Page 88 of Thorne
"He has every reason to hate me." I set the fork down. "His daughter is six years old. She likes purple. She carries a stuffed dinosaur named Theodore everywhere she goes. And she has something in her blood that my money helped put there. If our positions were reversed, I don't know that I'd be as restrained as he's been."
"Restrained." Talia's eyebrows rise. "That's what you're calling it?"
"That's what I'm calling it."
Eliza leans forward. "The men have their version of you. The Rook. Phoenix's financial architect. The reason this whole nightmare has funding." She folds her hands on the table. "What's the version you'd tell?"
I look at the screen. Then at her. The women are waiting. Martha has stopped scrubbing. Even Cassie has gone still.
"I'd been watching the money streams for years." My voice comes out like gravel, like something scraped from a depthI don't visit voluntarily. "Financial streams. Disbursement patterns. You can get used to a lot of rot if you only look at the decimals."
"Until you can't." Talia doesn't turn from her position.
"Until you can't."
"Then I read the clinic reports from the ML-273 trials. Not the financial summaries. The actual clinic reports." The words come harder now. "They weren't data points. They were ages. Weights. Adverse event logs. Deaths."
"Children." Eliza's voice drops to a quiet murmur.
"Children."
Martha sets the pot in the drying rack. The clang of metal on metal is the only sound.
"I attempted to kill the funding. I believed if I could trigger an override at the source, I could starve the project before it went live. Cut the arterial flow." I meet Eliza's eyes. "I didn't realize Phoenix was already watching the signal. Every transaction, every flag, every override attempt: it was all data. It intercepted the command. Flagged me."
"And then you were in a cage," Eliza finishes it.
"Eight months."
"How long?" Talia leans forward. "Between seeing the reports and hitting the override?"
"Six months."
The number sits in the room like something with mass. I don't soften it. I don't explain it.
"Six months." Cassie's voice is measured. "That's a long time to sit with that kind of information."
"Yes."
"What were you doing?"
"Building the case. Documenting the trail. Making sure that when I moved, I had enough evidence to bring the whole structure down, not just delay it." I hold her gaze. "Some days, Icalled that thoroughness. Some days, I recognized exactly what it was."
"What made you look?" Eliza tilts her head. "What made you pull the clinic reports?"
"A number was wrong. Dosage calibration in the disbursement model. The amounts didn't match adult oncology weights. Someone had run a second tier through my architecture, assuming I wouldn't notice because the figures were small." I pick up my pen. Set it down. "I notice amounts."
The slap of small feet hits the concrete.
Lily marches in, Theodore dangling from her fist, a math paper clutched in her other hand like evidence. She ignores the texture of the room, the weight of what's been said, and goes straight for the middle of it.
"Look what I can do." She thrusts the paper at Eliza, who is closest. Eliza takes it with both hands, giving it the same focused attention she gave my confession.
"3,245 times 11." Lily is already climbing onto the chair beside Eliza, Theodore abandoned on the table. "It's 35,695. You put the first number, then you add who's standing next to them. It's the neighbor rule."
Eliza studies the paper. Her finger traces the work. "What about when the neighbors add up to more than nine?"
"You have to carry. Like, if it's 7 and 5, that's 12, so you put the 2 and remember the 1 for next time." Lily's face is bright with the specific pride of someone who has cracked a code. "The numbers aren't monsters anymore. They're just neighbors. Daddy is letting Julianna teach me all the secrets." Lily bounces on the chair. "I'm not bad at math anymore. I've got a high-octane brain."
