Chapter 10 : Damage Control
The floodlights hit me before the voice did.
White-hot halogen, angled upward to catch anything taller than human standard approaching the eastern gate. I threw an arm across my eyes. The specimen kit banged against my hip. Behind me, the jungle's bioluminescence dimmed in protest at the intrusion — nature's night-cycle surrendering to a hundred thousand lumens of human paranoia.
"Hold position. Identify yourself."
The voice belonged to a man in RDA security fatigues, sidearm drawn but pointed at the ground. Professional trigger discipline. Name tag: MARTINEZ, D. Behind him, a second guard operated the gate scanner while a third spoke rapidly into a handheld comm unit.
"James Chen." I kept my hands visible. Nine feet of avatar body lit up like a stage performer, every shade of blue washed pale by the floods. "Avatar driver. Xenobotany division. I had an authorized overnight expedition in Sector 7."
Martinez checked his datapad. His face did something complicated.
"Chen, your overnight authorization expired fourteen hours ago. You've been off-grid for thirty-plus hours. Comms dead. Transponder intermittent. We've got a search protocol active."
"Fourteen hours past authorization. Not thirty — the overnight bought me more time than I calculated. But fourteen hours is still enough to trigger every alarm in the book."
"Equipment malfunction." The lie came out smooth. Practiced — I'd been rehearsing it during the three-hour hike from the grotto, shaping it with each step. "The portable comm unit shorted during a stream crossing. Same stream that took my transponder offline intermittently on my first expedition. I sheltered in place per emergency protocol until conditions were safe to return."
"You sheltered for fourteen hours?"
"Viperwolf activity in the area. Pack of six, maybe more. I wasn't going to hike three hours through contested territory at night without communications."
Martinez's expression didn't change. He waved me through the scanner — the gate's biometric system confirmed James Chen, avatar driver, clearance Level Three — and holstered his sidearm.
"Dr. Augustine is waiting for you in Lab Three. She's been there since midnight."
"Of course she has."
The walk from the perimeter gate to the science wing took four minutes. Long enough for the adrenaline to curdle into something heavier. My hands were shaking again — not the neural fatigue tremors from the grotto, but the specific vibration of a man about to face consequences he'd earned.
Through the bond, distant but present, Shadowfang's heartbeat pulsed in the back of my skull. Slow. Steady. The viperwolf was sleeping in the sanctuary, leg splinted, regenerative field knitting bone and tissue back together. Safe. Unaware that the person he'd bonded with was about to walk into an interrogation.
Lab Three was lit. Grace stood at her workstation, datapad in hand, lab coat wrinkled in a way that said she hadn't left this room since the search alert triggered. The cigarette behind her ear was fresh — unlit, but fresh. She'd been chain-replacing them.
"Chen."
One word. Loaded with twelve hours of waiting and the specific fury of a scientist who'd vouched for someone and been made to regret it.
"Grace, I—"
"Sit down."
I sat. The lab stool groaned. My tail wrapped around its base like a nervous cat.
Grace didn't sit. She stood over me — which was an achievement, given the height difference — and tapped her datapad against her palm in a rhythm that matched Martinez's trigger discipline: controlled, deliberate, ready.
"Equipment malfunction. That's your story?"
"The comm unit shorted during a stream crossing. I—"
"I heard. Martinez commed me your initial statement." She set the datapad on the bench. Hard. "Let me tell you what I see. I see an avatar driver on grief leave who requested solo expeditions in a remote sector within days of his first field deployment. I see that driver returning from his first overnight twelve hours late, with a comm unit that — let me check — yes, functions perfectly well now that it's dry."
She picked up the comm unit from my specimen kit. Turned it on. It beeped.
"Humidity sensitive," I said. "Extended immersion—"
"These units are rated for full submersion to five meters for thirty minutes. They're designed for Pandora, Chen. They don't short from a stream crossing."
Silence. The lab's ventilation hummed. Somewhere down the corridor, a centrifuge spun.
"She knows the equipment story doesn't hold. Give her something better or lose everything."
"I panicked."
Grace's hand stopped tapping.
"The viperwolf pack — I've encountered them before, in the same sector. They circled me on my first expedition. Didn't attack, but..." I let the pause stretch. Let her fill it with the image of a grieving scientist, alone in alien jungle, surrounded by predators. "When the comms went down and I heard them in the canopy, I froze. Sheltered under a rock overhang and waited. By the time the sounds stopped, it was too dark to navigate safely."
Half-truth. The viperwolves had been there. I had sheltered — at the grotto. The panic was real, just pointed in the wrong direction.
Grace's jaw worked. The anger was still there, but something else was elbowing through — the same sympathy that had softened her when I'd mentioned Mei Chen. The recognition that James Chen had lost his sister, then lost his body, and was now alone on an alien moon making bad decisions from a place of fear rather than malice.
"Martinez filed a formal incident report," she said, quieter now. "It goes to Selfridge's office. With the greenhouse visit and the transponder gap from your last trip, that's three flags in five days."
Three flags. The first day in Max Patel's medical bay, when the neural readings had been anomalous. The greenhouse at three in the morning. The transponder gap during the system awakening. And now this.
"One more incident — one more — and you're in mandatory evaluation. You know what that means."
"Program removal."
"Program removal. Avatar recycled. You cease to exist, Chen. There's no human body to go home to." She picked up her cigarette, examined it, put it back behind her ear. "I'm vouching for you one more time. The report goes through with a notation that Dr. Augustine observed no behavioral pathology inconsistent with documented grief response. That buys you breathing room. Not much."
"She's protecting me. Again. And I'm lying to her face. Again."
"Grace..."
"Don't." She raised a hand. "Don't thank me. Don't apologize. Just — for God's sake — stop giving them ammunition. You're a good researcher. Your specimens from Sector 7 are the best neural-density data we've gotten in two years. That matters. Don't let whatever's happening in your head destroy the work."
She left. The lab door sealed behind her. The cigarette smell lingered.
I sat on the stool for a long time. The specimen kit sat on the bench — containers full, data logged, cover story intact. Good specimens. Real science. The ironic armor of competence wrapped around a foundation of lies.
Through the bond: Shadowfang stirred. A flicker of awareness — not awake, just the animal's nervous system registering something through the network link. Pack-sense. The alpha checking that its pack was still there, even in sleep.
Still here, I sent back. Not words — the sensation of proximity, of safety. The bond carried it like a telephone line carrying tone.
The specimen report took forty minutes. I typed it in the empty lab, cross-referencing James Chen's established methodology — in situ neural mapping using portable EEG analogues, the technique from his publications — with real data from real specimens collected between moments of existential crisis. The report was good. Thorough. The kind of work that would make Grace's notation look justified.
The kind of work that bought time for the secret growing in a grotto three hours' walk from here.
My hands had stopped shaking by the time I finished. The lie still tasted bitter, but bitterness was a flavor I was learning to swallow.
The avatar barracks were dark when I reached them. Other drivers asleep in their link chairs or on their cots. I lay down on the undersized bunk, tail curled against my thigh, and closed my eyes.
Through the bond, across kilometers of jungle, Shadowfang's heartbeat counted time. Steady. Trusting. Waiting in a grotto that glowed with living light, healing in a pod that grew from the walls because I'd told a system to build it.
"One node. One citizen. One more chance before the cover breaks. Make it count."
The ceiling was too close. The bunk was too small. But the distant pulse of a wolf sleeping safe in a territory I'd claimed — that was exactly the right size to fill the gap between fear and purpose.
Three days. I'd give them three days of perfect behavior. Then the gap in the schedule, the four-hour window on Day 10, and the road back to the place where James Chen ended and whatever Chase Sinclair was becoming could continue.
Martinez's report sat in Selfridge's inbox. Grace's notation sat beside it. The balance tipped on a knife's edge, and every hour of model behavior was a gram of weight on the right side.
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