Page 98 of Thorne
He folds the paper carefully and places it in his chest pocket, against his heart.
Skye appears beside him, cooler in hand. Lily's blood. The samples she drew two days ago, packed in ice, ready for transport to whatever lab can identify what Phoenix put inside my daughter.
"Seventy-two hours." Skye looks at Ghost. "Preliminary results by then. Full workup within the week."
Ghost nods. "Keep us posted."
No drama. No drawn-out goodbyes. Forest catches my eye across the bay, gives a single nod, operator to operator, and climbs into the vehicle. Skye follows. The engine turns over.
Lily waves from beside me, Theodore clutched in her other hand. She doesn't cry. She doesn't ask where they're going. She is six years old and she trusts that the large Norse god will return.
The vehicle disappears around the bend.
Lily looks up at me. "Can I go show Julianna my new pattern now?"
I look at the doorway. Somewhere inside, the woman I can't stop thinking about is working at the kitchen table. The woman whose scent is still on my skin. The woman I told myself I was keeping Lily away from for tactical reasons.
"Yeah, Lily-bug." My voice comes out rougher than I intend. "Go show her."
She takes off running. Theodore bounces against her leg.
I go back inside. There's work to do. There's always work to do.
I walk past the comms room. I haven't locked the safe room door since last night. Since I walked out of there holding Cassie's mitigation file and the knowledge that everything I'd done to the woman inside was based on a lie. She attempted to defect. She fought to stop it.
And I broke her for it anyway.
Lily finds me in the kitchen at noon.
"Daddy. Watch."
She climbs onto the chair beside Stratton, beside Julianna, and spreads a piece of paper on the table. Numbers in crayon. The multiplication grid she's been working on all week.
"Okay, so the number eleven is magic." Lily's voice carries the authority of a professor delivering a lecture. "Watch what happens when you times it by things."
I lean against the doorframe. My usual position: never fully in a room, never fully out. I know what's coming. I've witnessed this before: seen my daughter run to this woman's door in the middle of the night, observed her light up when Julianna explained the patterns, tracked her transformation from a girl who believed she was broken into a girl who knows she's a genius.
I sanctioned it. Grudgingly. Because Lily needed what this woman could give her, and I couldn't give it myself.
That doesn't make it easier to watch.
"Eleven times eleven is 121." Lily writes it down. "See how it goes 1-2-1? Like a mountain? And eleven times twelve is 132. One-three-two. And eleven times thirteen is 143."
"What's the pattern?" Julianna tilts her head. Her voice is different with Lily—gentler, like she's a different person entirely when my daughter is in the room.
"The middle number goes up by one every time." Lily bounces on the chair. "And the outsides stay the same until you get to really big numbers. It's like the eleven is building a staircase."
She turns to me, beaming.
"Julianna taught me that eleven is a friendly number. It wants to make patterns. It's not like seven. Seven is sneaky."
I look at my daughter. At the confidence in her face. At the language she's using: friendly numbers, sneaky numbers, staircases. Words this woman gave her. Words that replaced the tears and frustration and the look on Lily's face when she believed she was stupid.
My jaw works once.
"That's good, Lily-bug. Real good."
"Can I show the others? Can I show Halo? He likes numbers too."
