“No.”
“Turn it back on.”
“It isn’t safe.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know exactly that.” His voice cracked. “I watched it nearly kill you once.”
Ava went cold.
Eli stood slowly.
“What do you mean, once?” Ava asked.
Daniel pressed his hand against the wall, as if he needed it to stay upright.
Before he could answer, Ava noticed the photograph.
It hung behind a sheet of cloudy plastic on the far wall. She wheeled herself closer, ignoring Daniel’s warning. With trembling fingers, she pulled the plastic aside.
Dust fell in a soft gray curtain.
Her mother stood in the photograph wearing a white lab coat, younger than Ava remembered her, her dark hair pulled back. Beside her was Daniel, thinner, smiling with a pride Ava had never seen on his face. Between them sat a little girl in a small white chair, her uneven braids tied with yellow ribbons.
Ava touched the glass.
The little girl was her.
She was maybe six years old.
On the wall behind them was the same blue-veined floor.
“No,” Ava whispered.
Daniel closed his eyes.
A metal cabinet stood beneath the photograph. Its top drawer was slightly open, as if someone had searched it recently and left in a hurry. Inside lay folders sealed in plastic sleeves.
Daniel stepped forward. “Ava, don’t.”
She reached before he could stop her.
The first folder had her name on it.
Ava Mercer.
Not from four years ago.
From twenty years ago.
Her vision blurred, then sharpened around the typed words. Patient experienced progressive motor delay. Experimental stimulation trial approved by guardian consent. Initial response promising. Adverse event recorded after unauthorized amplitude increase.
Ava read the sentence three times.
Unauthorized amplitude increase.
“What is this?” she asked.
Daniel covered his mouth with one hand.
“What is this?” she repeated, louder.
He looked at the folder as if it were a knife. “When you were little, you had a neurological disorder. It affected your legs first. By five, you could barely walk without braces. Your mother refused to accept the prognosis.”
Ava’s mind flashed with images she had never trusted: metal bars beside a bed, cold stickers on her back, her mother singing while blue light moved under glass. She had thought they were dreams.
“She built this?” Ava asked.
“With a team.”
“And it worked?”
Daniel’s laugh was hollow. “At first, yes. You ran across this garden by the end of summer. Miriam called it a miracle and hated the word because she said miracles couldn’t be repeated.”
Ava looked down at her useless feet. “Then what happened?”
Daniel said nothing.
Eli, who had been standing by the cabinet, carefully lifted another folder. “There’s a memo.”
Daniel’s face hardened. “Put that down.”
Eli froze.
Ava turned to him. “Read it.”
The boy looked terrified, but he opened the folder.
His eyes moved over the page. “It says the board wanted human trial data before the sale.”
Daniel stepped toward him.
Ava moved her chair between them. “Read it, Eli.”
Eli swallowed. “It says Dr. Vale-Mercer objected. It says the subject was a minor and the device was not stable.”
Ava felt each word land inside her.
“There’s a signature,” Eli said.
Daniel whispered, “Enough.”
Eli looked at Ava.
She already knew, somehow. The room knew. The
