Chapter 3 Jagger
Chapter Three: Jagger
I spent from four a.m. to five a.m. reviewing Moore's archive, cross-referencing financial trails, building connection maps between shell companies and offshore accounts. Productive work. Necessary work. The kind of work that should have consumed my full attention.
Instead, I kept pulling up the security feed from the guest bedroom.
Jonah sleeps like someone who's forgotten how.
He tosses, kicks at the sheets, curls into himself like he's trying to disappear.
Twice he sat bolt upright, gasping, before collapsing back against the pillows.
Each time, I found myself leaning toward the monitor, watching the details of his distress with an attention I couldn't justify.
By five thirty, I gave up pretending to work and went to the kitchen.
Now I'm standing at the counter with a cup of coffee I don't remember making, watching the sun crawl over the city skyline, and trying to remember the last time another person's presence disrupted my routines this thoroughly.
I can't.
The Foundry trained isolation into us. We work alone, sleep alone, exist alone. Attachment is weakness. Connection is vulnerability. The only relationships we maintain are strategic, calculated, temporary.
The only exception is my brothers. We will always have each others backs, even when one brother acts like an idiot and almost reigns hell on all our heads. But each of us functions inside the triad differently.
Jinx has his chaos. Jace has his silence. I have my systems, my protocols, my carefully ordered existence.
And now there's a man sleeping in my guest bedroom who talks too much, deflects with humor, and looks at me like he’s trying to write some journalistic piece on how to make a statue smile.
It's unsettling.
The guest bedroom door opens at 7:12. I hear the soft slap of bare feet on hardwood, the hesitation at the hallway's edge, the almost imperceptible intake of breath when he spots me.
"You're up early," Jonah says. "Or did you just never go to bed? I'm betting on option two, based on the whole 'soulless automaton' vibe you've got going."
I don't turn around. "There's coffee."
"Wow. A complete sentence and an offer of caffeine.
Much improved from a few hours ago. We're really making progress here.
" He moves into the kitchen, and I watch his reflection in the window glass.
He's wearing the clothes I provided, a simple gray t-shirt and black pants, both slightly too large for his frame.
His hair is a disaster, sticking up in multiple directions like he lost a fight with his pillow.
He pours himself coffee, adds an obscene amount of sugar from the canister on the counter, and leans against the refrigerator to drink it.
"That's disgusting," I say, watching him dump in a fourth spoonful.
"What, the sugar? Some of us like our coffee to actually taste good, Harrison. Not everyone wants to drink bitter bean water and pretend it's a personality trait."
"It's not a personality trait. It's efficiency."
"Sure. And the black clothes, the minimal furniture, the complete absence of anything resembling joy in this apartment—that's all efficiency too?" He gestures around with his mug. "You know what this place says about you? It says, 'I've never had fun and I'm vaguely offended by the concept.'"
I should ignore him. Should let his commentary wash over me like every other irrelevant variable.
Instead, I hear myself say, "There's a library."
"Oh, a library. How decadent. It’s full of military history and philosophy texts and maybe one novel you've read seventeen times because it's 'efficient.'"
"Dostoevsky isn't efficient."
"Ha!" He points at me, triumphant. "A true Dostoevsky guy. Very on brand. Very 'I enjoy watching people suffer through moral crises because it makes me feel something.'"
"I don't feel things."
"You keep saying that." He takes a long sip of his sugar-laden coffee. "But you also keep responding to my bullshit, which suggests otherwise."
He's not wrong. I don't know why I'm engaging with him. I don't engage with assets. I process them, extract what I need, and move on.
"So," he says, when I don't respond. "What's on the agenda for today? Waterboarding? Psychological manipulation? A rousing game of 'remember the trauma'?"
"Memory evaluation. Controlled triggers to assess the extent of your resurgence."
"Ah. So option three." He takes another sip. "Will there be snacks? I feel like there should be snacks if you're going to dig around in my broken brain. The one you broke, mind you. Funny… it’s also you trying to fix it. Ahh, the circle of life."
I finally turn to face him. He looks worse in daylight than he did on the security feed.
Dark circles under his eyes, a grayish pallor to his skin, the kind of exhaustion that goes bone deep.
But his mouth is curled into that sharp, mocking smile, and his eyes are alert, watching me like a cat toying with a mouse.
"You didn't sleep," I say.
"Neither did you, apparently. We have so much in common." He gestures between us with his coffee cup. "Insomnia buddies. This is beautiful. So fucking beautiful, Harrison. We should get matching t-shirts."
"The nightmares will get worse as more memories surface."
His smile flickers. Just for a moment. Then it's back, sharper than before. "Thanks for the heads up. Really appreciate the bedside manner. Very comforting."
"I'm not here to comfort you."
"No, you're here to extract information from my scrambled brain and then probably kill me.
" He shrugs, casual, like we're discussing the weather.
"At least you're honest about it. That's refreshing.
The guards at detention used to pretend they were helping me.
'Rehabilitation,' they called it. Like drugging someone into compliance is rehabilitation. "
Something twists in my chest. I ignore it.
"You were compliant?"
"I was nonresponsive, Harrison. There's a difference." His voice goes flat, the humor draining away. "Three years of chemical fog. Three years of not knowing my own name, my own face, my own thoughts. You know what that's like? Waking up every day and not recognizing the person in the mirror?"
I don't answer. I'm not sure I can.
He watches me for a moment, then shakes his head. "Of course you don't. You've always known exactly who you are. That must be nice."
Before I can respond—before I can tell him that I'm not sure I know anything anymore—he drains his coffee and sets the mug in the sink.
"So. Breakfast? Or do we jump straight into the psychological torture?"
I set my cup next to his. "Eat something. We start in an hour."
"Wait, actual food?” He puts a hand to his chest in mock surprise. "Harrison, you're spoiling me."
I leave the kitchen before I can respond to that. Before I can examine why his constant deflection irritates me in a way I can't explain.
The evaluation room is on the second floor of my place, a space I've used for asset processing before. Clean white walls. Adjustable lighting. A desk with two chairs facing each other, a tablet for recording observations, and nothing else. No distractions. No variables.
I spend the hour preparing. Organizing trigger materials. Reviewing protocols. Building a framework for assessment that will yield useful data while minimizing the risk of a complete psychological break.
I should want him to break. That's how extraction works. You push until the walls crumble, then you sift through the rubble for what you need.
But every time I start designing pressure points, I think about the way he looked in the detention center. The fear underneath the bravado. The defiance that should have been beaten out of him years ago.
Unbidden, his laugh in the interrogation room surfaces in my mind. Broken and bitter, but still a laugh.
I close the file and stare at the blank wall until it’s time to go down and bring him up to the room he will be in for the next few hours.
"Cozy," he says, taking in the room. "Very minimalist torture chamber. I like what you've done with the complete lack of windows."
"Sit down."
He sits in the chair across from me, folding himself into it with exaggerated casualness. His foot immediately starts tapping against the floor, a rapid staccato rhythm that betrays the calm he's projecting.
I notice other things too. The way his shoulders hunch slightly, protective. The way his hands keep moving, fingers tapping, knuckles cracking, never still. The way his eyes dart to the door, calculating distance.
He's terrified. Underneath all the bravado, he's absolutely terrified.
Something about that bothers me more than it should.
"So how does this work?" he asks, voice steady despite everything his body is telling me. "You show me inkblots and I tell you about my childhood? Because I should warn you, my childhood is gone, much like everything else."
"That's not in your file. The stuff I gave you should have only erased your short-term memory."
"Yeah, well, my file was written by people who only cared about what I knew, not who I was." His smile goes sharp. "But you're not like them, right? You're different. You actually want to understand me."
The mockery in his voice shouldn't sting. It does.
"I'm going to show you a series of photographs, documents, and names," I say, ignoring his comment. "Tell me if anything triggers a response. A memory, an emotion, a physical sensation. Anything at all."
"And if nothing triggers?"
"Then we move to the next set."
He drums his fingers on his knee. "What if I lie? Say nothing triggers when something does?"
"I'll know."
"Because you're psychic? Or just incredibly arrogant?"
"Because I've spent many years learning to read people." I meet his eyes. "Every micro expression. Every shift in breathing. Every change in pupil dilation. You can't hide a reaction from me, Jonah. You can only choose whether to explain it or let me draw my own conclusions."