The phone woke her at 1:04 in the morning on the first of September, and she couldn’t reach it.

She was in the sleep hood, in the dark, with her wrists tethered under the headboard, the way she’d been every night for nine months. The hood hissed in her ears. Under the hiss she heard the phone buzz on the nightstand — once, a pause, and then again, and again, the long patient buzz of a call, not a text. It stopped. Then a text, short. Then another call.

She lay still and counted. Four calls. Three texts. She couldn’t see any of them. The phone lit the inside of the hood faintly through the thin black fabric, a pale glow that came and went, came and went.

Abby wasn’t in the bed. Lea could tell without reaching; there was no weight beside her, no breathing. Abby had been downstairs at the long kitchen table with her laptop when Lea went up at ten, and she’d come up at 10:40 to clip the tether and lace the hood, and then she’d gone back down. She did that most nights now. Since the term sheet. Since the collar.

The phone buzzed again.

Then footsteps on the stairs. Fast. Then the bedroom door, and the light from the hall coming pale through the hood, and Abby’s hands at the back of Lea’s head, at the laces, pulling them loose.

The hood came off. The room was dark. Abby was standing over the bed in a grey T-shirt with Lea’s phone in her hand and the screen lit up in her face.

“Your sister,” Abby said, “is outside.”

Abby unclipped the tether. She didn’t say anything else. She held out the phone.

Dana 00:58 — Halo called me tonight. About Craig.

Dana 00:59 — I’m still his emergency contact. I never knew. They called me at 9:40 and said he’s a participant in a clinical study at your company and he’d been taken to the ER and was stable. A nurse from your company. At 9:40 at night.

Dana 01:01 — He’s fine. He told me he was fine. He said it like six times.

Dana 01:02 — Lea is Craig in the same thing you’re in

Dana 01:04 — I’m outside.

Dana 01:07 — Come out.

Lea sat on the edge of the bed in the dark with the phone in her hands and read it three times.

He’s fine. He told me he was fine. He said it like six times.

She didn’t know what had happened to him. She’d read his daily at six that morning, the way she did every morning. Day 81. Enclosure: Configuration B, rev. 2 (−6 mm). Thirteen tumescence events. Participant statement: “Fine.” Nothing about an ER. Nothing yet. She would read about it in five hours, on the rug, in the plain grey font. She knew that already. She knew it the way she knew the weather.

She got up. She went to the window.

The bedroom window looked down over the front of the house: the stone steps, the gravel turning circle, the long drive going down between the trees toward the road on the bluff. It was very dark. There was no moon.

At the bottom of the gravel, just inside the gate, with its lights off, there was a car. Lea knew it at once. A grey Subaru with a dent in the back passenger door where Sofia had opened it into a pole at soccer practice. Dana’s car.

She could see her sister in it. Barely. A shape in the driver’s seat. The faint light of a phone on her face.

Lea stood at the window, naked except for the bands and the rings and the collar, and the long bar between her thighs, and looked at her sister’s car.

Behind her, Abby didn’t move.

Her phone buzzed in her hand. A call. Dana.

She looked at it. She looked at Abby, standing by the bed in the dark with her arms folded.

“Answer it,” said Abby. “If you want.”

She answered it.

“Lea.” Dana’s voice was very low and very steady. Their father’s voice. She’d been crying, Lea could hear it, and she’d stopped. “Are you awake? Are you — can you see me? I’m at the bottom of the drive.”

“I see you.”

“Come down.”

“Dana, it’s one in the morning.”

“I know what time it is. I’ve been sitting here since half past midnight trying to decide whether to call the police.” A breath. “Lea. Is Craig in the same thing you’re in?”

Lea stood at the window with her free hand flat on the cool glass.

“I can’t talk about participants,” she said. “It’s confidential. I’d—”

“So yes.”

Lea said nothing.

“Okay,” said Dana. “Okay. So yes.” Lea heard her breathe in, out, the way she’d breathed in labor, the way their mother had taught them both to breathe through anything. “They called me. A nurse from your company called me at twenty to ten at night and said my ex-brother-in-law was in the ER, and when I got there he was in a cubicle in a gown with his knees up and he wouldn’t let the doctor near him and he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong and he kept saying fine. Fine, Dana. It’s fine. It’s a study. It’s fine. And then a woman came. Not a nurse. A woman in a green coat with glasses on a string, and she sat in the chair in the corner, and she didn’t say anything to him, and he stopped talking. Just stopped. Like she’d turned him off.” A pause. “She looked at me. She knew my name. She said, Mrs. Ruiz. Thank you for coming. I’ll take it from here.”

Lea closed her eyes.

“Who is she, Lea?”

“A board member. From a partner company.”

“Is she the one doing this to him?”

“I can’t—”

“Is she doing it to you?”

Lea opened her eyes and looked down at the dark car at the bottom of the drive.

“No,” she said.

It was true. Every word of it was true. Pauline Ward had never touched her. Pauline Ward had a key she couldn’t turn without Abby’s hand, and a floor of two on her breasts that she could feel right now, this second, standing at the window. But Pauline Ward was not the one doing this to her.

“Then who is?”

Lea didn’t answer.

The silence went on for a long time. She could hear Dana breathing. She could hear, behind her, nothing at all. Abby made no sound.

“Come out,” Dana said finally. Very quietly. “Please. Just come out. Come down the steps and get in the car. You don’t have to tell me anything. I promised I wouldn’t ask, and I won’t. I’ll drive. We’ll go to my house. Rob’s got the guest room made up. You can sleep for a week. You don’t even have to bring anything. Just come out.”

Lea stood at the window.

Come down the steps and get in the car.

Forty yards. The stairs, the hall, the front door, the stone steps, the gravel. Barefoot, she could do it in a minute, even with the bar. Less.

She turned around.

Abby was standing by the bed, in the dark, with her arms folded. She hadn’t moved. Her face was in shadow.

“The door’s unlocked,” Abby said.

Lea looked at her.

“It’s always unlocked. You know that. It’s been unlocked every night since September.” Abby’s voice was perfectly level. “Same terms as always. If you go out through it, Schedule A ends. The job ends. I’ll unlock everything that can be unlocked tonight, and send Priti in the morning for the rest. You’ll be fine.” A pause. “That’s the door. It’s right there.”

Lea stood with her back to the window and the phone at her ear and her sister’s breathing in it.

It’s right there.

She thought about the stairs. The front door. The gravel under her bare feet. Dana’s car, with the dent in the back door. The guest room made up. Sleeping for a week.

She thought about the platform at the top of her, still in her, whatever was unlocked tonight. Priti in the morning. The magnetic tool in its case in the back room. She thought about the bands, hardware, and the rings, and the floor of two that two women would have to agree to take off her. She thought about the collar at her throat and the seam she couldn’t find.

She thought about the job. The nine hundred million. Section 7.2. Without any further action by the Grantee. She thought about what she would be on the other side of the door: a thirty-eight-year-old lawyer with no job, no apartment, a resignation she’d have to explain, a body full of steel she couldn’t explain, and a sister asking no questions forever.

And she thought — this was the one she’d remember — about how much she wanted to see what Abby would do next.

She turned back to the window.

“Dana,” she said into the phone. “Go home.”

“Lea—”

“I’m okay. I’m safe. I promise.” Her voice was very calm. “I’m not going to come out tonight.”

“Is she in the room?”

Lea looked at the dark car.

“No,” she said.

Behind her, Abby didn’t move, and didn’t make a sound.

“I don’t believe you,” said Dana. “I don’t believe really, and I don’t believe this. I’m going to sit here for a while.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t have to talk to me. I’m just going to sit here. In case you change your mind.”

“Okay.”

Dana hung up.

Lea stood at the window for forty minutes.

She didn’t sit down. She didn’t put on a robe. Abby didn’t tell her to do either. She stood at the window in the dark, naked, with the collar at her throat and the bar between her thighs and the rings at two, and watched the grey car at the bottom of the drive.

The phone light came on in the car, and went off. Came on. Went off. Once, the dome light came on — Dana opening the door — and Lea’s whole body went tight, and she put both hands flat on the glass. But Dana only got out and stood beside the car for a minute, in the dark, with her arms wrapped round herself, looking up at the house. At the window. She couldn’t see Lea; the room was dark. She looked up at the window anyway, for a long time.

Then she got back in the car.

Behind Lea, at some point, Abby sat down on the edge of the bed. Lea heard the mattress take her weight. That was all. Abby sat there in the dark and didn’t say anything and didn’t touch her and didn’t touch the phone in her pocket, and the rings stayed at two, at Pauline’s floor, and the platform at the top of Lea stayed silent.

At 1:51 the car’s headlights came on.

Lea watched them swing round on the gravel. Watched them light up the trees. Watched the taillights go down the long drive, slowly, slower than anyone needed to drive, and stop at the gate — stop for a long time, ten seconds, twenty — and then turn out onto the road on the bluff and go down it, and round the bend, and away.

The drive was dark again.

Lea stood at the window.

“Come to bed,” said Abby.

Abby laced the hood herself. She clipped the tether. She lay down on her own side of the bed, on top of the covers, still in her T-shirt, and didn’t touch Lea at all.

Lea lay in the dark with the hiss in her ears, and under it, faint, very far down, the voice. The exit is the instrument. The exit is the instrument.

She thought about Dana standing beside the car with her arms wrapped round herself, looking up at a dark window.

She thought about Is she in the room? and No.

That was the second time. In the front hall in July, in a whisper: Yes. Really. And now, at a window, at one in the morning, with Abby sitting on the bed eight feet away. She had lied to her sister twice, and both times it had been for Abby, and both times Abby had heard her do it.

She hadn’t been asked to either time.

That was the part she lay awake with. Not the door. She’d always known the door was there. It was that no one had asked her to lie, and she’d done it anyway, and done it well, in a level voice, the way she did everything now.

Craig’s daily came at six.

HCM-2 PHASE I — PARTICIPANT DAILY REPORT

Participant: M-10
Day: 82
Enclosure: Configuration B, rev. 2 (−6 mm). Integrity nominal. Lock events: 0.
Adverse event: 21:15. Participant presented to emergency department reporting enclosure discomfort. Transferred to keyholder supervision 23:10. No intervention required. Enclosure retained.
Participant statement (required, verbatim): “Fine.”
Keyholder note: Emergency contact (D. Ruiz) notified per protocol. Contact record retained.

Lea read it on the rug, on her knees, in the grey light.

Contact record retained.

Not updated. Retained. Pauline had seen whose name was in that field, and chosen to leave it there.

“Read it to me,” said Abby, from the bed.

Lea read it to her.

HALO BIOMETRIC — PARTICIPANT NOTES (PRIVATE)

Subject: L-01.
Day: 171.

00:58–01:51. Sister at the bottom of the drive. Halo’s on-call nurse rang her about M-10 at 21:40, from the protocol contact list. P. was at the ER by 22:30. P. spoke to the sister by name.

I unlaced her and gave her the phone. I told her the door was unlocked. Same terms.

She stood at the window for 47 minutes.

Sister: “Is she in the room?” L.: “No.”

I was 2.4 metres away.

She lied for me again. I didn’t ask her to. I haven’t asked her for anything since the collar. I’ve been too busy losing.

HR at the window: 68. She was calm. She was calmer than I’ve ever seen her.

I don’t know what that means. I’ve always known what her numbers mean.

M-10 report: Contact record retained. P. is keeping the sister’s number.

So am I.