Chapter 191: 192 | Welcome to Sub-Level Three
Vivian talked for forty-seven minutes.
I didn’t interrupt her once. Not because I was being polite. Because every sentence she said rearranged the architecture of what I thought I knew about Vito D’Angelo, and interrupting her would have been like stopping a surgeon mid-incision to ask about the weather.
She told me about the facility.
Not the company campus. Not the glass tower downtown where executives sipped espresso and congratulated themselves on quarterly earnings. The other one. The one that didn’t appear on any corporate filing or zoning document. A building on the eastern edge of Century City near the industrial port where Angelo Corp maintained a warehouse district that generated exactly enough revenue to justify its existence on paper and not a cent more.
"Sub-level three," Vivian said. Her wine glass was empty. She hadn’t refilled it. "That’s where the medical team operates. Dr. Kenji Morita runs it. He reports to Father directly. No intermediary. No oversight committee. No board approval required."
"How many people know about it."
"Four. Father. Morita. Morita’s assistant, a woman named Pham who has been with the company since before we were born. And now you."
"And you."
"I don’t count. I’m property."
She said it flat. Like a weather report. Like she’d practiced saying it until the words lost their teeth.
I leaned back into the leather. The couch was expensive. Everything in this room cost more than most people’s monthly rent. Vivian sat across from me with her legs crossed, her dark red dress riding up her thigh in a way that would have gotten a reaction from the old Rome and still got a reaction from the current one because SPECIMEN kept this body running at a frequency that noticed everything whether I wanted it to or not.
I noticed the way the golden light caught the fine bones of Vivian’s wrists. The way her collarbones created shadows beneath the neckline of her dress. The way her dark hair fell across one shoulder while the other remained bare, the strap of her dress doing the absolute minimum amount of structural work.
She was beautiful. Not Mera’s aggressive heat or Cheon’s ice queen severity or Noel’s sharp angles. Something different. Something that looked like it had been assembled from the same genetic material as the face I wore, rearranged into feminine lines that hit harder because of the familiarity.
Stop noticing.
She’s your sister.
Half-sister. Technically. From a father who treated children as corporate assets.
Still. Stop.
"The blood markers," I said, pulling the conversation back to where it needed to be. "What exactly did the lab find."
"Three anomalous signatures overlapping your baseline. Two were partially identifiable. Spatial manipulation and thermal regulation."
Mera. Laurana.
My stomach dropped.
"The third signature was unlike anything in the database. It registered as active but the classification algorithm couldn’t sort it. The system flagged it as a potential new variant."
"Which means."
"Which means Father has proof that you carry other people’s Essentia inside your body. He doesn’t know how you got it. He doesn’t know it transfers through contact. But he knows the signatures are there. And he knows they match people you’ve been spending time with."
I closed my eyes.
My father had blood samples with Mera’s spatial signature woven into my cellular structure. Laurana’s thermal signature. And whatever the third signature was. Probably the drain itself, the core ability that everything else orbited around.
"The annual physical," I said. "A month ago."
"Standard procedure for all Angelo heirs. Blood draw, vitals, Essentia output screening. You’ve had one every year since you were four. The results go to Morita. Morita sends them to Father. Father files them and forgets about them." Vivian uncrossed her legs and crossed them the other direction. The dress shifted. I kept my eyes on her face. "Except this year the results didn’t match anything in your eighteen years of documented history."
"Because the original Rome was a Passive Null."
"Because the original Rome was a Passive Null. And now you are very obviously not."
The words hung in the room.
Neither of us addressed what she’d just implied. That she’d said original Rome like she understood there was a version before and a version now and the two were different people. I filed that observation and kept moving.
"You said you could slow him down. Misdirect the lab results. How."
"I have access to the research division’s internal network. Not administrative access. But enough to modify comparison parameters in the blood analysis software. If I adjust the baseline readings from your previous physicals, the anomalous signatures won’t flag as sharply. The system will categorize them as measurement error or equipment drift."
"And Morita."
"Morita trusts his instruments more than his instincts. If the software tells him the readings are within acceptable variance, he won’t push. He’ll note the discrepancy and wait for the next quarterly draw."
"When is the next quarterly draw."
"November fourteenth."
Six weeks. I had six weeks before another blood sample went through the system.
"Can you delay it."
"I can lose the scheduling notification. Push it back two weeks before anyone notices. That gives you until late November."
Late November. The exhibition matches were in three weeks. If I won, Vanguard would offer whatever contract I wanted. If I secured the contract, I’d have agency protection. If I had agency protection, Father couldn’t simply disappear me into a basement without triggering a very public investigation.
Every piece needed to land in sequence. Every domino had to fall at exactly the right time.
"What else."
Vivian reached for the wine bottle. Poured herself a fresh glass. Her hand was steady again. Telling me the truth had cost her something, and the telling was done, and now she was rebuilding the walls that kept her functional.
"The surveillance on your apartment. Father uses a private security contractor called Meridian Group. Three operatives rotate eight-hour shifts. One in a vehicle across the street. One in the lobby posing as a maintenance contractor. One monitoring digital traffic from a remote location."
"You’re kidding."
"Father doesn’t kid. He invests."
Three operatives. Watching my building. Logging who came and went. Which meant they had photographic documentation of Mera arriving. Cheon arriving. Both of them leaving together in the morning wearing yesterday’s clothes. Noel arriving once, though that had been the conference room, not the apartment. Laurana would be clean because I’d gone to her place.
But Mera and Cheon were compromised. My father knew they spent nights. He knew the pattern.
"Has he moved on them."
"Not yet. He’s collecting data. That’s his method. He doesn’t act until the picture is complete."
"And the picture isn’t complete."
"The picture is missing the mechanism. He knows you carry their signatures. He doesn’t know how they get there. Until he understands the how, he won’t risk exposing his surveillance by confronting you."
I picked up the wine glass she’d poured for me earlier. Still full. Still untouched. I drank half of it in one pull.
It was good wine. Probably cost more than Marco’s weekly salary.
"Tell me about the engagement."
Vivian’s jaw tightened. The first real emotion I’d seen since the opening minutes.
"Daniel Park. Son of Winston Park, who runs a semiconductor conglomerate that Angelo Corp has been courting for a joint venture. Father arranged the match eight months ago. Daniel is perfectly nice. Perfectly boring. Perfectly uninterested in me as a person and perfectly content to marry the D’Angelo name for the business synergy it provides."
"Does he know about your ability."
"Nobody knows about my ability. I told you. I’m registered as Null. That’s the official story. That’s the only story."
"Does Daniel know about the facility."
"Daniel doesn’t know what floor his own office is on. He is not the problem."
"What is the problem."
