Page 68 of Dose

“Phoenix,” he says.

The word is no longer an argument. It is a place on a plan, five days away, holding sixty-three children who cannot wait for either of us to stop being afraid.

“Phoenix,” I agree.

I settle against his uninjured side and count his breaths until they deepen toward sleep.

Neither of us lets go.

22

THEON

The breach goes perfectly for fourteen minutes.

I watch Isla on the thermal display from the west junction room, one level below the medical wing. Her vest telemetry runs beside the image: pulse elevated, respiration controlled, no distress alert. She moves with Raphael and two members of his extraction team, exactly where she is supposed to be.

She passed Damon’s live assessment four days ago. Raphael removed my sutures yesterday and cleared me for limited support. Isla enters only after the tactical team declares the wing secure. I remain at the junction as medical-wing reserve.

Every condition we set has been met.

None of them makes this tolerable.

Her green outline stops at the verification laboratory. Raphael’s team fans out around her while she checks labels against the manifest.

“Lot identities confirmed,” she says over comms. Crisp. Professional. “Beginning transfer to validated cases.”

One of the clinicians reads the numbers back. Isla confirms each before the case is sealed. Those drugs will keep sixty-three children stable long enough to reach their recovery sites. The paper dosing records are being scanned in the next room, the digital archive mirrored through the access Ezra planted in Atlanta.

This is why she is here. Not to clear corridors. Not to confront guards. To recognize the difference between medication that can travel and medication that might kill a child before dawn.

“Medical cache on schedule,” Raphael reports.

“Copy,” Nikolai says from command overwatch. “Dormitory team, status.”

Damon answers. “First floor clear. Darius has the east stair. Evacuation crews moving group one.”

Lucien’s voice follows, low and calm beneath the frightened noise around him. “Eight children on transport one. Moving the next group now.”

There are six medical transports waiting beyond the service perimeter and three vetted initial recovery sites prepared to receive them. Every child has an assigned seat, a transport group, medication, and a paper identity that did not exist a week ago. Each vehicle has a clinical crew. It took five days to construct the extraction and years to build the network beneath it.

My part is simple. Hold the junction. Watch the medical team. Move only if Nikolai sends me.

I flex my right hand once against the rifle grip. The healing line across my left shoulder pulls beneath the closure strips and then settles.

On-screen, Isla moves to the records station.

Fine. She is twenty feet away, behind two fire doors, and fine.

The camera over the western service corridor dies.

Not flickers. Dies.

“West camera lost,” Marcus says.

An alarm starts somewhere above me, a short mechanical pulse instead of the full evacuation siren.

Isla’s voice cuts across the channel. “Contact, west corridor. One armed⁠—”