring in my ears.
I forced myself to stop thrashing. To think. To assess like I’d been trained.
Where was I?
The surface under me was hard. Cold. Metal, maybe? A table. The air smelled sharp with antiseptic, chemical clean. That smell that turned my stomach because it signaled hospitals, procedure rooms...
My head pounded. Temples throbbing with each heartbeat, nausea rising hot and sick.
Drugged. I’d been dosed with something.
The realization came with a wave of vertigo that spun the room. Whatever they’d used was wearing off, leaving me disoriented and slow, thoughts slipping away like water through my fingers before I could grasp them.
I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision.
A single door. Heavy. Secure. No window.
And on the far wall, a mirror. Large. One-way.
Someone was watching.
Terror spiked fresh and sharp. I jerked against the cuffs again, harder this time, panic overriding logic. The metal table rattled but didn’t budge.
“Help!” My voice cracked. “Somebody...”
The words died.
Who was I calling for? Guards who’d put me here? People who wanted me bound?
I made myself breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth. The way I’d coached a thousand patients through panic attacks.
Except I was the patient now. And coaching didn’t work because my chest was too tight and my heart hammered and...
Focus. What’s the last thing you remember?
Xavier’s room. The boarding school. I’d been smiling, for God’s sake. Walking out to get water, thinking about how peaceful he’d looked, how the tremor was finally gone, how maybe we’d actually done it.
Then nothing.
A blank space where memory should be.
How long had it been? Hours? Days?
The nausea surged. I turned my head to the side, gagging, but came up empty. Just dry heaves that left me gasping and shaking.
Xavier didn’t know where I was.
Neither did Hellhound nor Havoc.
I pulled against the wrist bindings again. They held. Of course they did. I’d designed protocols around these exact models. I knew how strong they were.
The monitoring equipment sat silent beside me. Heart rate, blood pressure. They’d been tracking my vitals. Watching me sleep. Studying me like a specimen under glass.
The thought crawled across my skin.
This wasn’t random. This wasn’t some opportunistic grab. The medical equipment, the bindings, the observation room setup. Planned. Professional.
They’d been waiting for me.
I stared at the one-way mirror, knowing whoever was behind it could see my face. See the fear I couldn’t hide.
Let them look. Let them see I was terrified.
Because I was.
I was absolutely terrified, and trying to pretend otherwise wasted energy I didn’t have.
The door opened.
I flinched, hating myself for it. Hating that I couldn’t control the response, couldn’t stop my body from trying to curl away from whatever was coming.
A man stepped through.
Older. Sixties, maybe. Impeccably dressed in a tailored suit. Charcoal gray, crisp white shirt, no tie. No lab coat.
He looked... normal. Pleasant, even. Like someone’s grandfather. Like a businessman on his way to a board meeting.
But I’d heard about him. Xavier’s nightmares. Havoc’s briefings during the planning sessions. The name spoken with the kind of fear usually reserved for natural disasters.
Dresner.
My breath caught.
He was real. Standing in the doorway, studying me with calm interest. Not angry. Not rushed. Just... curious.
Like I was a puzzle he was looking forward to solving.
“Ms. Bolton.” His voice was smooth, cultured. Almost kind. “I’ve been very curious to meet you.”
I clamped my jaw shut. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing fear.
Dresner smiled. Small. Knowing. “The strong, silent type. How refreshing.”
He crossed the room with unhurried steps, shoes making soft sounds on the tile. He stopped beside the monitoring equipment, fingers trailing across the dark screen.
“I imagine you’re confused. Perhaps frightened. That’s understandable. But I assure you, Ms. Bolton, you’re in no immediate danger.”
The words should have been comforting. They weren’t. They turned my stomach because immediate meant there was danger coming later.
“Where am I?”
My voice came out hoarse. I swallowed, tried again. “Where am I?”
“A secure location. That’s all you need to know for now.”
Secure. Right. Prison by another name.
I tested the bindings again, slower this time. Looking for any give, any weakness.
“I wouldn’t recommend struggling. Those are medical-grade cuffs. I’m sure you recognize them. You’ve used similar models yourself, haven’t you? At Boston General?”
Ice flooded my veins.
He knew where I’d worked. Where I’d lived. My history.
“Three malfunctions in eighteen months.” Dresner pulled a tablet from inside his jacket. He swiped the screen with the focused interest of a researcher reviewing data. “Unprecedented. Each one a different generation operative. Each one perfectly conditioned. Each one broken.”
He looked up, meeting my eyes. “The conditioning was flawless, Ms. Bolton. The problem wasn’t internal.”
My mouth was dry. I wanted to look away from his steady gaze but couldn’t.
“What are you talking about?” I forced the words out. Needed to understand, even though part of me didn’t want to know.
“So I looked for external variables. What did these three agents have in common? What changed in their environments before malfunction? What stimulus triggered the resistance?”
His tone shifted slightly. More engaged now. Almost excited.
He turned the tablet toward me.
Three files. Three photographs.
“I’m a pragmatist, Ms. Bolton. I follow the data.”
“There is one of my Prima Generation agents. Reaper’s malfunction coincided with sustained exposure to a woman, a journalist. His conditioning began deteriorating within seventy-two hours of contact.”
My chest tightened.
“She asked him questions. Made him remember who he was before. She made him feel.”
The second photo appeared. Another woman. Professional. Composed.
“Specter’s breakdown occurred after meeting a psychiatrist. His implant showed irregular patterns within one week.”
Dresner’s finger hovered over the screen.
“She treated him as human. Not weapon. She trusted him when he had no reason to be trusted. I suspected it was a defect of the Prima Generation, but...”
The third photo loaded.
My face stared back at me.
My hospital ID photo from Boston General taken a few years ago.
“And now Blackout and you, Ms. Bolton.”
The way he used Xavier’s designation made my skin crawl. Like it was his real name. Like he owned it.
“I’m aware of the chip’s damage, and that’s why I sent a team to retrieve Blackout. All I was expecting was a corpse, but he’s kept breathing, and within hours his conditioning started failing.”
Dresner paused, letting the silence fill the rest.
My stomach dropped. “You’re insane.”
“I’m a scientist. I observe. I analyze. I adapt.”
“And now, he deactivated the chip entirely.”
The words hung between us.
I stared at my own photograph on his tablet. At the file with my name, my history, probably every detail of my life reduced to data points and analysis.
“The common denominator isn’t your professions. Not your skills. Journalist, psychiatrist, nurse. All different fields. Not your backgrounds. Varied, no pattern. Not your training. None of you had experience in psychological warfare or deprogramming.”
Dresner swiped back through the files.
He looked at me again, and this time there was something almost like admiration in his expression.
“It’s what you represent.”
My throat was so tight I could barely breathe.
“Authentic human connection. Empathy without agenda. Care without conditioning. Trust freely given, not chemically enforced.”
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t process.
“You’re saying... love?” The word felt absurd in this sterile room, with me strapped to a table.
He set the tablet down on the equipment cart.
“That changes brain chemistry in ways I hadn’t fully accounted for.”
The clinical detachment made me want to scream.
“My conditioning is designed to suppress emotion, memory, autonomy. PSI-317 regulates neurochemistry. The implants monitor and correct deviation. It is a perfect system.”
Dresner paced slowly beside the table.
He stopped, looking down at me.
“But I never fully accounted for the variable of genuine attachment.”
The words fell like stones.
“The accelerated healing was unexpected. Continuous PSI-317 exposure triggers cellular regeneration at approximately three times normal human rates. Periodic injections don’t produce this effect, only the implant’s constant micro-dosing.
A flaw in the delivery system that became an advantage.
” He glanced at the monitors. “Until deactivation, of course. Then he becomes merely human again. Fragile. Mortal.”
“That’s not a variable. That’s being human. That’s what makes us...”
My voice shook.
“Weak. Predictable. Exploitable.”
Dresner finished for me.