"Because I am trying to remain civilized," he said.
zos gave Arik the report on Liam, and his gaze dared the prince to keep the idea of being civilized.
Arik accepted the slate.
The device woke beneath his thumb with a sealed Agaronian cipher that could be unlocked by either Arik’s signature or ros’. zos had stripped the file out of every network that might rember being touched. There was no administrative ghost left behind for Felix’s people to sniff out later.
Liam’s formal identification image appeared first.
The image was three years old, perhaps four. His hair was tied back, his red eyes narrowed at the cara with a look of profound boredom that bordered on open hostility. He wore a dark academic coat with the stiff collar of the Capital Registry, and his expression suggested that whoever had taken the photograph had been one comnt away from becoming part of a cautionary report.
Arik looked at it for one mont too long.
Then he read.
Subject: Liam Sienna Canmore.
Classification: Dominant Oga - High-Flow Potential.
Specialization: Harmonic Ether-Dynamics / Structural taphysics.
Arik scrolled past the academic record, the doctorate earned by twenty, the accelerated placents, the sealed research exemptions, and the nineteen patents Felix had "gifted" to the state with the polished theft only old families dared call patriotism.
Then he landed on the section Gabriel had been most curious about.
"Personal associations," Arik murmured.
"None," zos said flatly.
Arik’s thumb paused on the edge of the slate.
zos continued, precise enough to be cruel. "No current lovers. No previous lovers confird. No long-term companions. No registered heat partner. No private consort arrangent. No repeat intimate visitors through household logs, clinic records, travel patterns, or security shadows."
The silence that followed was very quiet.
zos watched Arik’s face with the expression of a man prepared to witness sothing unfortunate and docunt it for future caution.
Arik did not smile... yet.
"He spends most of his ti between Lab V, the Armstrong wing, and the municipal maintenance tunnels," zos went on. "He does not attend social rotations unless forced. He does not accept consort applications. According to internal household logs, he has rejected every introduction Felix attempted over the last five years."
"Every introduction," Arik repeated.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"The stated reasons vary."
Arik looked up.
zos’s mouth curved faintly. "The most recent one was that he would rather sleep inside the turbine intake."
Arik laughed.
The sound was low and brief, but it softened sothing in the room before it sharpened again.
"He has taste."
"He has selective survival instincts," zos corrected.
Arik returned to the slate.
The report continued beneath the personal section, stripped of gossip and arranged with the ugly efficiency of intelligence work.
Primary emotional access: Enia Ravenwood. Mirelle Armstrong. Rex of Wrohan. Alexander Smith. Select laboratory staff.
Arik tapped the na of the security guard from Lab V.
"Alexander Smith."
zos’s gaze sharpened by a degree. "The security guard."
"The one who gave us the IDs."
"The one who looked like he would have buried Felix in a corridor if Liam asked him to."
"Yes." Arik’s finger remained over the na. "Find out everything about him too."
zos did not look surprised. That was one of his better qualities. "Security-wise, or access to Liam?"
"Both," Arik said. "He seems like a man Liam trusts with his work, and for soone that similar to Gabriel, that ans Alexander is not rely tolerated. He is trusted. I want him checked for potential betrayal and..." His gaze remained on the na, cold and thoughtful. "If instinct serves correctly, as security for Liam when he becos mine."
zos’s eyes did not widen, he knew Arik and the warlord inside him too well, but his spine went a fraction straighter.
"When he becos yours," he repeated. "You are already building a fortress around him before he has even agreed to leave the basent."
"He does not need to agree yet," Arik said, his voice dropping into that low, quiet register that made rank feel like a physical thing. "He needs to remain alive long enough for to dismantle the cage."
zos stared at him.
Arik did not look up from the slate.
"Alexander Smith is a variable I had not accounted for, but he may be a welco one. A man who guards a genius in a chasm and does not ask foolish questions understands the value of what he protects. Check his accounts, his family ties, his combat record, his service history, and every recorded disciplinary incident. If he is clean, he stays close."
"And if he is compromised?"
Arik’s mouth curved faintly.
The expression had no warmth in it.
"Then Liam receives proof."
zos’s brow shifted.
Arik finally looked up. "I did listen to Gabriel."
"For a mont, I was concerned."
"If Alexander is compromised, Liam needs to know before I act. But if the compromise is active and threatens him, we remove the access point first and explain afterward."
"That sounds much more like you."
"It is important to remain recognizable."
zos exhaled once, dry and controlled. "I will have Alexander assessed."
Arik returned to the slate, and the next section opened under his thumb.
dical history.
The file did not dramatize. It laid horror out in clean lines, stripped of the rcy of outrage.
Industrial accidents.
Lab surges.
Stress collapses.
Displacent sickness sensitivity.
Minor burns from ward feedback.
A fracture in the left wrist at nineteen, logged as a fall in the lower chanical corridor.
Three instances of non-laboratory blunt force trauma filed without official follow-up.
Arik’s gaze moved down the dates.
One injury lined up with a canceled funding request.
Another with a patent transfer.
Another with a family summons was flagged through Ray Canmore’s office, and he knew that so of it might be retaliation and not accidents.
Then the attached images opened.
Arik stopped.
He had seen the bruises on Liam’s face.
Even beneath the makeup and ether creams, even softened by treatnt and hidden beneath Liam’s refusal to turn his face the wrong way, Arik had noticed the shadow at the cheekbone, the stiffness near the jaw, and the wrong bloom of pain under skin forced to look presentable.
He had known Felix had struck him. He had not known the severity, or more honestly, he didn’t care at that ti to intervene. Liam looked like a man knowing how to defend himself.
The first image loaded under cold dical light.
Liam’s face was turned slightly to the left, hair pulled back from his cheek, expression blank with the kind of exhaustion that ca after anger had run out of imdiate targets. Without costic masking, the damage looked brutal.
The bruising spread from cheekbone to jaw in a wide, uneven fan of violet, dark red, and blackened swelling. The point of impact sat high along the cheekbone, where the skin had split in a thin crescent beneath the pressure. The lower cheek had swollen enough to distort the line of his face. A darker mark ran close to the corner of his mouth, where the force had driven his teeth into the inner flesh.
The second image showed the opposite angle.
The third was an intraoral scan.
Laceration, inner right cheek: 1.8 cm, shallow-to-moderate depth.
Bleeding controlled before examination.
No tooth fracture detected.
Soft tissue trauma consistent with blunt-force impact transmitted through the outer cheek.
Arik’s thumb went still.
User Comments
0 comments from readers