15 UNRAVEL
alistair
I don’t like the notification flashing across my Dominion watch.
A colorful string of curses tears out of me as I slam the coffee mug down, sloshing dark liquid and staining the scattered papers, soaking ink and data alike.
With a non-verbal cue to my assistant to clean up the mess on my table, I made my way to the operations desk.
The only reason I left campus earlier than usual today—forced Ariella to handle the paperwork I should’ve supervised myself—was because of this. Triarch Dominion decided to remind me who owns my leash. They wanted me to be present earlier than usual.
Fortunately, I didn’t have the biker after me this evening.
If Traich Dominion didn’t send the spy after me, their systems should’ve flagged her long ago. The ignorance is what unsettles me—the hesitation that shouldn’t exist in an organization that functions like a guillotine.
Someone was trailing my routines, hovering at the edges of my life like a shadow I never acknowledged. To them, it should be a breach. And breaches get erased.
A year ago, I wouldn’t have cared who this stalker was. A fresh biological body is always useful here. There’s always a chance one might survive the conversion and might become another perfect Synthète.
But this isn’t a year ago. And the coincidences shouldn’t align so well.
The doors slide open for the gurney to roll into the operating room.
For a second, I don’t process the body, only the designation tag clipped to the rail, the data stream hovering on the screen beside it.
Ariella Keinston.
The face lands in my skull like a controlled detonation.
My stalker.
She lies restrained beneath translucent medical film and low-dose sedation, her lashes fluttering beneath half-closed lids. Oxygen tubing arcs over her cheekbones. Her shoulder sits wrong—subtle to an untrained eye yet screaming to mine.
Bruises bloom along her face and arms, mottled purples and sick yellows beneath scraped skin. Her lips are parted, faintly bloodied, breath uneven. It looks like an accident. A bike accident, to be more precise, since she’s a biker.
This is how they initiated phase one of her erasure. They engineered it as a reckless late-night motorcycle accident, a young heiress riding too fast and losing control on a poorly lit stretch of road.
What the public will see is skid marks and shattered metal.
What I see is calculated impact angles and an untreated shoulder dislocation that no emergency responder would’ve missed.
Triarch Dominion finally showed that they had marked the suspect a long time ago. Just because she was a Keinston, they were waiting for a better time.
Now she will be either dead or suspended somewhere between life and disposal. Consequently, she will be routed to research before any official declaration is made. They will catalog the damage, measure survivability thresholds, and determine whether conversion is viable.
If she is deemed useless, they won’t announce it. They will simply erase her.
Documentation will be scrubbed, biometric traces dissolved, registry entries amended until it appears the said individual never existed at all.
I wonder how worthy they think it is to touch a Keinston heiress.
Why her?
I get that she was stalking me, but… it just doesn’t sit right.
Either way, I have to do something about it.
Although her clothes haven’t been changed—which means she’s been directly brought here—I can see she’s cataloged to a variable ready to be discarded for the sake of experimenting.
I lift my gaze from her body and let it travel the room.
“Lock this suite,” I order calmly. “Perimeter restriction under my authorization only.”
No one moves fast enough. I turn slightly, just enough for them to hear the edge of the restraint. “Now.”
The systems respond before the people do. Status lights change. Access permissions shift. The room seals with a soft, decisive hiss.
“She’s under my direct authority,” I continue, my voice level, lethal in its clarity. “No scans beyond what’s already logged. No tissue sampling or neural probes. No secondary sedation and documentation routed through central servers.”
A junior technician nods. So do the others.
“If I didn’t explicitly ask for it,” I add, meeting his eyes, “it doesn’t happen. If anyone touches her without my permission, I’ll personally revoke your clearance before you finish scrubbing out.”
That lands.
I gesture once. “Assignments,” and turn to the few I always allow to remain with me.
“Dr. Elara Voss,” I ask, “Musculoskeletal and external injury observation only. Do not intervene unless I request it.”
She nods. “Understood, sir.”
“Dr. Henrik Morrow. Neurology. Concussion monitoring, passive only.”
“Yes, sir.”
“and Dr. Saira Khatri. Toxicology and internal assessment. Identify what’s already in her system.”
“Got it, sir.”
“You’ll observe and report to me only. Any deviation from baseline comes to me directly,” I say, looking primarily at the three of them.
Understanding settles into the room like a binding contract that I don’t delegate this.
“That’s all. Everyone out.”
One by one, they file out. Shoes whisper against the floor. Doors slide open, then seal. The monitors remain. The gurney remains.
Only she and I are left. Alone.
I recheck the locks myself, even though the system already confirms the seal. My gaze drifts toward the CCTV lens mounted in the upper corner of the room, its red indicator blinks steadily, reminding me that nothing here is ever truly private.
I feel an unknown wrongness settle under my skin at that. Gotta alter the footage once I’m finished.
For now, I dim the overhead lighting to a clinically acceptable low and remove my coat. I roll my sleeves in a rush and scrub in at the sink, forcing my breathing into rhythm.
Another body. Another girl. That is what I tell myself. I’ve done this before at least a hundred times as I approach the gurney.
With steady hands, I peel back the medical film and throw it aside, exposing her to sterile light and to my gaze in nothing but ruined fabric clinging to her skin.
With much care, I cut off the ruined clothes. The more I tear through, revealing more skin, the harder I grit down on my molars. So I throw away the scissors when there’s nothing left but her in a matching underwear set.
For a second, I consider removing the gloves and touching her skin directly.
My throat swallows before I can suppress it.
It’s illegal to look at a patient this way, which I’m acutely aware of. I could justify it as clinical efficiency, as contamination prevention, or as oversight. But the truth beneath those excuses is far less comfortable to admit out loud.
I can do anything I want to her at this moment, and the best part is she won’t know a thing. My cock twitches at the thought.
A strained grunt leaves me.
The idea makes me want to slam my head against the wall until I can’t form these unwelcomed thoughts anymore. I’ve never hated myself more than now.
Focus, Alistair. I mentally scold myself and try to tame all my unhinged thoughts at the name of being recorded.
My gloved fingers brush over bruised skin as I assess the damage. Warmth blooms faintly against latex.
I withdraw almost immediately, as if the contact itself has crossed a forbidden boundary. This reaction is foreign to me, and I resent it.
Road rash burns along her thighs and forearms, gravel still embedded at the edges of torn skin. I irrigate each wound methodically, watching the subtle change in her breathing whenever I reach the rawest patches.
She remains sedated, but her body registers the pain every time.
Her shoulder confirms my suspicion the moment I test its alignment. An anterior dislocation was deliberately left untreated.
My jaw tightens.
I’m an engineer—the chief architect of the Triarch Dominion’s electronic neurological infrastructure.
My expertise lies in designing the biomechanical pathways for the Synthète program, not in resetting joints and suturing flesh or playing the role of a trauma surgeon for fuck’s sake.
Yet, I chose not to delegate this to any number of people outside this room to touch her.
An illogical choice. A dangerous deviation from protocol.
So here I am, cleaning her up and changing her into a medical gown, pretending I’m not being watched while this proximity is clearly affecting me in the worst possible ways.
I clean the split along her lip and remove the dried blood from her temple. She smells of antiseptic and asphalt, with a metallic undertone that lingers beneath both. The world narrows to the steady rise and fall of her chest as I work every wound slowly.
This is nothing.
I’ve handled bodies before in the name of science. I have a wife, a marriage constructed like everything else in my life by the Triarch Dominion—functional, strategic, devoid of intimacy.
Physical proximity has never translated into vulnerability.
This is just another girl. I keep reminding myself.
The lie fractures the moment my fingers rest against the curve of her neck, and I feel her pulse accelerate beneath my touch. My fingers subconsciously wrap around her throat, feeling the last of her life right in my grasp.
I don’t put much pressure. Not only because I don’t want her alive, but want her breathing under my command.
Then I remember I need to go and talk to the council about this situation. With that in mind, I reluctantly pull my hand from her throat and focus on finishing what I started.
When I finish treating the external injuries, I retrieve a clean hospital gown and dress her with careful precision. The fabric guides over bruised skin as I adjust her limbs into it carefully, tying the fastenings securely without allowing my gaze to linger where it shouldn’t.
This is so unlike me. And I despise being out of control.
The room is silent except for her soft breathing and the periodic beep of the attached monitors. I hate that I like the sound of her being alive at least.
I hate that I notice the gentle slope of her nose, the delicate swell of her breasts over the rim of the bra, the softness of her skin, and the flat expanse of her stomach.
I hate that I notice the way her lashes tremble, as if she’s fighting her way back to the surface.
I despise that my control, something I’ve spent years refining like a fine art, feels less absolute in this room.