Chapter 1 Jagger #2
The guards handle him roughly as they move him through the hall.
Standard protocol for high-risk assets, though Jonah Doe doesn't look like he could fight off a strong breeze, let alone trained operatives.
They shove him through the door, and he stumbles, catches himself on the wall, leaves a smear of something dark on the white surface.
Blood, probably. Old detention centers aren't known for their gentle treatment.
But those eyes. Even through the grainy feed, I can see them moving. Scanning. Assessing. Finding the camera positions, the guards, the distance to the exit. Even sedated and restrained, he's gathering information like a half-dead animal still looking for escapes.
Interesting.
The guards bring him to the evaluation room.
White walls with those lights that buzz.
Single cold chair. Observation mirror that he'll know is a window.
I've conducted hundreds of these sessions.
I know exactly how to arrange a space to make someone feel small.
The chair is bolted to the floor, positioned so the overhead light hits the subject's face while leaving the interrogator in shadow.
The temperature is kept two degrees below comfortable.
Small details that add up to a constant, grinding sense of vulnerability.
I let him sit alone for forty-seven minutes.
Long enough to breed uncertainty, not long enough to let him settle into defiance.
I watch through the mirror as he tests his restraints, examines the room, eventually goes still in a way that suggests either acceptance or the conservation of energy.
Smart. Most people exhaust themselves fighting in the first ten minutes.
Then I enter.
He looks up as the door opens. Fear floods his face first, instinctive and raw. His pupils dilate. His breathing speeds up. His hands clench into fists before he forces them to relax. Classic stress response, exactly what I'd expect from someone facing down their worst nightmare.
But underneath the fear, something sharper. Recognition that doesn't quite reach consciousness. His body knows me even if his mind doesn't remember.
Good. The memories are closer to the surface than the report suggested.
"Jonah Doe." I take the seat across from him, keeping my posture deliberately relaxed. Projecting calm. Control. The kind of stillness that makes nervous people more nervous. "Do you know who I am?"
His mouth twists into something that's probably supposed to be a smile. It looks more like a grimace. "Jagger Harrison. The Architect. The mind behind half the operations I can't quite remember investigating." He spits as he says my name and title.
Cute.
"You remember investigating The Silent?"
"Fragments." His voice is rough. Damaged from years of disuse, or maybe from the screaming. "Faces without names. Places without context. The shape of something massive and terrible that I was stupid enough to try exposing."
"Stupid is accurate." I let my gaze move over him, deliberately dismissive.
Taking in the tremor in his hands, the sweat beading at his temples, the way he's gripping his knees to keep himself still.
"You thought you could take on an organization that's existed for centuries.
You thought your little newspaper articles would matter. And now look at you."
His jaw tightens. There it is. Anger breaking through the fear.
"The report says you're experiencing memory resurgence," I continue. "Tell me what you remember."
"Bits and pieces. Nothing useful." He's trying to match my coldness, but his body betrays him. "Is this the part where you threaten to hurt me if I don't cooperate? Because I should warn you, I've been hurt by professionals before. You'll have to get creative."
"I don't need to hurt you. Pain is inefficient." I lean back in my chair, letting silence stretch between us. "I broke you once already. I can do it again whenever I choose. The only question is whether you're useful enough to justify keeping you functional."
The color drains from his face. "You. You were the one who—"
"Yes. It was me. I designed your interrogation protocol.
I supervised your chemical processing. Sat across from you for eighteen hours while you screamed yourself hoarse.
" I watch his reaction with detached interest. The way his breathing speeds up.
The way his pupils dilate. The way his body tenses like a trapped animal.
"You don't remember the specifics. The erasure took most of the details.
But somewhere in that damaged brain of yours, you know exactly what I am. "
He's silent for a long moment. I can almost see the gears turning, the fragments of memory trying to coalesce into something coherent.
"Why am I here?" His voice cracks on the question. "If you're the one who broke me, why bring me back?"
"Because something went wrong with your processing. Memories that should have been permanently erased are resurfacing." I stand, and he flinches hard enough to rattle his chains. The sound is satisfying in a way I don't examine too closely. "I need to know what you're remembering. And why."
"So you can erase me again?"
"So I can determine whether you have any remaining value." I move toward him, watching the way he tries to press back into the chair like he can phase through it. "The Silent doesn't keep broken tools, Jonah. You're either useful or you're disposed of. There is no third option."
He swallows hard. "And if I refuse to cooperate?"
"Then I hand you over for reprocessing, and this conversation becomes the last coherent thought you ever have." I stop directly in front of him, close enough that he has to crane his neck to look at me. "Your choice."
Something shifts in his expression. Still terrified, but underneath it, a flicker of defiance that has no business being there. A spark that should have been extinguished three years ago.
"Westpoint," he says. "I was investigating Westpoint Academy when you took me."
The name hits like ice in my veins. He remembers. I keep my face blank, but my surprise must show, because his eyes sharpen despite his fear.
"You know that name," he says. "You know what I was looking for."
"Westpoint Academy was a boarding school for gifted youth. It burned down over a year ago."
"Bullshit." He's leaning forward now, chains forgotten, terror temporarily eclipsed by whatever drove him to investigate us in the first place.
"It was a front for something. I found shipping manifests.
Medical equipment going in, but no patients being treated.
Birth certificates that didn't match any hospital records.
Connections to fertility clinics on three continents. I found—"
He stops. Presses the heel of his hand against his forehead, face contorting with pain.
"You found what?" I already know what he found… what he reported that he found, but I want him frantic. That’s when he will tell me what I need to know and I can throw his body to the sea.
"I don't know. It's right there, but I can't—" A frustrated sound escapes him. "Like reading through frosted glass. I can see the shapes but not the details."
The memories are fragmentary but present. With time, with the right triggers, they might surface completely.
"The details will come back," I say. "The resurgence has already started. It will continue."
"How do you know?"
"Because I designed your erasure protocol." I return to my seat, crossing one leg over the other. "I know exactly how it works. And I know how it fails."
He stares at me, and for a moment, the fear recedes entirely. What's left is something harder. Colder. "You sound almost proud of that."
"I'm good at what I do."
"Breaking people."
"Understanding them." I hold his gaze. "Which is what I'm going to do with you. I'm having you transferred to a private facility. Better conditions than detention.”
I don’t tell him that he will be at my house. I want this off the official records.
Suspicion floods his face. "Why would you do that?"
"Because your memories have potential strategic value. And because I have questions that only you might be able to answer." I stand again, moving toward the door. "Don't mistake practicality for kindness. The moment you stop being useful, this arrangement ends."
"Wouldn't dream of it." His voice is steadier now, the defiance winning out over the fear. "You don't exactly scream humanitarian."
"I'm not any type, Jonah. I'm a tool designed to serve a purpose." I pause with my hand on the door. "You'd do well to remember that."
"Hard to forget when you keep reminding me."
I glance back. He's watching me with those too-sharp eyes, and there's something in his expression I can't quite recognize. Not fear. Not hatred. Something more complicated.
"Get some rest," I say. "You'll need your strength for what comes next."
"That sounds ominous."
"It's meant to."
His laugh catches me off guard. Broken and bitter, but a laugh nonetheless. The sound scrapes against something inside me, something I don't have a name for.
"You know what's funny?" He shakes his head, chains rattling with the movement.
"I spent three years terrified of faceless monsters.
The people who took everything from me. And now I'm sitting across from one, and you're just..
. a guy. A cold, fucked up guy with control issues and probably serious attachment disorders, but still. Just a guy."
"I'm not just anything."
"Sure you are. You probably piss the bed at night when the monster in your dreams turns out to be you.
" His eyes meet mine, unflinching despite everything.
Despite the fear still coursing through him, despite the chains, despite the power imbalance that should have him cowering.
"That's what scares you, isn't it? You want to be a machine.
A perfect tool without weakness or want.
But you're not. You're part human, somewhere under all that ice. And you hate it."
My fists clench and my nails dig into my palms. He’s been watching me the whole time I've been watching him, reading me the way I read everyone else.
I should hurt him for that. Should remind him exactly how inhuman I can be when someone pushes me too far. Should put him back in his place, make him understand that whatever he thinks he sees is a projection, a fantasy, anything but the truth.
Instead, I leave. Close the door behind me. Walk down the corridor with his words echoing in my skull.
You're part human, somewhere under all that ice.
My footsteps are steady. My breathing is controlled. Anyone watching would see exactly what they expect to see: the Architect, calm and composed, another successful interrogation completed.
They wouldn't see the way my hands want to shake. The way my chest feels too tight. The way something cracked, just slightly, when he looked at me and saw past everything I've built.
He's wrong.
He has to be wrong.
Because if he's right, then everything I've constructed over the last thirty years is a lie.
Every wall I've built. Every emotion I've suppressed.
Every part of myself I've locked away because feeling things is dangerous and wanting things is fatal and the only way to survive in this world is to become exactly what they designed me to be.
An Architect who can build and destroy in the same breath.
But Jonah Doe looked at me with his too-sharp eyes and his broken smile, and he saw something else.
I make it back to my office before I allow myself to stop. Lock the door. Sit in the dark with only the glow of the monitors for company.
On the screen, Jonah's file stares back at me. His photo from three years ago, before we took him. Bright-eyed. Determined. The kind of face that belongs on someone who still believes in things like truth and justice and making a difference.
We destroyed that person. I destroyed that person.
And now the pieces are coming back together, and I don't know if I should help them or bury them again.
I pull up the Project Omega files. The Harrison Protocol notation. The phrase that's been haunting me since I found it blinks on the screen.
Three viable subjects.
We were never orphans, were we? We were never rescued from the margins and given a purpose.
We were made. Designed. Products of whatever nightmare Project Omega really was.
And if Jonah's memories surface completely, he might be the only person alive who can prove it.
I close my eyes and breathe.
Tomorrow, I'll have him transferred to my residence. I'll watch him and study him. Extract whatever information he carries.
And somewhere along the way, I'll find out the truth about what I am.