Checkup
The facility was underground, which felt appropriate.
They never said it was underground, of course. Officially, it was "off-grid and secure." Unofficially, Kieran hadn't seen a window since the elevator doors opened and swallowed him.
He followed the corridor's slow curve, footsteps muted by rubberized flooring. The air smelled of antiseptic, recycled too many times, with a faint metallic tang underneath, like blood scrubbed so often it had become part of the walls.
White light flooded everything. The ceilings were low enough that tall men might have felt the urge to duck. The doors were flush with the walls, each labeled with a number instead of a purpose. Nothing in the Order ever said what it was on the outside.
He stopped at Room 12, as instructed.
The panel beside the door blinked a soft green when he pressed his thumb to it. The lock clicked politely instead of buzzing. The Order liked its threats quiet.
Inside, the room was cleaner than any place he lived. Clean bed with paper sheet. Clean metal tray with instruments arranged in straight lines. Clean screen on the wall, dark until someone decided otherwise.
Dr. Mara Ilyin stood by the counter, gloved hands adjusting the settings on a diagnostic tablet. She wore a pale gray scrub top instead of a lab coat, her dark hair twisted into a bun that looked like it had been redone one too many times that day.
She turned when he entered.
"You're limping," she said, by way of greeting.
"I'm not," Kieran replied.
"You are," she said. "Only a little. Left leg. Sit down."
He sat on the edge of the bed. The paper crinkled under him, loud in the small room.
She peeled off one pair of gloves, snapped on another, and came closer, tablet in hand.
"Operation code?" she asked, without looking up.
"Balance/1173."
Her thumbs moved. Text scrolled across the tablet. She made a small sound in her throat that could have been acknowledgment or mild disapproval.
"That's the hotel man," she said. "Dorrance."
"You read the mission logs?" he asked.
"I read the parts that pertain to whether your bones are intact or not," she said. "And sometimes the parts that tell me how likely it is that someone's going to come through that door with half a face."
She set the tablet on the tray and reached for his left wrist.
Her fingers were cool and firm, feeling for his pulse, then working their way up his forearm, pressing tendons and muscles.
"You strained something," she said. "Terrace entry?"
"Crosswind," he said. "Grip slipped. Corrected."
"Of course you did," she muttered. "Take the jacket off."
He shrugged out of it, pulling carefully so as not to telegraph the ache in his shoulder. The shirt followed, leaving him bare from the waist up under the harsh light.
Scars mapped his torso. Not many, given the years he'd been working, but enough: a pale oval on his right rib cage, puckered along the edge where the stitching had been rushed; a thin line across his belly from a knife that had almost gone deeper; the long diagonal curve from clavicle to lower ribs that had never quite faded, the one that belonged to a lesson in a different place, under different rules.
Mara's eyes flicked to that last scar out of habit. They always did.
She slid her fingers along his shoulder, pressing into the muscle, rotating the joint.
"Pain?" she asked.
"Minor."
"On a scale of one to ten."
"Three."
"On a scale where you answer like a human being, not a Forge report."
He considered.
"Five," he said.
"Better," she said. "You tore something small. Nothing dramatic. I'll give you a patch and a shot. Try not to hang off any ledges for a couple of days."
"Assignments aren't up to me."
"I know," she said. "But gravity does not care about duty rosters."
She stepped back to grab a small pack from the counter, tore it open with quick fingers, and slapped a transdermal patch onto his upper arm. It burned cold as it adhered.
"Anti-inflammatory," she said. "Slow-release. Side effects: mild drowsiness, existential dread, and an urge to question your life choices."
He looked at her. For a second she held the blankness of his gaze, then huffed a quiet breath that might have been a laugh.
"Joke," she said. "I know they didn't issue you those at the Forge."
"They issued other things," he said.
She moved behind him to start palpating along his spine.
"Any falls?" she asked. "Impacts?"
"No."
"Head trauma?"
"Not tonight."
"Nightmares?" she asked, almost idly.
He didn't answer.
"That wasn't a medical question," she added. "You don't have to answer."
"Then why ask?" he said.
"Because sometimes you forget you're still made of the same stuff as the people you're sent to kill," she said. "And I like to check how far gone that process is."
Her fingers paused at the base of his neck.
"You're tighter than last time," she said.
"Longer climb," he said.
"And a different method," she added.
His shoulders didn't move, but the air around him seemed to thicken.
"You read more than the parts about bones," he said.
"I read enough to be useful," she replied. "And occasionally enough to make myself uniquely unhappy."
She walked around to face him again, crossing her arms.
"The coroner bought the heart attack," she said. "Or will, once his final report is submitted. The sedative levels are high but not implausible. No signs of external violence except an old shoulder injury. Nice work."
It shouldn't have mattered to him what she thought. Doctors weren't on the chain of command. But some part of him relaxed, very slightly, at her assessment.
"It was cleaner," he said. "In context."
"I'm not arguing," she said. "I'm just noting. You deviated. Morrow covered it with the right words. The architects will log it. None of that is fatal on its own."
"And together?" he asked.
"Together, it might mean someone starts watching your choices with a magnifying glass," she said. "You know how they are. The moment you stop behaving like a predictable variable, you turn into a study."
"I'm not deviant," he said.
Her mouth twitched.
"I didn't say deviant," she said. "I said interesting. They don't like interesting. Interesting things take time. Time is expensive."
She picked up a hypodermic from the tray, flicked it once, and gestured toward his arm.
"This is the part where you pretend not to care about needles," she said.
"I don't care about needles," he said.
"Good," she replied. "Because this one stings."
It did, but he didn't flinch. The fluid went in cold, then spread warmth through the muscle.
"Vitamins?" he asked.
"Liquified conscience," she said. "Vitamin D, iron, a little something to help your body remember it's attached to a person."
She dropped the used syringe into a container that swallowed the click.
"Any dizziness, blurred vision, or ringing in your ears in the last week?" she asked.
"No."
"Chest pain? Shortness of breath?"
"No."
"Unexplained tremors, nausea, detachment, inability to feel emotion?" she asked.
"That last one is part of the job description," he said.
"Not to this extent," she said. "The conditioning works with what's already there. If you ever feel nothing when you should feel something, you tell me."
He frowned.
"How would I know what I should feel?" he asked.
"Exactly," she said softly. "That's why I worry."
He looked at her.
"What do you think I should have felt tonight?" he asked. He hadn't meant to ask it, but the words came anyway.
She studied his face, reading the lines there like a chart.
"You tell me," she said.
"I felt…" He searched for it. The Forge had given him names for pain, fear, rage, focus. It hadn't given him language for the smaller things. "Tight. Here." He touched his chest, slightly left of center. "And here." His throat. "Like something was trying to move and couldn't."
"Fear?" she asked.
"No," he said. "I wasn't afraid."
"Guilt?"
"I don't know," he said.
"Good," she said.
He blinked.
"Good?"
"If you'd said 'no, nothing,' I'd be recommending they pull you from field work for a while and stick electrodes to your skull," she said. "That would be a waste of everyone's time, including mine."
She scribbled something on the tablet with an actual pen—nice touch, he thought; pens didn't leave the same trails as certain digital tools.
"I'm marking your physical status as clear," she said. "Shoulder strain treated, no contraindications for future assignments. I'm also making a note that you successfully adapted the method to reduce collateral risk in a volatile environment."
"You're framing it as efficiency," he said, recognizing Elena's tactic.
"Of course," she said. "Efficiency, risk reduction, resource preservation. Those are the magic words. If I write, 'Agent displayed reluctance to traumatize an eight-year-old child with her father's brains on the wallpaper,' you end up in a room with no windows and someone asks you how you feel about puppies until you forget your own name."
He held her gaze.
"You wouldn't write that," he said.
"I'd think it," she said. "Very loudly. But I'd translate it on paper."
She set the tablet down.
"Listen," she said. "You're good at what you do because you still understand what a person is. Not just what a body is. The Forges didn't finish the job. That's what makes you dangerous to them and useful to everyone else."
"Dangerous to who?" he asked. "The Order?"
"To the people who believe they've accounted for every variable," she said. "And to anyone who assumes you'll always pick the move they would pick."
"You're talking about architects," he said.
She smiled, a thin, tired thing.
"I'm talking about anyone who sits in a warm room, looks at numbers, and forgets that each unit is made of memories and bone," she said. "They don't like surprises."
"Do you?" he asked.
"Not the kind that bleed on my floor," she said. "But between a man who kills because he was told to and a man who stops to consider who's watching when he does it, I know who I'd rather have in the field."
He slid his shirt back on, careful of the patch.
"Your opinion doesn't change the assignments," he said.
"Maybe not," she said. "But it changes how much of you arrives in my ward on a stretcher. That's enough for me."
The wall screen hummed awake then, unprompted. The Order's internal feed flashed an icon: a stylized scale balanced on a blade.
Mara glanced at it, then at him.
"Looks like they cleared your contract," she said. "Status board's updating."
The icon shifted to a new screen: text rolls, names of operations, colors marking completion, failure, pending. BALANCE/1173 flickered from amber to green.
Another line brightened below it.
> PENDING: OPERATION SILENT/402 – ASSIGNMENT: VEILED BLADE [HOLT/K] – PRIORITY: ELEVATED
Mara's brows rose.
"That was fast," she said. "Twelve-hour hold my ass."
"They changed the hold?" he asked.
"They do what they want," she said. "But that priority flag means someone higher than Morrow put their finger on your file."
"Why?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Maybe they like your style," she said. "Maybe they want to see if the blade bends the same way twice."
She stripped off her gloves and tossed them into a bin.
"You're cleared," she said. "Go find your handler before someone else does. And Kieran—"
He paused at the door.
"If the next file puts you in a room with another child," she said, "and you make the same call, understand that you're not just changing methods. You're positioning yourself."
"For what?" he asked.
"For a future that will either kill you faster," she said, "or make you into something they never meant to build."
He nodded once.
"Understood," he said.
He stepped back into the corridor. The door sighed shut behind him with the soft finality of a confession.
As he walked toward the elevator, the lights seemed brighter than before, the air colder. At the far end of the hall, a camera lens followed his movement, the tiny red dot within it blinking like a patient eye.
Somewhere above, in a room without windows, someone would see SILENT/402 attach itself to his name and nod.
He pressed the elevator call button and watched his own reflection ghosted in the polished metal. For a second, he saw not just himself, but a dozen thin, shivering boys in gray blankets, staring back at him through time.
The doors opened.
He stepped in.
The descent into the next part of his life had already begun, and he hadn't even read the file.