Simon Vale asked for immunity before he asked for pain medication.
Clare reacted to that detail with disgust.
“He's a doctor.”
Ward replied, “He's also frightened.”
“Good.”
I understood Clare's anger.
Simon had stood beside Evelyn's unconscious body.
His expertise had helped make the drugs possible.
He might have participated in what happened to me.
Whatever fear he felt now did not erase years of deliberate harm.
But frightened people talked.
That made him useful.
Simon had been found with a deep wound along his side, dehydration, and signs he had spent hours outdoors.
He claimed he had escaped Northfield after being attacked.
By M2.
Investigators interviewed him at a guarded hospital.
We watched a recording later.
Simon looked older than the man I had seen in the archived video.
Smaller too.
Fear does that to people.
The investigator asked, “Who is M2?”
Simon closed his eyes.
“Dr. Miriam Vey.”
Clare inhaled sharply.
“You know her?”
“Everyone in neuropharmacology knows her.”
Miriam Vey was a respected researcher.
Published.
Decorated.
A former university professor whose work focused on memory formation, trauma response, and pharmacological interruption of recall.
She had also served on Asterion's scientific advisory board.
Publicly, she retired four years earlier.
Privately, according to Simon, she never stopped.
M2.
Miriam.
The second-generation director of the project.
“What does second-generation mean?” I asked.
Ward explained what Simon had said.
The research predated Dererick.
Predated Simon.
Possibly predated Asterion's current corporate structure.
Miriam inherited it from an earlier program.
“Who started it?”
“Simon claims he doesn't know.”
I did not believe him.
Neither did Ward.
The interview continued.
Simon admitted providing compounds.
Admitted monitoring subjects.
Admitted helping create documentation that disguised adverse reactions.
He insisted he had never intended permanent injury.
Clare nearly walked out when she heard that.
“That's what people say when their experiments have names instead of numbers.”
I squeezed her hand.
Simon described Dererick as a field handler.
Not a scientist.
His strength was social access.
He could create relationships that lasted.
He could make people trust him.
Asterion considered that rare.
I thought of our marriage.
Six years reduced to professional competence.
The investigator asked Simon why Dererick married subjects.
Simon hesitated.
“Marriage provides continuous observation.”
The answer made me nauseous.
“Was he required to marry them?”
“Not initially.”
“Explain.”
“Evelyn became attached. Dererick proposed extending access through marriage. The data quality improved.”
I closed my eyes.
Dererick had invented the method.
Not Miriam.
Not Asterion.
Him.
Whatever sympathy his messages had briefly stirred vanished.
“He volunteered it.”
Ward nodded.
“Yes.”
After Evelyn, marriage became part of the protocol for certain subjects.
I was one.
Dererick's apparent affection had not merely failed to stop the experiment.
His relationship with Evelyn had taught the project how useful marriage could be.
The investigator asked about Evelyn's confinement.
Simon looked away.
“She destabilized.”
“What does that mean?”
“She discovered the project.”
“And?”
“She attempted exposure.”
“So you declared her mentally ill?”
“I didn't.”
“Who did?”
“Miriam managed the transition.”
Transition.
Phase IV.
South Harbor.
Mara's rewritten records.
Voss's administration.
Graves's protection.
Everyone had played a role.
“Why didn't Evelyn simply leave?” the investigator asked.
Simon answered quietly.
“She did.”
My breath stopped.
“What?”
Ward paused the video.
I looked at her.
“Evelyn escaped?”
“For eleven days.”
“Where did she go?”
“Police.”
Of course.
She had done exactly what I nearly did.
Simon continued.
Evelyn reported Dererick.
An officer interviewed her.
That officer was not Graves.
The report went upward.
Within hours, Asterion knew.
Records were altered.
Simon provided an interpretation of toxicology findings.
Mara supplied psychiatric history that did not previously exist.
A clinician linked to the project evaluated Evelyn.
Her credibility collapsed under manufactured evidence.
She was returned to Dererick.
Then transferred to South Harbor.
I felt physically sick.
“That was the first Phase IV.”
Ward nodded.
“They learned from her.”
Every trap built around me had been refined using Evelyn's failed escape.
That was why she understood.
She had already lived my future.
The investigator asked Simon about me.
His expression changed.
“Anna was different.”
“How?”
“Dererick became unstable.”
“Define unstable.”
“He delayed exposures. Reduced dosages without authorization. Falsified some observation logs.”
I stared.
Dererick had been altering my data.
Why?
“Attachment,” Simon said when asked.
“He loved her?”
Simon gave an exhausted laugh.
“I don't know what Dererick calls love.”
Neither did I anymore.
But Simon said something else.
Three months earlier, Miriam ordered Phase III to begin.
Dererick delayed.
Twice.
Then he apparently decided to trigger it himself.
“How?” the investigator asked.
Simon looked directly toward the camera.
“He changed the tea.”
My skin prickled.
The strange taste.
Three nights.
Not careless mixing.
Deliberate.
“He wanted Anna to notice.”
The room became silent.
I remembered asking Dererick at breakfast.
Different?
How?
His response.
His smile.
Then the third night.
The cup.
The camera.
The syringe he never used.
He had checked my pulse.
Noticed I was awake.
And stopped.
“He knew,” I whispered.
Ward looked at me.
“That night. He knew I hadn't taken it.”
“Simon believes so.”
I replayed Dererick touching my wrist.
The hesitation.
The unused syringe.
He had known I was pretending.
Yet he left the camera running.
Why?
Because he wanted me to see enough.
Enough to run.
Enough to break the protocol.
The investigator asked Simon exactly that.
“Dererick was trying to collapse the project,” Simon said.
“Why not simply report it?”
“He couldn't.”
“Why?”
“Because Asterion had files on him.”
“What files?”
Simon hesitated.
“Early subjects.”
“Crimes?”
“Yes.”
“Committed by Dererick?”
“Yes.”
There it was.
No redemption.
Dererick might have turned against Miriam, but he had done so only after years of willing participation.
If he exposed Asterion, he exposed himself.
So instead he created a controlled failure.
He let me wake.
He left clues.
He expected me to run.
But he underestimated what happened next.
Peterson.
Jonah.
The archive copy.
The speed of the investigation.
“He wanted me to expose them for him.”
Ward said, “That's one interpretation.”
“He used me again.”
Even his rebellion had turned me into a tool.
The realization hurt in a strangely clean way.
I no longer needed to decide whether Dererick was secretly good.
He wasn't.
A guilty man could oppose something worse without becoming innocent.
Simon said Dererick contacted him after I left the house.
He told Simon the project was finished.
He intended to release records.
Simon panicked.
Miriam learned of the breach.
They met at Northfield.
“What happened there?” the investigator asked.
Simon swallowed.
“Miriam arrived first.”
“Alone?”
“No.”
“Who was with her?”
“R.”
“Name.”
Simon closed his eyes.
“Robert Crane.”
R.
Logistics.
Vehicles.
Property access.
Disposal.
Another collaborator identified.
Miriam ordered Simon to destroy Northfield's records.
Simon refused.
Not from morality, he insisted.
From self-preservation.
If the records vanished, Miriam could blame everything on him and Dererick.
An argument followed.
Crane attacked Simon.
Dererick intervened.
During the struggle, Simon was cut badly.
Dererick got him out through a service tunnel.
They escaped in separate directions.
“Where did Dererick go?”
“I don't know.”
“Did he say?”
Simon nodded.
“What?”
“He said he had one thing left to fix.”
I knew before the investigator asked.
“What thing?”
Simon answered.
“Evelyn.”
My heart tightened.
Dererick knew she was alive.
He had always known.
Perhaps he intended to free her.
Perhaps silence her.
I no longer trusted any generous interpretation.
Ward received another message.
South Harbor.
Evelyn was safe.
Dererick had not reached her.
At least not yet.
“Where is Miriam?” I asked.
“Unknown.”
“Crane?”
“Unknown.”
“Graves?”
“Unknown.”
Three dangerous people missing.
Dererick missing too.
Simon alive.
Voss still unaccounted for.
Mara overseas, supposedly.
The network was breaking apart, but broken systems could be more dangerous than stable ones.
Then Ward's phone rang.
She answered.
Her face changed.
“Repeat that.”
She listened.
“When?”
Another pause.
“Secure it. Nobody touches anything.”
She ended the call.
“What?”
Ward looked directly at me.
“Someone delivered a package to the federal building.”
My stomach tightened.
“For who?”
“You.”
“What is it?”
“A phone.”
“From Dererick?”
“There was a note.”
“What did it say?”
Ward hesitated.
I already knew.
“Tell me.”
She did.
Anna, you were supposed to wake up sooner.
