"I'm on my spot," I said into the comm, the words pressed soft against the microphone and carried like a blade. The ballroom breathed around me—silks brushing like small storms, candlelight pooling in chandeliers, laughter threaded with the clink of glasses. Masks gleamed on smiling faces; each one was a promise of anonymity, an invitation to lie. Perfect for an Organization initiation, perfect for what we were about to steal.

The three teens we'd pulled out a week ago kept replaying in my head—wide eyes, teeth gritted against fear, names slipping like wet stones. Requiem, they'd whispered between coughs and antiseptic-sour mouthwash. The word sat wrong in my mouth but fit the facts: a splinter of the Organization that had turned their research toward people. Human experiments. New veins of cruelty flowing under the old bureaucracy. I could taste metal, fear, the institutional tang of someone who's been sterilized to the point of becoming a case file.