Bruce stared at the same paragraph of the incident report for nearly a full minute before realizing he hadn’t absorbed any of it. His eyes kept landing on the words, but meaning refused to stick. The precinct was quieter than usual—graveyard shift humming somewhere behind the bullpen, a custodial cart squeaking faintly as it rolled down the hallway. The overhead fluorescents buzzed, a constant reminder of how long he’d been there.

  He leaned back in his chair, letting the rigid metal frame dig into his shoulder blades. It was late—later than he meant to stay—but going home felt like an exam he hadn’t studied for. Karen’s voice lingered in the back of his mind, sharp edges and sighs. He’d spent most of the afternoon trying not to replay the morning argument, and it hadn’t helped. The crime scene report was supposed to ground him, give him something solid to stand on. Instead, it only reminded him how much of this case didn’t make sense.

  George Stall. Then Noodle. Mick, and the three names tied to the MentaTech leak, floating like loose threads waiting to be pulled.

  Rumor was Stall and Halden had been… something. Lovers, maybe. Complicated, certainly. And complicated was always a good place to start.

  He rubbed a hand over his face, lingering at his temples until the pressure hurt. Sleep would be nice, but he doubted he’d get any.

  His pager vibrated on the desk. He snatched it before the second buzz.

  A number. Not one he recognized immediately—but he knew where it came from. Jac. She must’ve been calling from home.

  Bruce reached for the desk phone, hesitated, then got up and reached instead for the phone mounted on the wall near the bulletin board. No reason for anyone to overhear him. He dialed the number.

  It rang twice before she answered. “Hello?” Jac’s voice was quieter than usual, softer. Not timid—just worn.

  “Yeah?,” he said.

  “Oh.” She paused. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt if you were working.”

  “You’re fine,” Bruce said, leaning a shoulder against the wall. “Paperwork doesn’t care if I ignore it.”

  Jac let out a small, nervous laugh. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Crime scenes’ll do that to you,” Bruce said. “First one’s always the worst. You just got lucky. You handled the gore like a champ.”

  “It’s not the gore,” Jac said. “It’s… I keep thinking about him. About what that must’ve been like. About how a person does that to someone else.”

  Bruce let the silence breathe. He knew that feeling. The way a scene stuck to your ribs long after you left it. The case was having a similar effect on him.

  “That feeling?” he said. “The one that’s keeping you up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a good thing, kid.”

  Jac exhaled softly. “Good?”

  “You’re supposed to feel it,” Bruce said. “Means you’re still human. You can still empathize with other people. With suffering. The day you stop? The day you walk into a room like that and don’t feel something twist in your gut? That’s when you’re done. The badge’ll take pieces of you if you let it. Don’t give it the parts that matter.”

  Jac was hesitant, but mustered a faint, “thank you.”

  Bruce adjusted his stance, uncomfortable with how easily the words had come out. “Don’t get used to it,” he muttered.

  “I won’t,” Jac said, but he could hear the smile in her voice. “I just… needed to hear it.”

  “Go to sleep,” Bruce said. “You’re no good to me if you’re a zombie tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He hung up before she could say anything else.

  For a moment, he stayed where he was, staring at the phone. He hadn’t meant to get sentimental. Hell, he hadn’t meant to talk about feelings at all. But something about the rookie—it reminded him of himself in ways he didn’t like to admit. He returned to his desk, closed the file, and pushed his chair in.

  Time to see Marla Halden.

  The streets outside the precinct were mostly empty. A few late-night stragglers drifted past the bars, and a line of plowed snow turned the edge of the sidewalks into gray walls. Bruce climbed into his car, turned the ignition, and let the heater struggle against the cold.

  He drove in silence, watching the houses shift from narrow-lot bungalows to the older, sturdier row of townhomes where Halden lived. The neighborhood wasn’t wealthy, but it had a certain pride—porches swept clear of snow, porch lights still on, wreaths still lingering from a holiday already fading.

  He parked across from a narrow brick townhouse with a single warm light in the living room window. Her address matched. He stepped out, breath fogging immediately, and crossed the street.

  At her door, he knocked once. Firm, professional.

  The silhouettes inside shifted. Footsteps. Then the door cracked open a few inches, a chain still latched.

  A woman’s face appeared in the gap—eyes sharp, tired, evaluating him faster than most civilians could.

  “Detective Morrow?” she asked.

  Bruce nodded. “Ms. Halden.”

  She unlatched the chain and opened the door fully. “Come in.”

  He stepped into a space that was too tidy to be lived in comfortably. Books stacked with deliberate precision, papers arranged in neat piles on the dining table, a candle burned almost all the way down as if she used it more for company than scent.

  Her gaze flicked to the windows, the corners of the room, back to him. That kind of anxious scanning—Bruce clocked it immediately. Not guilt. Fear.

  “You’re working late,” she said, motioning toward the couch.

  “Comes with the job,” Bruce answered. “Thanks for seeing me on short notice.”

  “I couldn’t exactly say no to a detective,” she murmured, but the tone wasn’t resentful. It was practical.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Bruce sat. Halden stayed standing for a moment before finally settling into the armchair opposite him. Her movements were controlled, like someone rehearsing calm.

  “I know why you’re here,” she said. “George.”

  Bruce opened his notebook. “We heard the two of you were… involved.”

  She let out a humorless breath. “Involved is a polite way to put it. We were a disaster with occasional good moments.”

  “He seemed to matter to you.”

  “He did,” she admitted quietly. “Until the job mattered more to him. Until he started taking shortcuts and calling them ‘collaborations.’”

  “He stole your work,” Bruce said.

  “Pieces of it,” she corrected. “Ideas. Concepts. Enough that it stung but not enough for a lawsuit. And honestly?” She looked down at her hands. “I forgave him. His mind didn’t work like everyone else’s. He didn’t know how to love people the way he loved problems.”

  Bruce noted the softness in her voice. Not defensive. Not angry. Just worn.

  “And you didn’t see him the last few days?” Bruce asked.

  “No,” she said. “Not for months. And when we parted ways, it wasn’t… violent. Tense, maybe. Hurtful. But not enough to spark… whatever happened to him.” She shivered slightly, though the room wasn’t cold.

  Bruce leaned forward. “You said on the phone earlier that the leak put you under a microscope. What did that mean, exactly?”

  Halden rubbed her arm, suddenly uncomfortable. “Three of us were questioned. No charges, but we were let go. The press coverage got out of hand—speculating about applications we never intended, talking about misuse, cyborg nonsense. People like me became collateral damage.”

  “And you never found out who leaked it?”

  She shook her head. “Tally blamed Ringer. Ringer blamed Stall. Stall blamed the higher-ups. None of us knew. We were all angry. Some louder than others.”

  “And the argument in the parking lot?” Bruce asked. “The one between Tally and Stall?”

  Halden’s lips curled faintly. “Evan can barely handle a paperwork deadline without losing his temper. I’m not surprised he snapped. But you’re barking up the wrong tree if you think Evan could do… that.”

  Bruce didn’t respond.

  She studied him for a moment, the fear behind her eyes flickering again. “Detective, if you’re here to figure out whether I killed George… I didn’t. Whatever he did to me, professionally or personally, I let go of that a long time ago.”

  Bruce nodded slowly. “Then help me understand something. What was Stall afraid of?”

  Halden inhaled sharply. “Who told you he was afraid?”

  “People who saw him recently.”

  She swallowed. “Then… yes. He was. He acted like the past was catching up to him. Like he’d built something on top of something older, something he didn’t want to explain.”

  Bruce tilted his head. “Older?”

  Halden hesitated, then looked toward a drawer across the room. She didn’t get up to retrieve anything, but her eyes stayed locked on the location.

  “There was an early prototype,” she said. “Before NeuraSkyn. Before even my involvement. A document—no author, no lab markings. Just a blueprint for neural integration so advanced it shouldn’t have existed. I shouldn’t have had it. But I did. And I used it.”

  “And Stall used your work,” Bruce said.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “And someone else used his.”

  She pressed her lips together, regret etched into every line of her face.

  Bruce closed his notebook. The room suddenly felt heavier.

  “Thank you,” he said softly.

  She nodded. “Detective… you don’t think this was random. Do you?”

  Bruce stood. “Nothing about this case feels random.” That wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t reassurance either. It hung somewhere in the middle.

  She walked him to the door, and for a moment he thought she might say more. But she didn’t. She only watched as he stepped out into the cold night.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  “You too.” He meant it, shouting over his shoulder. He didn’t look back.

  Bruce drove in silence most of the way home. The heater sputtered in uneven bursts, failing to fully warm the cab. Streetlights stretched across the windshield in quick slashes of white, flashing over his hands on the steering wheel. He found himself replaying the interview in fragments—Marla’s stiff posture, the tightness in her voice, the way she kept her eyes toward the window whenever she talked about Stall.

  She wasn’t a killer. He didn’t need twenty years on the job to know that. The fear in her voice was real. Not the kind that came from guilt, but the kind that came from loss—career loss, emotional loss, maybe more. There was something else, too. Something she didn’t quite know she knew.

  The “older prototype.” The mysterious document. The uneasy way she’d said it had no author.

  It tugged at something in his gut, but he didn’t know what yet. Too many pieces, not enough of the picture. By the time he pulled onto his street, his shoulders were tight with exhaustion.

  The house was dark except for the living room lamp. Karen’s silhouette was visible on the couch—small, unmoving, arms folded loosely in her lap. Bruce felt that familiar pinch behind his ribs, the one that made him feel both guilty and defensive at the same time.

  He shut the car door quietly and walked toward the house, rolling his shoulders back as if it might make the conversation easier. Inside, he removed his coat, hung it over the back of the armchair, and stood in the doorway to the living room.

  Karen didn’t look up right away. Her gaze stayed fixed on the muted TV, some late-night sitcom flickering without sound.

  “You didn’t call,” she said finally.

  Bruce exhaled. “I got tied up.”

  “Bruce.” She said his name like a reprimand. “You’ve been tied up for eight years.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “It was work. I had to follow up on—”

  “It’s always work,” she snapped, her voice cracking. “Do you know what time it is? Do you know how many hours I sat here wondering if you were going to bother coming home at all?”

  “I told you I’d be late.”

  “You didn’t say this late.”

  He ran a hand over his face. “Karen, I’m doing my job.”

  “And what am I supposed to be doing?” she asked sharply. “Waiting around like furniture? Pretending this is normal?” Her eyes shone with tears that hadn’t fallen yet. “Are we married, Bruce? Or am I just someone who happens to share your address?”

  “That’s not fair,” he said quietly.

  “No?” She stood abruptly, pacing in front of the coffee table. “Because it feels fair. It feels exactly like what this is.”

  Bruce’s jaw tightened. “I’m doing the best I can.”

  “Your best?” She turned toward him, and there it was—the hurt, raw, and shaking. “Your best was before everything happened. Before her.”

  He felt the blow before she landed it.

  “Karen—”

  “No,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’m not trying to attack you. I’m trying to make you understand. When we lost Suzy… I lost you too. You shut down. You buried yourself in the job. You didn’t talk to me. You didn’t talk to anyone. You just kept disappearing into work like the way you did today, over and over again.”

  He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “I didn’t know how to—”

  “To grieve?” Karen’s voice softened, breaking at the edges. “Neither did I. But I didn’t have the luxury of disappearing. I didn’t have the option of pretending she never existed.”

  “Don’t say that,” he murmured.

  “Why not?” Karen asked. “You never wanted to talk about her. You never wanted to talk about what we went through.”

  He stepped forward, voice low but firm. “I didn’t hate you, Karen. I never blamed you. Not for any of it.”

  Her face twisted, full of pain. “Then why did it feel like you did? Why did it feel like I became a reminder of everything you couldn’t fix?”

  “Because I was angry,” he said, voice breaking on the admission. “Angry at the world. At fate. At everything. But never at you.”

  She closed her eyes, tears finally spilling. “I feel like you did. I feel like you think less of me because I couldn’t… because we couldn’t…” She shook her head. “And part of me wonders if losing her was a blessing. Because I don’t think you would’ve been here. I don’t think you would’ve known how.”

  Bruce felt something clench deep inside him—a mixture of shame and grief and something uglier he didn’t want to name.

  “That’s not fair,” he whispered.

  “It’s honest,” she said softly.

  He wanted to argue. He wanted to tell her she was wrong. But the words wouldn’t come. Something in him—something tired and bruised—knew she wasn’t entirely wrong.

  Karen wiped her cheeks and stepped back. “I can’t do this tonight. I don’t have the strength.”

  Bruce nodded, hand braced on the arm of the chair to steady himself. “Okay.”

  She hesitated, looking at him with a kind of sorrow that made him feel hollow. “I’m going to bed,” she whispered.

  He watched her walk down the hall, watched the bedroom door close behind her with a soft click that sounded more final than anything she’d said.

  Bruce sank onto the couch slowly, as if the weight of the last few minutes had doubled gravity. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and let his head fall into his hands.

  He stayed that way for a long time. Eventually, he shifted back, stretching out across the couch. The cushion springs creaked under him. The lamp in the corner buzzed faintly. A cold draft slipped through a window frame he kept meaning to fix.

  He stared at the ceiling, tracing cracks in the plaster that looked like branching rivers. His chest felt tight, not from fear or exhaustion but from something deeper—something he didn’t have the vocabulary for.

  He thought of Jac’s voice on the phone, of Marla’s eyes when she’d talked about being afraid. Karen’s hands shaking as she admitted she felt like he hated her. And he thought of Suzy—just once—then forced the thought away before the hurt could settle in.

  He didn’t remember falling asleep. Only the cold stiffness in his neck when morning came reminded him he’d slept at all.