BEFORE YOU FADE AWAY

THE FAULT IN THE METRIC The digital timer on the stainless-steel desk ticked down to zero with a soft, clinical chime. Dr. Sophia Bennett didn't look up from her tablet. Her stylus tapped rhythmically against the glass. The office smelled of industrial antiseptic and cold air conditioning, a sharp, sterile scent that usually anchored Ryan. Today, it tasted like metal at the back of his throat. "Repeat the sequence, Ryan," Sophia said, her voice flat and direct. Ryan sat back in the leather chair. He unbuttoned his charcoal suit jacket so the wool wouldn't pull across his shoulders, keeping his hands flat on his knees. Left hand, right hand. "Nine, fourteen, seventy-two, delta," Ryan said. His voice was low, smooth. "The primary asset liquidity index dropped four points before the opening bell. Your left earring is missing its backing. And the sequence you gave me forty-five seconds ago was... nine, fourteen, twenty-seven, delta. You substituted the twenty-seven to test my correction reflex." Sophia finally looked up. Her features were tight, her stylus freezing against the glass. "And the baseline drift?" "I am managing it," Ryan said, lifting his left wrist. The watch was a matte-black band, heavy and unbranded. Beneath the sapphire face, the sensor tracked changes he no longer trusted himself to notice. "My vitals are within nominal parameters." Sophia turned the tablet around, sliding it across the desk. The screen displayed a three-dimensional rendering of a human brain. Along the parietal lobe, small, localized clusters of deep violet indicators bloomed like stagnant ink beneath water. "Cortical degeneration doesn't care about your index, Ryan," Sophia said. "The decay is up three percent from last month. The neuro-protectors? They're just masking the tremors. They aren't stopping it. You've got less than six months of baseline cognitive function left. By winter, the blind spots won't be numbers. They will be faces,names and even your own signature." Ryan stared at the purple spots on the screen. He didn't blink. In the boardroom of Ashford Global Holdings, hesitation was an invitation to be gutted. His stepmother, Victoria, spent her afternoons analyzing his public appearances for the slightest delay in speech, looking for the leverage she needed to petition the board for an emergency audit. If she smelled blood, the empire his mother’s family had built would be dismantled piece by piece. "Increase the dosage," Ryan said. "If I double it, your liver won't survive past autumn," Sophia said flatly. "Then I have until autumn." Ryan stood up, taking a breath to steady his balance. He reached into his breast pocket, pulling out a heavy, matte-black fountain pen. He preferred the weight of ink; it forced his fingers to grip harder, fighting the microscopic resistance of his nerves. "Keep the data encrypted on the off-grid server. If Oliver calls for the baseline reports, give him the modified corporate health summary. Nothing else." *** Thirty minutes later, the armored town car glided through the iron gates of the Ashford estate, the tires crunching against the crushed limestone driveway. The house sat high on the northern ridge of Arbour Heights, a massive limestone monolith surrounded by dark, manicured hedges. Ryan bypassed the grand foyer, ignoring the head butler’s announcement that Victoria had left an invitation for a family dinner on Friday. He took the private elevator directly to his study, a vast, wood-paneled room where the walls were covered in whiteboards hidden behind heavy motorized tapestries. He closed the door, locked it, and pulled the remote from his pocket. The tapestries retracted with a low hum, revealing lines of data, names of shell companies, and legal transcripts from 2012 scrawled in black ink. In the center of the main board was a single, torn photograph. It was yellowed and frayed, showing the small, blurred figure of a young girl with dark hair sitting on a wooden dock. “Ava.” The only piece of his childhood that hadn't been sanitized by his grandfather’s public relations team. The girl who had hidden in the greenhouse with him when his mother died. Then came the summer of 2012. The crash on the northern highway. After that, her family stopped existing anywhere records could reach. His grandfather had handed him a sterile death certificate, but Ryan's adult mind had spent the last three years finding the legal gaps in that paperwork. Ryan walked to the heavy mahogany desk. His right index finger twitched a tiny, rebellious muscle spasm. He clamped his left hand over it, forcing it still. He pulled a sheet of heavy, cream-colored stationery from the drawer and uncapped his pen. The nib caught on the paper, tearing the fibers slightly before the ink flowed. The *A* in Ava was slightly distorted, the loop wider than his usual print, but he forced the rest of the lines to form. ‘Ava,’ They are rewriting what happened in 2012. You are the only proof left. If you receive this, the coordinates below lead to the original ledger repository beneath the old harbor warehouse. Do not trust the public records. Do not trust anyone with the Sinclair name.* “43.6532° N, 79.3832° W.” “Find the blind spots before they find you.” “ R.” He folded the paper, pressing the edges down until they were sharp. He slid it into an unmarked envelope, heating a stick of dark blue wax over a small alcohol burner on his desk. He pressed his personal signet ring into the hot wax the Ashford crest, a hawk with its wings clipped. He picked up his phone, dialing a dedicated, untraceable courier line. "Ashford," Ryan said to the receiver. "Secure delivery. Use the off-grid courier. The destination is... the residential address listed under the 2012 Sinclair profile. District 4, Sector B." "Acknowledged, sir. Courier will intercept within ten minutes." Ryan hung up. He leaned his palms against the edge of the desk, his head dropping as a sudden, sharp spike of pressure bloomed behind his left eye. The room tilted a fraction to the right, then corrected itself. The whiteboards became a blur of white and black streaks. He forced his eyes shut, counting down from one hundred by sevens. *100. 93. 86. 79...* When he opened his eyes, the room was still, but the heavy wax-sealed envelope was gone from his blotter. He blinked, a cold sweat breaking out across the back of his neck. He checked his watch. The digital log showed a four-minute gap between the phone call and the current timestamp. A four-minute blind spot. With a tight breath, Ryan checked the outgoing secure lockbox built into the side of his desk. It was empty. The courier log on his phone flashed a single green notification: *Package in transit.* He had sent it and the variable was live. His phone buzzed on the mahogany wood. The screen didn't display a name, just an encrypted string of letters. He swiped it open. Instead of his courier, a digitized, distorted voice cut through the speaker. "The baseline test at Bennett’s clinic was a stellar performance, Ryan. Truly. But you missed a variable." Ryan didn't move for a moment. "Victoria," he said, his voice dropping. "Your father always said your pride would be the thing that blinded you," his stepmother's voice smoothed over the line, cold and entirely satisfied. "Check your primary server logs, dear. We didn't wait for your doctor to file the report. The board meeting is being moved up to Monday morning. Enjoy the weekend, CEO. It’s your last one." The line went dead.