The six weeks expire. He calls Hale directly.

Hale answers on the second ring with the ease of a man who expected this call. "When can you start?"

He starts on a Monday.

The elevator doors slide open to a hum of keyboards and the sharp, citrus bite of cleaning products. Caden adjusts the strap of his laptop bag — too loose now, the leather sagging where his shoulder has narrowed — and follows Hale past rows of identical standing desks. Faces glance up, then away. A few hands pause mid-keystroke.

Hood up. Hair bundled underneath it, more or less contained. The sweatshirt is the largest I own and it reaches mid-thigh and in the elevator to the lab I stand with my face down and the hood forward.

I get to my desk before anyone else. This was the plan.

I open the overnight logs and they are good — rabbit's margins holding, pathway data clean, projection unchanged — and I focus on this and not on the fact that I am sitting in a laboratory in November in sandals and a hoodie like someone who has not quite finished becoming a person.

Good morning.

"Morning."

Caden's spreadsheet glows in the dark bedroom — $11,742 left, not counting the overdue utility bill. He's been calculating the bleed rate for ten days straight, watching commas vanish into decimals with the grim precision of a coroner marking time of death. The last withdrawal was for pads, the next period anticipated with precision, four weeks from the first one.

I close the door and stand in the apartment.

The same. The coat hook, the small pile of mail I haven't dealt with, the kitchen visible through the doorway with last night's pan on the stove. All of it exactly as I left it. I stand in it with my shoes still in my hand and the hair falling into my face and let the sameness settle around me for a moment.

[Note - this section contains an alcohol-induced gap in Caden's memory with ambiguity around what happens during that gap, referenced later in the story. In case this is upsetting to some readers I'm giving warning here.]

---

The intercom buzzes twice before Hale's voice crackles through — "Who is it?" — the same baritone Caden had heard on a hundred conference calls, smooth as poured bourbon.

"Caden Voss." His voice comes out softer than he intended, vowels rounding at the edges.

A pause. The static hisses.

"Sorry?"

I wake before Emily. Grey light, the room quiet. I lie there for a moment and take stock - the lower back ache that's been there for five days is gone. Not reduced, gone. The heaviness behind the sternum still faintly there but lighter, beginning to clear. Something has shifted overnight.

I get up and go to the bathroom.

The laptop screen casts a blue pall over Caden's hands as he scrolls through endless grids of sports bras — women in mid-stride, frozen in athletic poses, all of them grinning with their hands on their hips like this is some kind of victory. His fingers hesitate over the trackpad. None of these are designed for someone who still lifts weights but needs to strap down what shouldn't be there in the first place.

The next day comes with a heaviness I don't recognize at first - not the cramping, which has mostly eased, but something underneath it. Behind the sternum. In the legs when I stand. I eat breakfast and drink coffee and it doesn't lift the way tiredness lifts with caffeine. Just sits there, systemic, the whole body running slightly below its usual output.

---

Morning light finds him asleep in his clothes, barely rested. He packs both devices into his messenger bag and heads for the closest repair shop.

The bell jingles as he enters. A technician glances up from behind the counter — early twenties, a name tag reading ETHAN. His eyes skim past Caden's shoulders, landing somewhere around chin level. "Help you, ma'am?"

Caden's breath hitches. He sets the laptop and phone on the counter.

"Sir," he says, his pitch higher than expected, higher than a man's should be. He coughs, tries again. "Biometric lockout."

There's a single-occupancy bathroom at the end of the east corridor — the one with the accessibility sign and the slightly sticky lock that everyone knows about and nobody has ever put in a maintenance request for. I've used it before when the men's is occupied. Today I go there first, directly.

I push the button to lock the door and it clicks.

Chapter 4

I wake before the alarm.

This happens sometimes, the body surfacing on its own. But not groggy — more like arriving somewhere, the transition between sleep and waking unusually clean, as though I've come online all at once rather than in stages.

I lie still.

Chapter 3

Marcus calls at eight-fifteen — school run done, twenty minutes before he has to be anywhere.

"Wolves lost," he says, before I've finished saying hello.

"I saw."

"You didn't see. You checked the score at midnight and felt nothing."

"I felt something."

"You felt data. It's different." A car door, keys, the acoustics of his kitchen — I know it well enough to place it. "They're going to finish mid-table again. I've made peace with it. Have you made peace with it?"

"I've never not been at peace with it."

I am Vera.

The name is simply there — not chosen, not arrived at. Present the way the body is present, like the room is present. All three arrive at once and I can't tell you the order.

I wake before the alarm. The room is grey. I lie there taking stock - the burn is still there, but noticeably less. The itch is mostly gone. But there's something in the boxer briefs again, the same thick dampness against the labia as when I woke in the night.

I get up carefully, not waking Emily.

I pull open the waistband and check the boxer briefs in the bathroom. A white discharge in the crotch - different from last night, no sour smell, something milder. I drop the underwear to the floor and turn on the shower.

Chapter 27 – Wings of the Queen