Page 10 of Hollow State

Most of it was normal and exactly what Darwin had expected.

He shifted his attention to the latest X-rays and compared them to the originals and all the ones in between.

Kane had arrived at the bunker with a gunshot wound to the shoulder, massive blood loss, and an unstable thoracolumbar fracture in the T12 to L1 region. By the time Darwin had gotten his hands on him, weakness had already spread through both legs as swelling crowded the spinal cord.

Now, Kane walked the halls of the bunker with a cane, and occasionally without it, even though Darwin would prefer Kane use it all the time.

Darwin adjusted his glasses and scrolled through the results again, moving between Kane’s original intake records from Elysium Neuro & Spinal Institute and the blood Wynn had drawn early that morning.

The numbers hadn’t changed since the last time he’d looked.

His liver and kidney functions remained within acceptable ranges. His inflammatory markers continued to fall, and nothing suggested Kane’s body had developed an adverse reaction to the AXS-1 protocol.

AXS-1 was doing what Darwin had created it to do.

The treatment had stimulated repair and restored nerve function he hadn’t been sure Kane would ever regain. The progress had been slow at first, measured in the twitch of a toe and the ability to shift one leg without assistance. Then Kane had stood between parallel bars. Taken a few steps. Graduated to a walker, then the cane he viewed as a personal insult.

He was stronger now. More stable.

But a blood panel and simple X-rays could only tell Darwin so much.

They couldn’t show him the full condition of Kane’s spinal cord or whether the repaired neural pathways were holding under increased activity. They couldn’t provide the detailed imaging or neurological testing Prewit had available at the institute. And they couldn’t tell Darwin when they could safely begin reducing the AXS-1.

That required equipment the bunker didn’t have.

Darwin leaned back in his chair, lifted his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. The medical bay had gone quiet an hour ago when Wynn left to prepare Kane for transport. Darwin should have used that time to finish packing.

Instead, he’d spent it reviewing a file that contained no surprises.

The contents of the two plastic boxes stacked on the examination table were another matter entirely.

The team had recovered dozens of patches, several HELIOS-type watches, and enough vials of unknown substances to keep Darwin in the lab for months. He’d spent most of the morning running what little testing he could without compromising the samples.

He’d weighed the patches, examined the backing materials beneath magnification, and removed microscopic sections from two damaged units. He’d tested residue from the reservoirs and compared it to every known version of VKR-1, KTH-1, and TTN-3 he had in his database as well as the few doses of the first two compounds that the institute had.

Nothing matched cleanly.

The vials had been even less cooperative.

Basic reagent testing confirmed that several contained complex pharmaceutical compounds that included his creation, though not a match, which told Darwin almost nothing. Without better equipment, he couldn’t isolate the individual components, determine their concentrations, or identify whatever carrier Emma had used to stabilize them.

ARGUS, a concept he'd sketched but never fully developed, had been used to deliver TITAN to Emma’s runners, but these patches weren’t identical to the ones they’d already examined. Some had different backing materials. Others contained microscopic reservoirs arranged in patterns he hadn’t seen before. The labels on the vials were either coded or deliberately meaningless.

Emma Pryce had called herself a sports science innovator and operated her Human Performance Optimization Center as if it were nothing more than an elite training facility. Athletes went there to improve endurance, strength, and recovery.

Except that had been a lie.

And Emma hadn’t been optimizing human performance.

She’d been experimenting on people.

And once again, Darwin couldn’t prove Hyperion had anything to do with it.

No contracts. No payments. No internal correspondence. Nothing tying Emma’s center to Finch beyond the distorted pieces of Darwin’s research and the modified HELIOS technology they found inside the building, which was built off Gideon's design.

Finch had become exceptionally skilled at leaving everyone else’s fingerprints behind.

Darwin closed Kane’s file and glanced toward the boxes. He had work he could start, even if he couldn’t finish any of it inside the bunker.