“Yes.”
I looked at the hand on the plate.
I could remember the pressure of a pipette spring beneath my thumb more clearly than I could feel the plate itself.
I took the printed report with my left hand and walked out.
In the parking lot I sat in the same plain car I had driven to the Gala.
The report lay on the steering wheel.
High on the Blackwood tower, the outer screen still rolled Y-2 progress like nothing had broken.
I crushed the paper until the edges cut my palm.
My wolf keened once for the hand that would never heal the way a wolf’s body should.
I let it.
In this car there were no cameras and no Alpha to judge the sound of my breathing breaking.
One.
Two.
Three.
I counted to ten.
Then I flattened the report against the dash, smoothed the creases, and called Gray.
“Stop hunting ordinary rehab,” I said.
“The old path ends here. Find me something outside the system—projects Blackwood excluded, buried, or sealed. Silver-contamination nerve work.”
Gray was quiet for three full seconds.
“That side won’t give you safe answers.”
“I don’t want comfort. I want a path I can still test.”
Another pause.
Then only, “I’ll dig.”
Gray drove me to the sealed outer wing of an old regenerative site Blackwood no longer listed on any public map.
Elder Thorne met us at the glass barrier without a handshake.
He pulled three files onto a wall panel: my pre-marriage nerve-regeneration paper, the Y-2 risk-correction log, and yesterday’s evaluation.
Only after he finished reading did he open the cryo cabinet.
Blue light from the scaffold prototype washed over the silver scars on my right hand.
“Blackwood wanted controllable patients,” Elder Thorne said.
“I would not build a cure they could own. They sealed the project.”
He did not offer a miracle vial.
“This scaffold has never been tested on a living hand with this degree of silver damage,” he said.
“It could help. It could cost you the hand. I need a researcher who understands the risk, not someone I can persuade with a promise.”
Amputation.
I tucked the hand against my stomach and made him take me through the failed tests before I answered.
“If I take subject risk,” I said, “I also take researcher data rights.”
Elder Thorne’s mouth almost moved toward a smile. Get faster updates on novelping.com.
“That’s the entrance answer.”
The risk page said amputation.
The rights page said the data remained mine and I could leave.
I checked both roles—subject and researcher—and signed with my left hand.
“I can stop treatment? Even if the results look promising to you?”
“Yes.”
I signed the second page.
“Project restarts,” Elder Thorne said.
“As for your hand—we only trust the next data set.”
Day one we built the silver-deposit and nerve-conduction baseline.
Day four I took the scaffold micro-dose and logged every tremor myself.
Day eight I relearned precision grip with my left hand and rewrote the record templates when the old ones favored a right-dominant bench.
Day twelve, under stimulus, my right hand produced a nerve flicker that lasted less than a second.
“Again,” I whispered.
Nothing answered the second stimulus.
But the first flicker remained on the recording, small and unmistakable.
Elder Thorne did not declare a cure.
Under the cryo blue light he turned the project tag from SEALED to VALIDATION ACTIVE.
My right hand twitched once.
My left hand was already pressing the data page flat.
For twelve days, Felix Thorne had arrived at the sealed wing with a temporary badge, checked the doors, and left before my treatment began.
That morning, he put the master-control tablet on my bench.
“The old Blackwood supplier accounts are still here,” he said.
“I’d remove them first.”
I found the accounts.
“You haven’t done it?”
“It needs your authorization.”
He placed it beside the tablet.
I deleted the accounts and tested the lock.
His temporary badge failed until I restored it.
“Good,” he said.
He had rolled his sleeves to the elbows.
Four pale claw scars crossed the inside of one forearm, disappearing beneath the fold.
I had seen him every day and somehow never looked at his hands except to see what they were carrying.
I returned to the tablet too quickly.
“Does every door work from inside if the network fails?”
“We can walk them now.”
Salt and cold stone stayed close as he showed me the exits.
At the narrow service stair, he turned sideways to let me pass.
I noticed the warmth of his shoulder through my coat.
My own body surprised me enough that I missed the next step.
I caught the rail with my left hand.
He stopped below me.
“Bad stair?”
“Distracted researcher.”
His mouth moved at one corner.
He waited until I had my footing, then continued down.
Back at the bench, he laid out a temporary protection order and an emergency route to Port Haven.
I read both.
Security and transport; no claim on the research, and no obligation to stay with his team.
“Where would I go if I ended the agreement?”
“Wherever you arranged. We get you there safely.”
I checked that answer against the page before signing.
He stacked the papers and picked up his coat.
“Felix.”
He turned.
I had meant to ask about the scars.
Instead I pointed at the scratched machine beside the sink.
“Does that thing make anything drinkable?”
“It makes coffee. That’s as far as I can defend it.”
I almost smiled.
“Tomorrow, then. After the door checks.”
He looked at me a moment longer than the question required.
“Tomorrow.”
Caleb’s convoy stopped at the outer fence the next afternoon.
He walked into the gate zone with a technical cooperation letter under Ivy’s name and stopped at the glass.
It helps a lot!