“Yeah,” I said. “I figured out why. I think you guys need to know, and I guess the question is how you want to know. I can dish it all out here, or I can tell you enough that you can give some input on how we approach the others.”

Tristan asking like he had helped to shortcut things. I didn’t have to figure out how to approach ‘I’ in the acronym. Invitation. Asking if they want the information, empowering them to handle the situation.

“This is serious?” Natalie asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “This fills in a lot of the blanks, and it’s not pretty.”

“Tell us,” Ashley said.

Okay. I took a deep breath. My breath fogged as I exhaled.

“The file was Mrs. Yamada’s. She wrote about Chris. A message for colleagues, in case she couldn’t carry on her duties. For Chris Elman, the very first line was a statement. Chris lies.”

“No surprise there,” Tristan said.

“I barely talked to him and I’m not exactly shocked,” Natalie said.

No response from Ashley.

In the S.P.I.N.E. acronym, the ‘N’ was for ‘necessary information’. The meat of things. Uncle Neil had told me to stick to the facts, to be blunt.

I wasn’t as blunt as I could’ve been, but I was still blunt.

“He’s not a changer,” I said. “And he didn’t trigger after Gold Morning. He has a long history.”

“How long?” Tristan asked.

“It goes back a decade,” I said.

“He’s thirteen,” Tristan stated, voice firm, like he could say it with enough authority to make it so. Then, in a one-eighty in every respect, he said, “He’s not thirteen.”

“No.”

“If he’s not a changer then that thing about him being experimented on…”

Tristan trailed off. Natalie picked up where he left off. “…I never heard about him being experimented on.”

“It was the story,” Ashley said, and there was no positivity or humor visible on her face or in her body language. “A sob story that ensured we wouldn’t push too hard or ask too many questions.”

“He lied about everything,” Tristan spoke the realization aloud.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something happened. But it may have been self-inflicted, in a way. I could get into the nitty-gritty of it, what we know, who he was, and the dots we can connect between the two of those, but I want to leave it up to you guys.”

“Who was he?” Ashley asked.

“Lab Rat,” I said.

“Oh no,” Natalie said.

“That’s a reason to be secretive if I’ve ever heard one,” Ashley said.

I looked at Tristan. He was frowning, not looking at any of us.

“If you need a refresher on who Lab Rat is, I could go over the bullet points,” I said.

“Fucking asshole,” Tristan said. He clenched his fist, shaking his head.