LOGIN~Felix~"It started small," Evans said, sitting across from me, hands clasped like a man trying to hold himself together through sheer physical pressure. "You hated me. I know you already understand that part, but I need you to understand how much. You tried, more than once, to have my operations shut down. We crossed paths at a gala, maybe eight months before the amnesia, and you spent the entire evening making sure every single person in that room knew exactly how little respect you had for me."I nodded along, keeping my face arranged into something open, attentive, the exact expression of a man hungry for any piece of his missing life he could get his hands on.I'm done believing anything anyone tells me, I thought, watching his mouth move, watching the careful, rehearsed quality behind every word even now, even in a conversation he claimed was finally, completely honest. Not him. Not James. Not even my own body, apparently, since it's been keeping secrets from my own mind this en
~Felix~The second the bathroom door clicked shut behind him, I moved.I don't trust the phone he gave me. I've felt it since the first morning, some instinct telling me every search, every message, every quiet moment I spent scrolling through it was being watched, filtered, curated by someone on the other end who wasn't me. So I picked up his phone instead, lying forgotten on the nightstand, fully expecting to find it locked, fully prepared to abandon the idea and try something else.It wasn't locked.Luck, apparently, was finally on my side.My fingers moved fast, pulling up the dialer before I could think too hard about what I was doing, and a number surfaced in my memory the second I touched the screen, not a conscious recollection, just my fingers knowing exactly which digits to press the way they'd known exactly how to fire a weapon on that road two days ago. I dialed it without fully understanding why I trusted it.It rang twice before someone picked up."James?" I said, quiet,
~Reyes~"Turn him," I said, standing at the window of my office, watching the city lights spread out below like a map of territory I intended to eventually redraw entirely. "I want Felix remembering exactly how much he hated that man before any of this amnesia nonsense happened. I want that hatred sitting right back where it belongs, sharp and personal, and I want it there fast."My right hand stood near the desk, arms crossed, turning the instruction over before responding, which was one of the reasons I kept him close. He didn't just execute. He thought first."You want us feeding him memories directly," he said slowly. "Or you want us creating conditions that trigger what's already in there.""Both, if we can manage it." I turned from the window, pacing back toward the desk. "We already know proximity to familiar places does something to him, the estate, apparently the warehouse too, based on what our people saw from a distance before the attack. His own mind is doing half our work
~Evans~I got him back to the car, got him settled against the seat with his eyes closed and his breathing slowly evening out as the worst of the headache passed, and I sat there beside him with his hand gripped tight in mine, feeling the entire structure of the last two months finally, irreversibly starting to give way.I was so angry.He'd said it with such certainty, such raw, physical conviction, that some part of me understood, sitting there in that car, that whatever fragment had surfaced in the warehouse wasn't going away again. It would sit there now, half formed, aching, until the rest of it came looking for the pieces that completed it. And I was the only person left who could hand him those pieces before something else did it for me."We're going home," I told the driver quietly. Not the next stop on this trip. Not another careful, curated memory trigger designed to buy me more time. Home.Felix didn't argue. He just leaned his head back against the seat, eyes still closed,
~Felix~The drive to the warehouse was silent, Evans sitting beside me with his jaw tight, phone finally tucked away after whatever call had kept him out on that balcony long enough that I'd started counting the minutes. I didn't ask what it was about. I was too tired, too wrung out from everything that had already happened that day, to chase one more thread I didn't have the strength to pull on yet.The building came into view as the car slowed, and something in my chest tightened before I'd even consciously registered why.Old. Industrial. Harbor road, salt and rust in the air even through the closed windows, the kind of structure that had clearly been abandoned long enough for the paint to peel and the signage out front to fade past legibility. Ordinary, by every outward measure. And yet something in me recoiled the second it came fully into view, some old animal instinct flinching before my conscious mind had caught up to why."You feel it too," Evans said quietly, watching my fac
~~Evans~~I stood out on the small balcony off the safehouse's upper floor for a long time after leaving him alone, phone gripped tight in one hand, staring out at nothing, feeling the entire architecture of the last two months finally, completely start to collapse.Reyes did, I'd said, and watched him not fully believe it, watched that same sharp, cataloguing look settle back behind his eyes that told me, even through his grief, even through his fury, some part of him was already working past the lie toward whatever sat underneath it.I didn't have much time left. I understood that now with a clarity that felt almost like relief after two months of careful, exhausting management.Marcus found me there a few minutes later, phone already in hand. "Boss. The road's clear, we can move whenever you're ready, but I wanted to flag something first. We got movement on the warehouse property. Unconfirmed, could be nothing, but—""Cancel it," Felix said, appearing in the doorway behind him, arm







