[This chapter is dedicated to diavla! Thank you for your golden ticket.]
Doctor's Office–2:14 a. m.
Caius sat in the chair opposite the doctor, its leather stiff and unyielding beneath him, like everything else in this godforsaken room. His posture was rigid—military straight—but the tension coiled through him like a drawn wire.
His fingers tapped quietly against his knee, not out of nerves—he didn't get nervous—but because something inside him refused to stay still.
His thoughts were already racing ahead, cataloguing possibilities, bracing for outcomes, running calculations like strategy in war. What could be done. Who needed to be called. What needed to be moved.
Control. It was always about control.
But then the doctor spoke.
"We've found something concerning in Alex's scans," the man said, voice even, almost clinical. The kind of tone people used when they were taught not to panic the families.
