Elias lay motionless, his breath shallow, his face slack. He looked almost peaceful, but I knew better. His mind was at war, caught between the fractured pieces of his past and the programming that had stolen him from me.
I sat beside him, fingers digging into the armrest of my chair. Every instinct screamed at me to keep talking, to keep pushing him toward the truth. But words alone weren’t enough anymore.
He needed something stronger.
Kane stood nearby, arms crossed, watching with the kind of wary concern that meant she was already calculating worst-case scenarios. “If you force too much at once,” she warned, “his mind might shut down completely.”
I swallowed hard, my pulse a steady drum against my ribs. “Or it might bring him back.”
She exhaled sharply but didn’t argue. She knew as
