The door to room three is open and he peers inside. There’s no one in there. Room three stinks of blood and misery and hasn’t been cleaned yet. There’s bloody gauze on a tray, and a pile of used stitch kits.

“Commander Stone,” Dr. Chang declares, sounding relieved. “Good. We’re over here. A clean room with a bit more privacy.” He looks tired. Is it the patient that’s exhausted him, or the fact that it’s the middle of the night? Probably both.

“Patient is a submissive who is designationally off the charts and very difficult. Well, the circumstances surrounding him are difficult; I don’t think he actually is.” He shrugs and puts his hand in his pocket then realizes there’s blood all over his jacket. “Sorry, it’s late. I’m not speaking clearly. I’m at my wit’s end with this one. Well, with the whole damned situation, if I’m being honest. But you didn’t hear me say that.”

“Okay,” he says, curiosity already piqued. He’s become friendly with Dr. Chang over the last couple of years and has found him to be calm and competent. Finding him frazzled and annoyed about a patient is a new one. “What can you tell me about the patient?”

He sighs and closes his eyes for a moment as he gathers his thoughts. His gaze flicks around the empty hallway to make sure no one is listening. “He’s got a complicated presentation. Probably one of the most unusual I’ve ever seen.”

Liam doesn’t bother to hide his surprise. Chang is an expert on submissive health. Soldiers are flown from all over the country to see him, and he thought the doctor would have seen it all. “Wow. Okay.”

“You’ll see what I mean when you meet him. He’s just about as submissive as you can get. Which is rare nowadays but not impossible.”

“I’ve handled very submissive soldiers.”

“I know. That’s where he started. Since he became submissive, he’s had an incredible amount of experimental treatment performed upon him, all of it attempting to correct his submission. From surgeries to brainwashing, conversion therapies, and drugs. Any agency that had a treatment lying around they wanted to try out, this poor boy was an available guinea pig. Frankly, if you told me his father hated him and did this to torture him, I’d believe it. Everything they did just made him worse.”

His curiosity intensifies. The submissive designation isn’t new. And it isn’t reversible. God knows the military has tried to fix the problem over the years and it always ends badly. Policy nowadays is to leave the soldiers alone whenever possible.