The boy stood up from the fourth chair, and the whole room stopped breathing.He looked eight years old. Pale skin, dark hair, a white hospital uniform Adrian had seen only in broken memories. His eyes slid from silver to gold and back again.On his right palm sat a black ring.It was whole.Adrian raised the witness strip like a blade. "You're older than I thought you'd be.""You're younger than I thought you'd be." The boy gave a tired half smile. "You're counting the wrong thing."Behind Adrian, Seraphine shifted her weight. The pendant was still wrapped in cloth, but silver light leaked through the threads. Elysra said nothing. Adrian noticed that, and filed it away.Then he noticed the shadow. The boy's pointed at the wall. Everyone else's stretched toward the emergency lights.In this building, small wrong things were never small."What's your name?""You know it.""I know the name on the authorization. Adrian Vale."The boy's smile died. "That's *your* name." He tapped his ches

FIRSTBORN: SERAPHINE STERLING.Adrian read the line twice. Then he looked at his wife.Seraphine didn't move. The silver pendant lay open in her palm, three circles nested inside it, the center glowing a faint, sick white."That record is wrong," Elysra said."You haven't even read it," Seraphine said."I know what the transfer was built to do.""Funny. Everyone knows what it was built to do except the two people it was done to."Elysra flinched. Adrian let it land. This was the woman who had cut out his Dragon Core, rewritten his memories, and buried an anchor in his chest. If she was finally running out of answers, he wasn't going to let her hide behind silence."Show the source," he told the terminal.The screen flickered.RECORD SOURCE: ORIGINAL BIRTH REGISTER.WITNESS VALIDATION: SERAPHINE STERLING.IDENTITY VALIDATION: ADRIAN VALE."It's using us to prove itself," Adrian said.Seraphine leaned in. "My recovered memory counts as evidence. Me standing in that room counts as proof.

The child who was never born was the only one who could authorize the transfer.Adrian read the line twice. Then he looked at the three chairs in the white chamber.A woman sat in the first. A child sat in the second. The third was empty.No doors. No windows. No cameras he could see. Yet the room knew they had come.A red line cut across the words above the entrance.TRANSFER THREE: FINAL AUTHORIZATION PENDING.TIME REMAINING: 10 HOURS, 23 MINUTES.Seraphine stood at his side, her broken pendant sealed in an evidence pouch. Elysra hung back, staring at the woman in the first chair. On Adrian's other side stood the boy.The boy had Adrian's face. That was the first problem.The woman wore the same silver pendant Seraphine used to wear. That was the second.Elysra had stopped breathing. That was the third."Do you know her?" Adrian asked.His mother didn't answer.The woman's head was bowed. Dark hair hid her face. Her hands lay flat on her knees, perfectly still."I know the pendant,"