The nameplate read Orpheus, and the space was everything I fantasized about. An assortment of desks and chairs were pushed against the walls of the main room. A glass wall separated the area from the lab, but I almost pressed my face to the glass at the luxury of it. The surfaces were sterile white and stainless steel, embedded with premium tech. It could house a team of ten, but every inch was mine.

I would’ve been elated if not for the stack of files that weighed my arm down like lead. When I settled at one of the tables, a display screen automatically clicked on to Quanta’s live feeds.

That would’ve been disturbing on its own. But the image of her…

Puddles trailed from the shower to her bedroom and she lay on top of the coverlet, curled into a ball with her hair wetted down. Dozens of sensors registered her data. She gave off delta waves in sleep and both her pulse rate and core temperature were lowered. She’d fallen asleep soaking wet.

My heart clenched.

I’d started this crusade to make up for the life I’d taken, but my mission was bigger than any one person—even Quanta.

Even myself.

I wanted to help all the Reds. To shut down the Seligo and the Trials and the entire system.

Was saving her worth throwing that away?

I cracked open the first of the binders.

It was time to start finding answers.

<<<>>>

I’d been horrified twenty minutes in. Six hours later and only halfway through the first shelf of material, I had to back away from my desk.

Bloody hell. Sweat soaked the back of my shirt and I lifted my frames to rub my forehead.

The records from ages ten to thirteen were conspicuously missing, but the photos and psych records from the following years told more than enough. As I forwarded through the videos of her first days, bile rose in my throat.

She acted like a terrified animal. Huddling in corners. Sometimes catatonic, sometimes feral. Nagi’s assistants were acclimating her to her new room, trying to get her to open up and share her insights on the future.

Torturing it out of her hadn’t worked; they needed Quanta to explain what the images meant, otherwise her holo room footage was useless.

I turned off the playback. I couldn’t watch any more.

Instead, I switched to her live feed. I needed to check on her.

To make sure she was still standing.

She’d gone back in the shower. I would’ve clicked off to give her privacy, but Quanta was fully clothed as clapped her hands to her ears underneath a torrent of scalding water, her body barely visible in the cloud of steam.

They’d ripped information from her piece by piece.