He looked at the ring. It was still on his finger, still warm, still pulsing with that strange, rhythmic light that seemed to match his heartbeat, as if the metal had become an extension of his own circulatory system.But the heat was fading now, the burning giving way to something else, something that felt less like fire and more like the deep, gnawing cold that settles into bones after a fever breaks.He felt awful.The pain in his head was immense. It was not a throb, neither was it an ache. It was a scream. A relentless, piercing shriek that drowned out everything else, that made it impossible to think, impossible to breathe, impossible to do anything except exist inside the agony, suspended in a void where only suffering had any reality.Saul tried to stand, but his legs buckled beneath him, collapsing like they were made of jelly, the muscles refusing to obey the commands his brain desperately sent down his spine. He fell back onto the bed, the papers scattering around him l

Saul felt something like guilt wrap rise up his throat."I mean, I don't feel great," Saul said, his voice still rough, still weak. "But I'm okay. I think. Why aren't I in the hospital? Not that I'm not grateful to be alive and all, but why am I at home?"Kim looked away from him. Her hands dropped from his face, falling to her lap, and she stared down at her fingers like they held the all the answers.Leo answered from behind her."Because of the S-factor." His voice was matter-of-fact, but there was a heaviness underneath it, a weight that hadn't been there before. "It was still in your system when Kim found you. We couldn't take you to a hospital. The doctors would have taken one look at your blood work and treated you like you'd overdosed on some common narcotic. And that would have probably killed you."He stood up from the couch and walked closer, his footsteps soft against the floor. "Kim called in a specialist the moment she found you. Some guy she knows, someone who's worked

Saul squinted at the screen. The numbers blurred together, a sea of black ink on white light, but he could see the pattern Leo was talking about. It was too regular. Too symmetrical. It looked like a painting of numbers, not a real record."The people behind this were very thorough," Leo said. He chuckled, but there was no humor in it. He was grudgingly impressed despite himself. "Ha ha... too thorough, if you ask me."He leaned forward again, his fingers resuming their dance across the keyboard. Windows opened and closed and files appeared and disappeared with soft clicks. He pulled up another spreadsheet, this one older, the dates going back years, the paper trail stretching into the past like a road without end."When I discovered funds were missing at our main office," Leo said, "I thought this would have a lot of holes in it. I thought it would be messy. Desperate people make mistakes, right? They get sloppy. They leave traces."He pointed at the screen, at a string of transac

He stood there, panting, his hands on his knees, his head bowed.His chest rose and fell in deep, shuddering breaths, and a thin sheen of sweat had appeared on his forehead. The long monologue had taken more out of him than he wanted to admit, and the room was still spinning just slightly, like the world hadn't quite decided whether to let him stay in it.Leo whistled, a low, appreciative sound that cut through the silence."Well," Leo said, crossing his hands behind his head and stretching his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. He looked like he was settling in for a movie. "That was something."Saul scowled at him, his brows drawing together. He was still trying to catch his breath, still trying to steady himself, so he didn't really have any air to throw back a good come back to the man's snark but the sight of Leo looking so comfortable, so relaxed, so utterly unbothered, made irritation rise within him."I liked it better," Saul muttered, "when both of you w

But his body had other ideas. His knees buckled slightly, just enough to make him reach for the arm of the couch, and before he knew it he was sitting again, his back against the cushions, his chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged breaths.Leo, who had been lounging in his chair with the casual indifference of a man watching a mildly interesting television program, straightened up slightly. His eyes tracked the doctor's movements with a sharpness that belied his relaxed posture but he didn't say anything. He just watched.Smiling gently, Aris approached the couch and knelt in front of Saul, his movements slow and deliberate, the way you might approach a wounded animal. He wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Saul's arm and pumped the bulb, his eyes fixed on the gauge."Now, although, I am very glad to see you awake, sir, I would also like to retirate my earlier question," Aris said with a quirked lips. "How. Are. You. Feeling?”Saul closed his eyes. The question felt absur