"Don't reach for that call button, Lee," Austin Dre said, his voice fracturing into a dry, hollow wheeze that barely carried across the three feet of cold space between his knees and the bathroom tiles. He did not look at the heavy chrome hardware of the plumbing or the frosted glass privacy partitions of his apartment; his eyes were fixed entirely on the white porcelain basin of the sink, where a thick, dark splatter of fresh copper blood was slowly pooling around the drain. He held a crumpled linen towel against his mouth with a grip so rigid his gray, parchment-like knuckles popped with a distinct, dry click against his skin.
Lee stood perfectly frozen in the doorway, his large palms flat against the varnished cedar frame, his leather jacket unzipped to reveal a running shirt damp with pre-dawn sweat. He had let himself in with the emergency key five minutes ago, expecting to find his boss laced into his sneakers for their routine morning run through the commercial plaza. Instead, the raw, suffocating stench of hot iron and medicinal alcohol had drawn him straight to the master bathroom.
"You're empty, boss," Lee said quietly, his voice dropping into that tight, disciplined register he used whenever the physical parameters of a perimeter failed. He took two slow, heavy steps forward, his running shoes squeaking dryly against the linoleum until he was close enough to see the violent, rhythmic tremor traveling up Austin's forearm. "That isn't a standard respiratory tear from the midnight coughing spells. You're losing cell volume faster than the filtration supplements can balance the line."
"I'm losing time, Lee," Austin whispered, his chest heaving in one ragged, shallow spasm that made the canvas lining of his undershirt pull tight against his ribs. He slowly pulled the linen towel away from his lips, his mouth glistening with a thick, dark red glaze under the unshielded amber glow of the utility bulb. "The doctor told me three weeks ago that when the cell lysis reached the lower lung cavity, the sheaths would turn to liquid. I don't need a medical team coming up the service elevator with a diagnostic clipboard to run a series of numbers I already signed off on in the clinic."
"Your mother was looking at your plate during Sunday dinner, Austin," Lee said, his large hand reaching down to grab the edge of the porcelain basin to brace his own weight. He didn't look away from the dark stains in the sink. "She called the district office twice yesterday afternoon asking why your administrative files haven't been updated on the main registry node. She knows your eyes look hollow. Clara and Nina are asking why you look like you're fading out of the family photographs every time you drop by the compound."
"They remember me alive, Lee," Austin's rasping voice sounded—a thin, dry scratch that carried no executive authority, sounding instead like old paper scraping across a stone slab. He reached out with his trembling right hand, his graying skin dry as ash under the light, and turned the cold-water valve with a final, brittle thrust of his wrist. "If Salma finds out about the two-year timeline—if she realizes that while she was fawning over my new lifestyle, my body was systematically turning into ash—she won't let me spend my remaining months sitting in a jazz bar listening to the music. She'll buy out a medical wing in Singapore and plug me into three separate filtration loops just to keep a ghost breathing on a monitor."
He watched the stream of clear water hit the porcelain, turning the thick, dark red mass into a pale, swirling cloud of pink fluid that slid down into the gray iron pipes below.
The physical act of clearing the basin required a conscious, agonizing coordination of his core muscles, a sharp, white-hot stitch flaring up beneath his left collarbone until his vision blurred into a gray mist at the edges. For ten years, he had lived his life behind a series of calculated identities—letting Sonya Clay and her mother treat him like an unwanted stray because he wanted to earn a partnership that sat completely outside the parameters of his grandfather's multi-billion-dollar empire. Now, with his cell count dropping by a fixed percentage every twenty-four hours, the architecture of his secrets was turning into an iron cage he couldn't unlock.
"Angel Swan called the private line at midnight," Lee said softly, leaning over the sink to wipe a thin string of copper fluid from Austin's chin with a clean, dry cloth. "She isn't buying the story about the administrative work downtown, boss. She saw the surveillance photos from the financial district gala. She knows Jayden Brii is currently tracking her movements because he thinks she's trying to secure a competitive edge on the Jakarta infrastructure trust."
"Jayden is a child playing with legacy assets he doesn't have the capacity to protect, Lee," Austin whispered, his head sinking back against the cool ceramic tiles of the wall, his breathing a dry, whistling gasp. "He thinks because his grandfather is dying, the family rules don't apply to his personal transactions anymore. He's so busy watching Angel that he doesn't see his own mother liquidating the primary escrow accounts behind his back."
"He'll see the police detail before he sees the ledger, boss," Lee said flatly, grabbing Austin's shoulders to hoist his thin frame up off his knees. He didn't let go until Austin's feet were steady on the linoleum, his eyes fixed on the boy's face with a hard, unyielding protective fury. "I'm staying in the guest wing tonight. You can scream at me about your corporate privacy tomorrow morning, but I am not clearing this bathroom a second time while you're unconscious on the floor."
Austin didn't argue. He allowed the large man to support his weight as they walked toward the bedroom, his right hand tucked deep into his pocket where his fingers closed around his grandfather's silver signet ring—the only solid, unchanging thing left in a city that was slowly dissolving into a series of frantic credit updates and blood in the sink.