Chapter 2

When I woke up for real, Sylvia was by my side, her face a perfect mask of concern. She held my hand, her touch now feeling like a lie. Director Clark stood at the foot of the bed, his expression somber.

"Nathaniel, son, you went through hell," he said. "We're going to take care of you."

They told me the mercenaries had likely destroyed the Rosetta Key after extracting it. A tragic loss for the agency, they said. I just stared at them, my face blank.

"What about the serum?" I asked, my voice raspy. I was talking about the new regenerative serum, a project I had personally helped develop. It could heal bone and tissue at an incredible rate. My legs needed it.

"We need to stabilize it first," Sylvia said smoothly, stroking my hair. "Your system has been through too much trauma. We can't risk a rejection."

It was a lie. I knew it. They were delaying my treatment, prioritizing Caleb's integration with my Rosetta Key. They needed me weak. They needed me broken.

Days turned into a week. My condition got worse. A low-grade fever started, a reaction to the trauma and the slow, agonizing healing of my shattered bones. This was their excuse.

One evening, a nurse came in with a syringe filled with a dark, viscous liquid.

"Director's orders," she said. "A new painkiller cocktail. Top of the line."

Sylvia was there to oversee it. "This will help with the pain, my love," she whispered.

I knew our protocols. I knew our suppliers. The vial had markings from a rival organization, one we fought in the shadows. This wasn't our premium tech. This was something cheap, something dangerous.

They injected it into my IV.

The relief never came. Instead, a new kind of pain ignited in my body. It wasn't the sharp pain of broken bones. It was a deep, grinding agony, a fire in my marrow that made me want to scream. It felt like my bones were dissolving from the inside out.

I bit my lip until it bled, refusing to give them the satisfaction of hearing me cry out.

They used this. They documented my "adverse reaction," my "psychological breakdown." They built a case against me, piece by piece. My mission was a failure. My body was broken. My mind was unstable.

They stripped me of my security clearance while I lay in that bed, writhing in state-sanctioned agony. They told me it was for my own good, a temporary measure until I recovered.

All the while, they were grooming Caleb Todd to take my place. My position. My life. And they did it all with smiles on their faces, feigning sympathy for the man they were systematically destroying.