The elevator screen two floors down whispers headlines between breaths, and the building drinks them like tea. I let the rhythm find the metronome of my bones, then kill every notification I can’t trust and set the recorder on the table so its red eye can watch me.
My phone vibrates across a ring of dried citrus on the wood. Sera. I swipe. “You’re awake,” I say, because that is safe and not a charge.
“I’m awake,” she repeats, and the thinness in her voice keeps me upright. “Don’t talk; just—just listen.” Stainless clinks on her end; I hear a spoon circle a mug, the slow scrape of ceramic that means she’s buying time.
“I’m here,” I say. The kitchen smells like salt and the lab’s disinfectant I can’t scrub out of my hands. The bay coughs fog against my window, and drones blink blind along the marina’s wind tunnel; somewhere a blimp drifts off course and gossips stall mid-sentence.
“Leo had a… episode,” she says, the word breaking in her mouth. “Last week. Work flagged his metrics—concentration dips, sleep variance. He called me from outside the Strand, said the crowds were—too much. I told him to come home. He didn’t. He went to Curalis intake.”
My throat dries so fast I hear it. “He what?”
“Volunteered,” she rushes. “He asked for the pilot—he called it a peace program. They said it was short-term coaching. ‘Curated recall guidance’ so he could move through… Dad and Mom. Through you.” On the last word I hear the apology and the barb sleeping beside it.
I hold the counter with my free hand. The laminate bites my palm. “Who signed?”
“He did.” The spoon stops. “He’s thirty-one. He said he wanted help, and he didn’t want to bother us with the storm.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and smell citrus cleanser trapped in my fingerprints. “You told me when you told me,” I say, failing to be gentle. “Which is right now.”
“I wanted to tell you when I knew it wasn’t—” She inhales; I count four beats like a nurse taught me in a room I still carry in my ribs. “When I knew it wasn’t a trap.”
“Sera,” I say, and that’s all, because any other word would split the night.
“Don’t do that,” she says, voice small. “Don’t make the silence a verdict.”
“Then give me details.” I pace. The house tastes like hot sugar from the neighbor’s late baking. On the table, my mother’s wristband—halo icon like two rings pretending to guard—catches the desk lamp and throws back a wounded glow.
“He sent me a consent screen. It was—” She stops. “It looked like your addendum.”
“The reframing clause,” I say.
She swallows. “He said it was therapeutic discretion. He sent a thumbs-up and a peace hand. He said not to freak.”
“Where is he now?”
“He set his status to Peace Piloting. Then he went offline.” She tries for steadiness and lands on paper-thin. “I thought he’d check in tonight. He didn’t.”
“I need his wristband ID,” I say. “Now.”
Sera exhales like air escaping a box you can’t tape back shut. “I have it. I kept a picture from the last family beach day, remember? When you brought microphones and he kept splashing them. He flashed the band at me. I joked about the halo scanning the ocean for sins.”
“Text it,” I say. “Right now.”
I hear the chirp of her message. The photo hits my screen: Leo’s wrist, river-blue veins under salt, the halo icon crisp. I crop the ID, feed it to a lookup panel Jonas built for me in a fit of dangerous generosity, and hit resolve.
Micro-hook: The map draws itself in pale lines, and a dot I love decides where I have to stand.
The phone is still against my ear. “I’m here,” I tell Sera again, because I keep promises I can say out loud.
“If you run at them,” she says softly, “they’ll make it my fault for not telling you.” The spoon taps twice. Tap. Tap. Her house must smell like decaf and laminate dust and the heat of a wall display left on too long. “What if he’s safe?”
“Then I’ll apologize,” I say. “I’ll never stop apologizing. But my window shows storms. I’m not waiting inside.” I open the Faraday pouch and release my own wristband like a snake I mistrust. It wakes with a friendly buzz. Upcoming: Reframing Consult—Lab 7. The rings gleam. I turn the screen to face the table.
The lookup resolves. The dot blinks on the district map, then drifts, then stops: a rectangle of white I know without labels. “Sera,” I say, and my voice is a rope I throw across a sudden gap. “He’s pinging near Lab 7.”
“What does near mean?” She breathes too fast. “Near on purpose? Near in transit? Near for a walk?”
“Near means inside their perimeter,” I say, scanning the geofence notches. “He’s in the ring they say is a road but is actually a leash.”
“No,” she whispers. “No, no.”
“I’m looping in Jonas,” I say. “Stay on.”
I open a parallel call. Jonas answers on the second go with the audio equivalent of a raised eyebrow. “You awake or working?”
“Both,” I say. “Sera’s on. Leo volunteered for a ‘peace program.’ His band just pinged inside the Lab 7 perimeter.”
The rustle on Jonas’s end is a chair and a jacket and a keyboard waking up. “Send me the ID.”
I flick it over, the halo icon floating like an eye in the thread’s header. The city smells like a dock at low tide; the drones outside cough brighter and then dim, failing to see in the fog they own.
“Pulled,” Jonas says. “I’m in public APIs and shadow caches. There’s a sponsor endpoint for Authorized Benevolence I can’t touch without gloves.”
“Gloves,” I say, and it’s not a request; it’s a prayer and a curse at once.
Sera clears her throat. “Jonas,” she says, tripping over the name like she’s stepping into a room with someone she hasn’t chosen. “Don’t get him in trouble.”
“I don’t do trouble,” Jonas says. “I do evidence.” He’s lying, but he’s kind about it. “Sera, I’m going to talk fast. If Leo opted into a pilot, there’s a data trail: scheduling, intake questionnaire timestamps, scan-room queues, even cafeteria swipes. The benevolence portal aggregates it behind smiles. I can read what they forget to hide.”
“They don’t forget much,” I say. “They choreograph.”
“Then we step on their marks,” he says. “Mira, I need your chime logs—there’s a correlation script I wrote for bell entries and consent screens.”
I drag the folder to him. The elevator screen whispers a sponsor blurb, and the air tastes briefly of caramelized sugar. Families in the building trade reputation scores like weather—stay green, stay hired—and I picture Leo’s number dimming the way Sera’s husband’s did.
Jonas mutters to himself, a rhythm of keystrokes I know better than most people’s heartbeats. “Okay. I see Leo’s ID in a training array—masking is weak, patterns are loud. There’s a ‘pilot_cohort_3’ label cross-referenced with Lab 7. Intake at 18:32 tonight. Status flagged Comfort Prep.”
Sera whispers, “Comfort.”
“Not for him,” I say. I hit the recorder. “Call log: 00:14. Jonas confirms Leo tagged to Lab 7 pilot cohort. Status: Comfort Prep.”
Micro-hook: The dot doesn’t move. I move around it in my head like I’m circling a hole in thin ice.
“I’m looking for motion,” Jonas says. “Badge taps, door pops. There’s a soft system for cleaning staff with a less paranoid clock. If a hallway camera fails, maintenance gets a ping.”
“Find me failing cameras,” I say. “They hide work where the watchmen blink.”
“On it.” He breathes. “There—hallway outside Lab 7 A has a camera heartbeat drop for nine seconds. Time-stamped three minutes after Leo’s intake. Motion sensor stayed high. Something happened in the blind.”
“Gurney,” I say. “Or chair transfer.”
Sera’s breath hits the mic. “Stop saying chair.”
I close my eyes and taste lemon and copper. “Sera, I’m not filming this call. I’m not making it content. I’m making it a line I can hold when they ask where I was.”
“Where are you going?” she says, the panic behind the syllables like steam.
“To the marina,” I say. “To the door that hides the sublevel door. To the place where the fog makes drones fail at being gods.”
Jonas hums agreement. “There’s a staff entrance by the wind tunnel that feeds the HVAC. In this fog, the blimps reroute and the gossip booths shut down. You can walk invisible if your breath is small.”
“Breath is small,” I say, rolling a recorder battery between my fingers like a coin I pray with. I smell the kitchen’s heat and the wet air pushing at the window seal. In my mouth, the aftertaste of someone else’s hot sugar.
“Wait,” Sera says. “Don’t move yet. Tell me what you’ll say if you get him. I need to hear the script.”
I stop, palm on the table where the halo wristband glares. “I’ll say his name. I’ll say the three storm words Mom taught us. I’ll say we’re going home.”
She holds breath so long I listen for the bell tone the clinic would compose around it. None comes. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
Jonas clears his throat. “One more thing. The benevolence endpoint throws a user-facing message when a pilot participant is pre-cleared for broadcast segments. It’s coded to suppress in family portals. I can see the shadow of the message—like a watermark under the UI. Leo’s status is Pending Orientation Capture.”
My tongue goes dead in my mouth. “Orientation capture,” I repeat, and the room slants.
“They said ‘peace program,’” Sera says, and the spoon clinks like a tiny bell at a funeral.
“Peace that airs,” I say. “Peace with a QR code.”
Jonas’s keyboard rattles. “I’m scraping schedule blocks. Two-week special—Family Edition—has placeholders for ‘reconciliation vignettes.’ Lab 7 feeds pre-roll. They’re prepping him.”
The city tilts toward the sea. I hear the marina cables sing in the wind tunnel when fog thickens, a metal throat clearing. I swipe my recorder’s fresh card in—ceremony makes a spine when fear eats the one you were born with—and zip my coat.
“I’m coming with you,” Sera says.
“No,” I answer. “You stay. You hold paperwork. You send me the ledger photo with Mom’s discharge note. If they make me choose between sister and proof, I choose both. That means triangles and timing, not bravery on camera.”
She quiets. Then: “Bring him his hoodie. The gray one he likes.”
I stare at the peg by the door where a gray hoodie hangs like a person listening to itself. “I will,” I say.
Jonas’s voice returns, clipped and bright. “I have a path. Maintenance-labeled door, vents blowing citrus. Camera heartbeat drops in a loop every eleven minutes—someone automated blindness to sneak breaks. We ride that timing.”
“Ride,” I repeat. The elevator screen on my floor blinks awake and whispers a headline too soft to parse. Between floors, the building keeps secrets safer than people do.
I tuck the halo wristband into foil and tape, a temporary coffin. I slide the recorder into my inside pocket where it can hear my ribs. The house smells like lemon and old coffee and the cotton dust of a hoodie that carried a winter. My mouth is dry and I chew a sugar packet open and pour sweetness on my tongue because I need something that isn’t metal.
“Mira,” Sera says, and her voice is the line we all once crossed with ease. “If he’s already—if they—promise me you won’t use him to make the case.”
I press my forehead to the cool of the door. The wood’s grain is a waveform I could trace in the dark. “I promise I won’t make him proof. I’ll make him home.”
Jonas cuts in, gentle but urgent. “The heartbeat drop hits again in four minutes. If we move, we move now.”
The bay coughs. The drones blink blind. The blimp reroutes like a rumor that knows better than to show its face. I slide the gray hoodie off the peg, feel its weight like a hand at my elbow, and open the door to the stairwell air that tastes like concrete and winter.
Micro-hook: My phone buzzes once with a single character—.—from Leo’s number, then goes dark.
I descend, counting steps the way I counted hospital pulses. At the bottom, a neighbor’s door opens; hot sugar floods the hall; she sees my face and pretends not to, etiquette in this city where filming at communal tables is taboo and liveblogs sprout at the edges. We trade nods like weather reports. Storm code: understood.
“Text me,” Sera says over the line, brittle quiet. “When you see him. Tell him Mom’s words.”
“I will,” I say. I push through to the night that tastes like salt and circuitry. The fog wraps me in a wet garment that hides everything and shows everything to the machines that own night.
Jonas’s voice is in my ear, my second heartbeat. “Three minutes to drop. Follow the wind tunnel hum. When you smell fresh citrus, you’re close.”
I breathe in and get disinfectant, exhaust, the faint burnt sugar of a stall locking its gate. I taste the city and the market and the lie of purity tucked in two rings. I step into the wind and let it carry the next choice to my feet.
“Orientation capture,” I say to the fog, and the words stick. “Over my mother’s storm.”
“Two minutes,” Jonas says.
“Mira?” Sera whispers. “Is he—”
I pause at the corner where the maintenance door glows the color of no choice at all. The dot on my screen does not move.
“He’s inside,” I say. “And I’m at the door.”
Jonas inhales. “One minute.”
The heartbeat drop begins.
I reach for the handle and ask the night a question none of us can answer yet: “When they open him, who will he be looking for?”