They Auctioned the Wrong Man

Chapter 3

By two o'clock the next afternoon, I learned what Greywater meant by an evaluation.

It meant standing fully clothed on a circular wooden platform in the center of the inspection room while five women sat at tiered desks three meters away, scratching notes onto glass slates like judges at a county livestock fair.

At least I got to keep my jumpsuit on. I had half-expected a hospital gown with the back missing, which had been the universal badge of medical humiliation back in 2026.

"Step to the center mark," a new voice said from the edge of the platform.

She wasn't one of Pell's sloped-shouldered hall guards. Her dark grey uniform was pressed sharp enough to slice bread, with a double silver bar at the collar. A placard on the wall behind her listed the security detail under Captain Ilsa Rennick. She was thirty-three if she was a day, tall, with short brown hair tucked behind her ears and posture that suggested she had swallowed a steel rod at the academy. She didn't shout, and she didn't sneer like Pell. She just read the protocol.

"Walk, Unit," Captain Rennick said.

I walked from the left chalk mark to the right chalk mark, turned, and walked back. While I moved, I kept my gaze level and read the room the way I used to read a multi-car pileup.

Five desks. No one from Fleet Command had bothered to show up in person; an empty chair at the far left had a sealed telemetry relay humming on its blotter, recording the feed.

At the second desk sat a woman in her late twenties with dark, glossy hair and a deep burgundy coat that probably cost more credits than this entire building. Her brass nameplate read House Valcourt. She had a warm, easy smile on her face, as if we were sharing an inside joke at a cocktail party, though her eyes tracked every step I took.

Desk three held a woman of about thirty in a simple cream-colored robe with no jewelry at all. Sisterhood of the Last Mother. She didn't write anything down; she just watched my chest with a quiet, steady intensity that made me wonder if she was trying to hear my heartbeat across the room.

Desk four was a Directorate Inspector in a high-collared black tunic, checking boxes with mechanical boredom.

And at desk five—Helix Institute—sat a woman in her late thirties wearing a white lab coat over grey wool. She had dark circles under her eyes and wire-rimmed glasses that she pushed up the bridge of her nose twice in ten seconds.

She was terrified. I knew that look from seven years of working with rookie paramedics on their first pediatric call. Her shoulders were tight, her pen was shaking slightly, and she wouldn't look at the Directorate Inspector two chairs over.

"Halt," Captain Rennick said.

I stopped on the center mark. Warden Pell stood by the wall scale, smiling her thin, key-jangling smile as an overhead scanner bar descended on ceiling rails and passed a pale green light down my torso.

"Lot 7," Pell announced to the room, pitching her voice like a showroom dealer. "Pre-Quiet revival. Male, twenty-nine years at stasis entry. Mass seventy-eight point four kilograms, height one hundred eighty-one centimeters. Verified carrier of the Founder Marker under Concord charter. Bidding opens at the Aurora Spire in twenty-nine days."

"Medical clearance?" the woman from House Valcourt asked. Her voice was smooth, pleasant, and completely unhurried. "Cryo-revivals from the old vaults usually degrade within forty-eight hours, Warden. House Valcourt doesn't bid on defective stock."

"The lot is entirely sound, Lady Valcourt," Pell said quickly. "Dr. Lenz of Helix Institute will confirm the physiological scan for the Concord record."

At desk five, Dr. Mira Lenz flinched slightly at her name. She stood up, pushed her glasses up her nose a third time, and walked to the edge of the platform carrying a handheld scanner wand and a printed verification slip.

"Hold out your left arm, please," Dr. Lenz said.

She said please. Warden Pell's mouth pinched tighter in the corner, and Captain Rennick's head tilted half a millimeter.

I held out my left arm so she could check the blue wristband against her wand. Dr. Lenz stepped close—closer than she needed to for a wireless read, putting her back squarely between the Directorate Inspector's line of sight and my hands.

Her fingers were cold. As she took my wrist to steady it under the scanner lens, her right thumb pressed a tiny, folded square of stiff paper directly into my palm and curled my middle finger over it.

I didn't blink, and I didn't look down.

"Pulse seventy-six," Dr. Lenz said aloud, her voice steadying now that she had medical numbers to recite. She laid the printed scan sheet on the edge of the podium for Captain Rennick to counter-sign. I glanced down at the page upside-down—another dispatcher trick from reading forms across a counter.

Halfway down the sheet, under Cardiovascular Notes, a single line had been typed in bold: Mild arrhythmia, residual from revival.

That was interesting. My heart had skipped twice in the hall yesterday, sure. Either the cryo-pod had left me with a twitch, or Dr. Lenz was making very sure everyone in the room saw a bad heart on my official paperwork.

"Scan matches Concord intake parameters," Dr. Lenz said, stepping back to her desk. "Lot 7 is cleared for thirty-day holding."

"Return the Asset to Dormitory B," Pell told Captain Rennick.

Rennick stepped beside me, her hand resting near her baton but not touching me. "Step down, Unit."

I stepped off the platform, keeping my left hand loosely curved at my side as if my fingers were just stiff from the cold room. We walked out into the grey corridor, past the eight-second sweeping camera at the T-junction, and back toward the dormitory door. Rennick unlocked the heavy latch with her palm print and gestured me inside without another word.

I waited until the lock clicked, walked straight to the washbasin alcove in the corner where the overhead camera couldn't see past the concrete partition, and turned on the cold tap. Cupping my hands as if to splash water on my face, I unfolded the tiny square of paper between my palms.

It was torn from the bottom margin of a Helix calibration log, written in a cramped, hurried hand:

Do not let them inject the blue vial.