Chapter 2

My patience paid off in a big way. Morrow wasn't there that day.

Instead, two technicians came—one old, one young.

I recognized the older one; he'd been there the first time I was strapped into the restraint chair five years ago. The younger one was new, looking like he wanted to ask something a few times, but each time he saw the old man's expression, he swallowed his words. They only ran basic checks—blood draw, blood pressure, inspection of the skin around the catheter ports.

Silence throughout. When they finished, they packed up and left. The iron door closed; the electromagnetic lock clicked shut.

I sat against the wall, closed my eyes, and turned my attention inward. The impedance drop from yesterday's trial extraction hadn't recovered. The resistance to the catheter's pull was forty percent lower than normal.

The ember beneath my sternum was still quiet—but my body's resistance mechanism against extraction was failing.

Before, every extraction was passive endurance. Yesterday's trial, however, had triggered the safety protocol prematurely—the system detected impedance was too low, flagged the operation as risky, and shut down automatically.

I pushed my perception outward. My awareness passed through the metal walls and spread along the corridor. One of the foundational abilities of an S-Class superhuman is energy sensing. Five years ago, I could sense superhumans and equipment within several hundred meters.

The suppression system had locked that down for five years. The catheters had drained most of the energy I could access, but that foundation hadn't been extracted. Now that the lock was loosening, it was returning.

It came back more refined than before—the entire floor's electrical flow mapped out in my mind, the guards' neural signals appearing as faint points of light, the electromagnetic fields of powered equipment flowing like threads of light.

I traced the power circuit upward.

The suppression system, lighting, ventilation, and surveillance—four independent circuits converged at a main distribution panel three floors underground, then connected to the surface building via a shared bus.

Right next to that bus was a bundle of data lines.

The Arc Light server room was on the second basement level. The server room shared part of the physical layer of the bus with the prison.

The server room handled massive data traffic—most of it encapsulated within Arc Light's internal network: financial reports, experiment logs, personnel files.

The internal network had its own firewall, but accessing through the physical layer of the shared bus rendered those wrappers meaningless. Only one node remained untouched—wrapped in a private encryption protocol.

The label: Radiance.

Last night, I'd pushed through seventeen percent. The progress was slow because the shared bus bandwidth was narrow—only a few bytes at a time. Today, without extraction, there was plenty of time.

I compressed my perception to the thickness of a needle tip and slipped back into those lines through the physical layer, pushing in the first byte, waiting for the system to respond, then pushing the second.

Three hours passed. The guards in the corridor changed shift once.

When I'd reached twenty-nine percent, I sensed someone on the third basement level accessing my monitoring logs. The access privilege was above Morrow's level. The direction of access wasn't technical troubleshooting—they'd pulled only the recent days' anomaly data.

The cell door opened.

I withdrew my perception and opened my eyes.

Two guards in suppression armor stood at the door, with a mobile isolation chamber for high-risk prisoners behind them. The old technician held a radio.

"Come out."

"Where to?"

He pressed the radio and muttered something. Three seconds later, the distorted synthetic voice returned: "Bring him up."

For five years, that voice had only said "continue." This time, it said "up."

The guards cuffed my hands behind my back with magnetic restraints and pushed me into the isolation chamber. The glass hood descended; the cart moved through three alloy doors and into the freight elevator. The elevator rose. I counted the floors silently. One. Two. Three. The elevator stopped; the doors opened.

The corridor was marble-floored, with sconces on the walls, the scent of cleaning agents in the air. Ground level. For the first time in five years, air that didn't pass through a filtration system. The cart stopped before a wooden door marked "President's Office."

The room was large. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the city skyline at night, lights stretching to the horizon. Behind the desk sat a woman in a dark blue suit, hair pinned up, three data screens spread before her.

Valen.

The woman on the balcony at the charity gala six years ago. The hand that held mine at the wedding. The face that smiled at me and our son from the hospital bed.

She didn't stand up. Through the glass hood, she looked at me the way she might look at a report.

"How much longer can the equipment hold?" she asked the old technician.

"The suppression system is unstable. Yesterday's trial extraction triggered a safety protocol; today's impedance readings are still low. Morrow is investigating—one to two days, worst case we may need to replace the main control module."

She turned one of the screens around. It displayed my energy extraction data—five years' worth, condensed into a downward curve.

"Extraction rate dropped below ninety-two percent starting last Monday." Her finger tapped the inflection point on the graph. "You reported equipment aging before."

"Last week's equipment report came back normal."

"Then it's the subject." She turned the screen back. "Ten months from now, we activate the backup plan. Until then, maximize daily extraction frequency. How long can the equipment hold?"

"Eight to ten months."

"Enough."

Her gaze moved from the data screens to the old technician to the night view beyond the window—never once turning toward me. From start to finish, she didn't say my name.

Then she waved her hand. The cart turned around and headed back.

The glass hood bent her figure into a blurry outline. Before the door closed, the last thing I saw was her profile, looking down at her screen.

The freight elevator descended.

For five years, I'd imagined over and over what it would be like to see her again. Her expression. Her voice. Her first words. All of it had just happened. She'd spoken twenty-six sentences. Every one of them had been about her assets.

The elevator stopped. The cart moved through the corridor; the guards dragged me out and shoved me back into the cell. The iron door closed; the lock bit shut.

I lay on the floor. The cold on my back was exactly as it had been on the first day five years ago. When she said "backup plan," there was no pause. When she said "enough," she was already looking at the next screen.

I closed my eyes and pushed my attention back into that encrypted node on the second basement level. The progress accelerated—at two in the morning, the first layer of encryption cracked. At four, the second cracked. At five-twenty, only the final firewall remained.

This file was named after my codename, encrypted by her own hand, buried at the deepest layer of Arc Light's servers. Five years of extraction, her twenty-six words, her refusal to look at me—all of it was locked inside.

I tore through the last firewall.

The data flooded in—unpacked, reassembled. An audio file. Timestamp: seven days before Operation Omega, five years ago.

The first voice was Valen's.

"Project codename: Radiance. Objective: continuous serum extraction from S-Class superhuman Kane for the treatment of target patient, Leon."

Leon. My son.

Morrow's voice followed: "Serum extraction requires the subject to survive. Under standard protocol, how long can the subject last?"

"Three years."

"Leon requires at least ten years of continuous treatment. Under standard protocol, after three years we'll need another S-Class donor."

Valen's voice paused for one beat, then continued smoothly: "Then make him last ten years. Design a continuous extraction protocol. Reduce each session's extraction volume, extend the total duration."

Morrow's voice paused a moment. "Valen. This falls outside standard protocol coverage. The subject will remain conscious, continuously aware of the extraction process. Ten years."

"I'll sign off on the protocol coverage."

Her voice was flat throughout the audio. The cadence of "Project codename: Radiance" was identical to every subsequent word. No hesitation, no tremor.

Then the sound of Morrow clearing his throat. "Funding."

"Operation Omega. Announce he died in an explosive sacrifice during the mission. All survivor benefits and IP royalties for the hero's widow will be redirected to Project Radiance. Only you and I know this. Any other questions?"

"No."

The audio ended.

I opened my eyes. The cell was still this cell. Gray ceiling, the perpetually burning light, the wall covered in scratches.

I lay on the floor, pressing my palm to my chest.

She'd said "I'll sign off on the protocol coverage" with the exact same cadence as "Project codename: Radiance."

She had planned every step from the beginning. Before the wedding, or before Leon was born—that question had no answer. I set it aside.

I sat up from the floor and looked down at my hands. A fresh scratch from yesterday was still on my palm, the nail mark not yet scabbed over.

I pressed my palm to the wall. The scratches dug into my skin.