Chapter Six — The Court's Answer

That afternoon, Laila cornered Reyes in the stairwell.

"Protocol Sunfire," she said. "Sedation. Active suppression. That's the Court's answer to a forensic problem."

Reyes, who had been trying to escape to the roof with a cup of coffee, stopped. "The Court's answer isn't mine to question, Dr. Thorne."

"It's a medical order. That makes it mine to question." She stepped closer. "You ran the scene. You saw the lamp. If you sign off on drugging him into a coma while the real killer walks, you're not following orders, Commander — you're helping someone bury the truth."

Reyes's jaw tightened. For a long moment, he said nothing.

Then, very quietly: "Get out of the stairwell, Dr. Thorne."

She did. But as she passed him, she added: "Someone with access to the Court's own seal ordered this. Doesn't that bother you at all?"

Reyes drank his coffee, alone, in the dark, and said nothing to anyone about how much it bothered him.

That evening, Laila sat on the bench outside Kaelen's wing, eating a sandwich and reading A Tale of Two Cities to herself.

Through the partition, Kaelen watched her from the window — he'd stopped pretending not to.

"It's good," she said, without looking up, loud enough to carry through the glass. "The book. You'd like it."

"I've read it."

"Ah, so you admit it."

"…I lied earlier."

"Mhm. You're a terrible liar, Mr. Vesso. It's one of your more endearing qualities."

There was a long silence, through which the hundred and three cameras observed the scene with mechanical disinterest.

"The Court wants to escalate containment," Kaelen said finally. "Sunfire protocol. They're going to sedate me, Dr. Thorne. Probably tomorrow."

Laila stopped reading.

"Reyes told you?"

"Reyes didn't tell me anything. I read the courier's handwriting through the gate feed. It's a very specific script."

A pause. Then Laila folded the book closed, stood, and walked to the partition until her reflection was close enough to touch his.

"Then we have tonight," she said. "And I have a theory about a manufactured void-signature that some people in this building are going to find very inconvenient."

"Dr. Thorne —"

"You're not a bomb, Kaelen." Her voice was steady. "You're a man with a medical condition, and someone is using it to kill people and blame you. I'm not going to let that happen."

It was, he thought, the most dangerous sentence anyone had ever said to him — not because it was a threat, but because he believed her.

That night, Laila sat up in her quarters reading Kaelen's file by lamplight. Twenty-four years of observations. Subject isolated per protocol. Subject placed in solitary confinement at age seven, following the incident with the candle. Subject's request for a pet denied. Subject's request for a window — granted, top floor, reinforced glass. Subject counts birds.

He'd been requesting things. That was the part that undid her. A seven-year-old boy in solitary, and the system had recorded, in perfect official prose, that he'd asked for a pet and been denied, and then asked for a window and been granted one — because the Bureau had decided it was cheaper to give a monster a view than to explain to the Court why it couldn't.

Somewhere in the middle of the file, between the loneliness statistics and the behavior logs, she found a single sheet that didn't belong. A personnel memo, dated three weeks ago, with a Court seal at the bottom:

The attending for 7-Ω is to be filled by special assignment. Candidate selection to be handled directly by the Court.

Not the Bureau. Not the medical board. The Court.

She'd assumed her placement was a punishment detail — the post no one wanted, handed to the newest healer in the system. She hadn't wondered why a freshly graduated orphan with no connections had been selected for a Court-signed special assignment.

They chose me,* she thought. *Why?

She was still turning the question over when the alarms began to scream.

Not the soft, routine chime of a security drill. The deep, rolling klaxon of a Code Omega — a full containment breach.

And on the speaker above her door, a voice she didn't recognize, flat and final:

"Cell 7-Ω is in active surge. All personnel report to lockdown stations. Repeat — active surge."

Laila was already out the door.

She didn't stop for a visor. She didn't stop for a barrier suit. She ran through the corridors in her pajamas, past guards shouting her name, past the control room where someone was screaming, and she hit the door release of Cell 7-Ω just as the lights died.

Inside, in the dark, something was breathing like a whale.

She could hear him. Kaelen's voice, wrecked, from somewhere in the black: "Get out. Get OUT — I can't — Laila, I can't hold it —"

"You don't have to hold it." She walked toward the sound of his voice. "I'm here. I'm not moving. Breathe with me."