The first page was dated in small, cramped handwriting.
JUNE 2030 PRIVATE LOG.
NOT FOR FILE.
Ares read slowly, the crossbow across his knees, the single working lamp from his pack throwing a narrow circle of light over the page.
He shifted the crossbow slightly and leaned closer to the page, keeping the lamp steady with his other hand.
Above him the wooden stairs sat silent, the spear still wedged tight against the door handle.
Somewhere beyond the cellar walls the building settled the way old concrete did after dark, small ticks and groans that meant nothing.
He listened for them anyway before he let himself focus on the page.
The entry began mid-thought, as if the writer had already been keeping the log for a while before this page.
Subject 67 is still alive.
Nine weeks now.
Every other subject in the batch is dead or terminated.
I don’t understand why 67 is different yet, but I talk to it more than I probably should.
It knows my voice.
It comes to the front of the cage when I walk in.
The next entry was only a few lines below it, the same handwriting, a different day.
Ran the bloodwork again.
Nothing that explains the survival rate.
Whatever is keeping this one alive isn’t in any of the markers we’re trained to look for.
I’ve started keeping a separate page just for 67, apart from the batch notes.
I don’t think anyone else reads these logs, so it doesn’t matter.
But if they did, I don’t think I’d stop.
The name JANE appeared at the bottom of several entries, the surname scratched out hard enough to tear the paper.
Ares paused with his thumb against the edge of the page.
Then he turned it.
They’re cutting the program.
No results across four batches, one live subject, no publishable data.
Director says wrap it by Friday.
Euthanize what’s left.
I’m not doing that to 67.
The next few pages were shorter.
Dates without much between them.
Ares read each one carefully.
Worked alone tonight.
Copied everything onto a drive full research files, sequencing data, everything from the last two years.
Logged 67 as terminated at 11:40 PM.
It isn’t.
It’s in a carrier bag under my desk right now, asleep.
I don’t have a plan past tonight.
I have a mouse and a hard drive and a train ticket to New York.
Ares stopped there for a moment, then kept reading.
The next entry was dated four days later.
Ares shifted his weight against the wall and pulled the notebook closer to the lamp.
67 is fine.
Eating normally, no signs of stress from the move.
I’ve been keeping it in my apartment.
I don’t think anyone’s looking for a mouse.
They’re looking for the drive.
New York is loud in a way the lab never was.
I keep the cage by the window because 67 seems to like watching the street.
I know how that sounds.
I don’t care anymore how it sounds.
Some nights I forget what I’m running from and it’s just me and a mouse in a rented room with bad heating.
Those are the only good hours I get anymore.
I didn’t run every test before I left.
There wasn’t time.
There’s a protocol for airborne screening on any live subject before removal from containment and I skipped it.
I told myself it didn’t matter because 67 looked healthy.
I still believe that.
I need to believe that.
Ares stopped.
His thumb remained pressed against the paper.
The handwriting changed after that smaller, faster, pressed harder into the paper.
Someone at the lab noticed the download.
IT flagged it within a day.
It went to the directors.
The directors called the police.
I don’t know how much they know yet, but I know they’ll be looking for me by name within the week.
I’m not turning myself in and I’m not giving them 67 back to be terminated for a program that already failed.
I moved apartments twice in three days.
I don’t know if that was necessary or if I’ve just stopped being able to tell the difference between caution and panic.
67 doesn’t seem to mind the moving.
It sits in the carrier bag against my chest on the train like it knows to stay still.
I made two copies of the drive.
I’m keeping one.
I’m sending the other with 67, by courier, to the only person I trust with either of them.
Hana I’m sorry.
I know what I’m putting on you.
Keep him safe.
Don’t let anyone near him until you understand what he is.
Ares remained still for a long moment before turning to the last page in the section.
The final entry was shorter than the rest, and the handwriting there was different again less controlled.
I didn’t run the screening.
I know that now.
I should have known it then.
67 was never sick from what we gave him.
He carries something else, something that moves through breath, and it doesn’t behave the same way in him as it does in anything else it touches.
I didn’t test for it because I didn’t think to look for it.
By the time I understood what that meant, the mouse had already been in a courier van, a train station, an apartment building, my own hands, for the better part of two weeks.
I keep thinking about the people on that train.
The courier who carried the box.
The doorman who held the elevator.
I don’t have names for any of them.
I never will.
I never told anyone what I did.
Not the directors, not the police, not the university.
As far as any official record shows, Subject 67 was terminated in the lab in June 2030.
Only one person outside that lab ever knew what I sent, and where, and why.
My sister.
The page ended there.
Nothing followed it but blank paper.
Ares kept his eyes on the last line.
He read it again.
My sister.
His fingers tightened around the edge of the notebook.
He closed it slowly and set it beside the crossbow.
Ares leaned back against the cellar wall.
He thought of the riverbank.
The white suits.
The sedated wolf that shouldn’t have been able to grow to that size.
The pack accepting it.
Then the dog.
Three strides.
The deer hitting the ground.
Everything outside these walls had come from somewhere.
He looked up at the ceiling of the cellar, at the water-stained concrete, and thought of the camp he no longer had a place in the deer strung up between two hunters, the smell of cooked meat drifting through the corridor, a rule that had nothing to do with any of this.
None of them knew.
Mara didn’t know.
The girl who had brought him food that night didn’t know.
He thought about the two soldiers by the river, arguing over whether to leave the case behind.
Five weeks, maybe six, one of them had said, like the whole thing could simply be run again.
They hadn’t known what they were protecting either not really.
Only that Doctor Hana wanted it back.
He picked the notebook back up and turned the page, expecting more blank paper.
There wasn’t.
A new heading sat at the top of the next page, written in a different hand not Jane’s.
The letters were smaller, more even, pressed into the paper with the kind of control that came from someone used to writing things down for other people to read later.
FIRST TEST
Ares read the words once.
He looked at the lamp, then at the two barrels of beans still sealed against the wall.
He had rationed those without thinking twice about it.
One page could wait.
He closed the notebook and set it down beside the crossbow, within reach, and let the lamp burn a little longer before he put it out.