I woke screaming into a pillow, my mouth cotton-dry from Archer's "sedative." My "suite" was a sick joke: Frette linens on a four-poster bed, but leather restraints cuffing my ankles to the frame. The window was tempered glass reinforced with wire mesh. Beyond it, lightning fractured the sky over the Hudson.
The screams came from next door. A woman babbled in rapid-fire Russian before a wet thud silenced her. Heavy footsteps retreated down the hall. Then—
Jingle of keys. A hissed argument.
My door creaked open.
Vivian stood there, swathed in Alexander's mink travel coat, her "bandaged" arm now conspicuously bare. She clicked the lock behind her, the sound final as a guillotine.
"Evelyn." She sighed, perching on my bed like a queen visiting a leper colony. "I'd say I'm sorry, but we both know I'd be lying."
I tested the restraints. "Here to gloat?"
"Here to negotiate." She tossed a tablet onto my lap. The screen showed Alexander at a Met Gala, his hand possessive on the lower back of a senator's wife. "He's already moved on. Sign a revised statement admitting you lied about the transfusion, and I'll make your stay… civilized."
I laughed, the sound ragged. "Or?"
She unsheathed a syringe from her Birkin. "Or Archer pumps you full of Prometheus until you forget your own name."
Vivian crossed her legs with the slow, deliberate grace of a panther settling onto its kill. The mink coat—Alexander's coat, the one he'd worn that weekend in Aspen when he'd ignored my calls for three days—gaped open to reveal a silk chemise beneath. The same champagne lace she'd worn in last month's Vanity Fair spread. "Opera's Rising Star: Vivian Shaw on Love, Loss, and La Traviata."
She tapped one manicured nail against the syringe in her lap. Not the standard-issue Aster Institute sedative—this was custom, the barrel engraved with Nephilim Biotech's winged logo. A collector's item.
"You should be flattered, really." Her voice was a mockery of warmth, the same tone she used in interviews about mentoring inner-city children. "Alexander only doses the ones he cares about."
She leaned in, letting the coat's lining—blood-red silk with A.S. monogrammed in gold—brush my bare knee. "He had them formulate this batch just for you. Slows neural activity in the hippocampus. Like... unspooling a tape."
I kept my breathing even. Hippocampus. Memory consolidation. She's done her homework.
Vivian sighed, examining her reflection in the syringe's chrome plunger. "Though I suppose it doesn't matter what you remember. No one believes crazy little Evelyn Lin anyway." She flicked the cap off with her thumb. "Not even your daddy did at the end, did he?"
The air left my lungs.
She knew. Of course she knew. Alexander would have told her everything—how my father's final note had accused me of siding with Sterling Capital. How the coroner ruled the overdose accidental, despite the calculated dosage.
Vivian's smile sharpened as she saw the hit land. "Oh yes, carissima. Alexander showed me the security footage from your father's study. The way you shook him when you found the body—"
"Get out." My voice was a scalpel, clean and cold.
She laughed, high and bright as shattered crystal. "But we're just getting to the fun part!" From her purse, she withdrew a slim velvet box. Inside, nestled in black satin, lay a pair of platinum cufflinks—the ones Alexander had been wearing during the crash. The ones I'd pried from his ruined shirt to check his pulse.
"These arrived at our penthouse this morning." She traced the embossed A.S. with a fingertip.
"Along with a very curious note." She produced a card—my handwriting, but not my words:
"You were always better off unconscious."
I lunged against the restraints. "I never sent—"
"Tsk." Vivian pressed the syringe to my jugular. The needle bit, a single bead of blood welling. "Alexander's so tired of your lies. But don't worry." Her other hand caressed my cheek, the gardenia scent cloying. "After a few weeks of Prometheus cocktails, you'll truly believe you saved him. That's the beauty of it."
The needle glinted under the Tiffany lamp. My medical training screamed—prion disease. Spongiform encephalopathy. A death sentence masquerading as dementia.
A crash echoed from downstairs. Shouts. The fire alarm wailed like a banshee.
Vivian stiffened. "What the—"
The door burst open.
A man in an orderly's uniform filled the frame—too tall, too broad-shouldered for the ill-fitting scrubs. His ID badge dangled askew, the photo clearly stolen.
"Apologies, Ms. Shaw." The voice was rough, edged with a South Side Chicago accent. "Code Black in the east wing. All VIPs must evacuate."
Vivian hesitated, her manicured nails digging into the mink. Then she stood, smoothing her skirt. "This isn't over." The syringe disappeared back into her purse as she swept out, Chanel No. 5 trailing behind her like poison gas.
The "orderly" locked the door and ripped off his surgical mask.
Mateo Cruz.
My former surgical resident from Chicago Free Clinic. His olive skin was slick with sweat, a fresh cut bisecting his left eyebrow. The knife scar on his neck—courtesy of a Gangster Disciple in our trauma bay last winter—stood out white against his throat.
"Dios mío, Doc." He flicked a switchblade—my switchblade, the one I kept in my desk drawer—and sliced through my restraints. "You look like mierda warmed over."
I rubbed my wrists, the skin raw. "How did you—"
"Got your FDA tip about Prometheus." He tossed me scrubs and a stolen keycard. "Tracked the vials here through Medicaid billing codes. Archer's running Phase Zero trials on undocumented immigrants. Muertos vivientes—zombies with holes in their brains."
Sirens wailed closer. Cruz peered into the hall, his bicep straining the stolen scrubs. The tattoo I'd never asked about—*USMC 2011-2015*—flexed under the fabric.
"We've got five minutes before they fake a fire drill and scrub the evidence."
I stood, my legs trembling. The room tilted. Cruz caught me, his hands calloused but gentle. For a heartbeat, we were back in Chicago, stitching up a drive-by victim by cellphone light.
Then I saw the syringe Vivian left on the nightstand. The label read: *Lot 114-P. Exp. 11/7*.
Alexander's birthday. My Mercy file date.
The pieces clicked like a bone setting.
"Change of plan." I pocketed the syringe and grabbed the tablet Vivian abandoned. My fingers flew over the screen, pulling up her forged Mercy records. "We're not running."
Cruz blinked. "¿Qué? Then what—"
I zoomed in on the attending physician's signature: Dr. Rajiv Singh, MD.
"Singh died three years ago." I smiled, the expression sharp as my scalpel. "We're burning Aster to the ground. Starting with this."
Cruz's grin matched mine. "Ahora hablas mi idioma."