Lahat ng Kabanata ng Reject Me, Alpha Tate: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

Nicole's POVTate came to check on Tracy in the afternoon.I was in the corridor with Tracy's updated file when I heard him coming, and I stepped to the side without thinking about it, head down, attendant coat, glasses, wig. He passed within two feet of me but didn't look at me. I kept my eyes on the file and didn't breathe until he turned the corner toward Tracy's wing.I stood against the wall for a moment after he disappeared and let the air back in slowly.Four years and my body still made that calculation faster than conscious thought. Step aside, make yourself small, don’t give his peripheral vision anything to catch.Some reflexes apparently outlasted the circumstances that built them.I finished the file notes, completed the afternoon round and was heading back toward the research wing an hour later when my earpiece crackled. It was Amber's voice. "Maple got out of the nursery. I'm looking but I can't find him yet."I was already moving. I checked the east corridor, the gard

Nicole's POV The institute held a small gathering in the common hall that evening. Marlon had told me it would look strange if I didn't come. Attendant staff were expected to be visible at institute social functions. So I came in my coat and my wig and my glasses and stood near the edge of the wall the way I always did. The twins were already asleep. Amber was with them, I had checked twice before I left. Marlon found me within ten minutes, appearing at my elbow with two plates and the expression of someone who had also been told to be here and was making the best of it. "You look like you're guarding the wall," he said quietly, handing me a plate. "I'm observing," I said. "From a defensive position." He stood beside me and surveyed the room. "Tracy's group arrived twenty minutes ago. Far corner, near the window. Sophia has already introduced herself to three senior researchers and Tracy has already corrected someone's posture." "Sounds about right," I said. "Tate is

Nicole's POVTracy's first proper consultation session ran for ninety minutes, and I spent all of it at the back of the room with my clipboard, present enough to be useful and invisible enough not to matter.Marlon led the session with the calm authority he brought to everything. Tracy answered questions for the first twenty minutes and spent the next seventy demanding to meet Dr. Carter personally."She has reviewed your preliminary scans and she will be present when the protocol clinically requires it," Marlon said, for the third time. "Her schedule.""Her schedule," Tracy said, "is a convenient excuse.""Tracy." That was Tate, from the chair beside her.Tracy pressed her lips together but her expression said she wasn't finished with it.Afterward I walked two steps behind Tracy and Lily in the corridor, carrying Tracy's bag while they talked. "She's a fiction," Tracy said to Lily. "I'm convinced of it. Marlon invented a female name to make the project appear more progressive and s

Tate's POV I found the institute garden by accident on the third evening and had been coming back to it since. It was quiet in a way the rest of the building wasn't, and I had been spending too many hours inside rooms that felt smaller than they were. I needed somewhere to think without people’s attention on me. So I sat on the bench near the far wall and worked through the week in my head the way I always did in the evenings — what had been handled, what was still moving, what needed my attention in the morning. What I did not need was to be thinking about the attendant and yet. She had sat beside me in the courtyard last evening, she even offered me the bench and then left almost immediately as if my presence was a burden. I kept thinking about the attendant. She was careful — that was the first thing I had noticed about her. She never said more than she needed to. Never offered information that wasn't asked for. In a building full of people who adjusted their behavior t

Nicole's POVMarlon came later, and Amber must have called him and told him to stop by. He found me sitting in the near-dark and didn't comment on it, just turned on the small lamp on the counter, pulled his coat off and sat across from me and waited.He was good at waiting, he had always been patient, it was one of the first things I had noticed about him, back when we were students and I was still learning which people were worth trusting.I told him everything, Marlon listened without interrupting, which was one of the things I valued most about him.When I finished he was quiet for a moment. "How long did they sit with him?""Long enough," I said. "They were talking before I got there," I said. "I don't know everything that was said and I was too scared to ask them after they cried." I looked at the lamp. "I just keep hoping they didn't say anything that will come back to me.""Like what?" Marlon asked."Like anything," I said. "Maple has no filter and Rosy sees too much. Between