The encrypted file arrived at two AM. Morgan's phone vibrated against the desk, pulling Morgan from the half-sleep that passed for rest these days. Yuki's message contained no greeting, no context. Just a link and a single line: Ashford case. Fits pattern.
Morgan opened the file on the laptop, scanned the familiar structure. Liam Ashford, age nine. Adoptive parents: Daniel and Victoria Ashford, combined net worth forty-two million, real estate portfolio spanning three states. Biological father: Marcus Chen, currently serving eight years at Riverdale Correctional for embezzlement—charges filed three weeks before the adoption was finalized.
Three weeks. Suspiciously convenient.
Morgan pulled up Marcus Chen's case file, read through the charges. Chen had worked as an accountant for Ashford Development Corporation. The embezzlement accusation: Chen allegedly diverted funds to offshore accounts. But the evidence was circumstantial, the prosecution aggressive, the conviction secured through a plea deal that Chen's public defender had recommended to avoid a longer sentence.
Morgan's fingers moved across the keyboard, pulling county records. Liam's mother—Marcus Chen's ex-wife—had died in a car accident seven months before Marcus's arrest. No other family. No one to contest when the Ashfords, who'd employed Marcus for six years, offered to adopt the orphaned child of their former employee.
Charitable. Compassionate. Perfectly legal.
And perfectly designed to separate a child from a father who couldn't fight back from behind prison walls.
Morgan added Liam's photograph to the growing file. Dark hair, serious eyes, school uniform from Westridge Academy—another elite institution where children learned that wealth insulated them from consequences.
The pattern held. Wealthy family, biological parent criminalized and removed, child acquired through mechanisms that looked legal but functioned as theft. Liam belonged with Marcus Chen, not with the people who'd destroyed Marcus's life to possess Marcus's son.
But Morgan's hand stilled on the mouse. Scrolled down. Found the complication buried in the third paragraph.
Note: Case has received media attention due to Senator Harrison Whitmore's friendship with Ashford family. Whitmore spoke at adoption celebration, quoted in multiple outlets praising the Ashfords' generosity. Any incident involving Liam Ashford will attract significant scrutiny.
Senator Whitmore. Political power. Media coverage. Public statements.
Everything Morgan's previous operations had avoided.
Morgan opened a new window, searched for articles about the Ashfords and Liam's adoption. Found six major news outlets covering the story. Photographs of Liam with the Ashfords at charity events. Senator Whitmore's quoted speech about the nobility of providing homes for children in need.
The adoption had been publicized, celebrated, turned into a narrative about wealthy beneficence.
Which meant any disappearance would be news. Federal investigation. National attention.
Morgan closed the laptop. Stood. Paced to the window where the city sprawled below, all dark windows and distant lights and people sleeping in beds without missions consuming them.
Detective Ruth Banner was investigating. Morgan knew that. Yuki had confirmed it—Banner had pulled files on the previous cases, constructed a murder board, started asking questions that connected dots meant to remain separate.
Every additional operation increased risk. Every child Morgan reunited with a biological parent brought Banner closer to recognizing the pattern, closer to identifying Morgan.
Strategic thinking dictated pause. Wait until Banner's investigation stalled. Wait until the Ashford case lost media attention. Wait until the risk decreased to manageable levels.
But Morgan's chest tightened at the thought. Counted the days Liam Ashford lived with criminals who'd stolen Liam from Marcus Chen. Calculated the damage being done, the authentic connection being severed, the injustice multiplying with every moment Morgan hesitated.
If Morgan stopped now—even temporarily, even strategically—the system won. The Ashfords kept Liam. Marcus Chen remained imprisoned and separated from his son. The legal mechanisms that protected wealth and criminalized poverty continued functioning unchallenged.
Morgan couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop.
Because without the mission, without delivering justice, Morgan was nothing. Just empty space and engineered responses and a hollow place where identity should exist.
Morgan returned to the laptop. Opened the file. Started building the surveillance plan.
The research took hours. Morgan compiled property records, school schedules, security system specifications. Mapped the Ashfords' daily routines from social media posts and public appearances. Identified vulnerabilities in their protection—the gaps where a child could disappear without immediate detection.
Morgan's methods had been refined through repetition. Four previous operations, four successful extractions, four children returned to biological parents. The process was familiar now. Almost comfortable.
Morgan opened a new folder to store the Ashford research, labeled it with the date and target name. Clicked to save.
The laptop froze. Screen flickered. Then an error message appeared: File path conflict. Duplicate directory detected.
Morgan frowned, clicked through the error log. Found a folder buried in the system—one Morgan didn't remember creating. The file path traced back to an encrypted partition, hidden among Morgan's other secured data.
Probably old case files. Morgan had been collecting research for years, documenting every target, every operation. Easy to lose track.
Morgan clicked to access the folder. Entered the password. Waited while the encryption unlocked.
The screen populated with files. But not case files. Not surveillance photographs or target dossiers.
Clinical notes. Observation logs. Research protocols.
Morgan's breath caught. Clicked on the first file.
EMPATHY EXPERIMENT SERIES: LONGITUDINAL STUDY
Principal Investigator: Dr. Elias Kade, Ph.D.
Study Duration: 2005-Present
Subject Population: N=12, Ages 8-14 at intake
Morgan's hands shook. Scrolled down.
SUBJECT 7: INTAKE ASSESSMENT
Age at adoption: 11 years
Presenting trauma: Severe parental abuse, foster care displacement, attachment disruption
Baseline empathy metrics: Below 15th percentile on standard assessments
Research hypothesis: Targeted interventions can reshape empathic response patterns in severely traumatized children, creating controlled behavioral outcomes
The words blurred. Morgan forced focus. Kept reading.
Session 12 Notes:
Subject 7 continues to demonstrate rigid categorical thinking. Divides world into binary oppositions—safe/dangerous, victim/perpetrator, just/unjust. This cognitive pattern is consistent with trauma response but can be reinforced through selective validation of binary frameworks...
Session 47 Notes:
Subject 7 has internalized the concept of systemic injustice as primary explanatory framework. Shows increased agitation when confronted with examples of wealth protecting perpetrators. Obsessive journaling documented. Pattern emerging as hypothesized...
Session 89 Notes:
Subject 7's mission orientation is solidifying. Reports feeling purposeless without clear moral objectives. Identity formation appears contingent on external validation of justice-seeking behaviors. Longitudinal outcomes aligning with predicted trajectories...
Morgan's vision tunneled. The apartment—walls covered with research, timelines, photographs—spun at the edges.
Dr. Kade hadn't adopted Morgan out of love. Hadn't offered refuge to a traumatized child needing safety.
Morgan had been Subject 7. A data point. An experiment in reshaping empathy and engineering behavioral outcomes.
Everything Morgan believed about Morgan's self—the trauma response, the binary thinking, the obsessive need to deliver justice—all of it might be manufactured. Shaped. Reinforced through Dr. Kade's interventions disguised as parenting.
The mission itself—Morgan's entire identity as the debt collector—could be an outcome Dr. Kade had engineered. A predicted trajectory. A controlled behavioral result.
Morgan clicked through more files. Found observation logs spanning decades. Found notes from last week's visit: Subject 7 exhibiting increased cognitive dissonance following Hendricks operation. Binary framework showing strain under complexity of real-world outcomes. Intervention may be required to maintain mission orientation...
Dr. Kade's smile. The journal. The careful questions. The clinical assessment disguised as parental concern.
All of it documentation. All of it research. All of it part of a longitudinal study tracking Subject 7's predicted development.
Morgan stood. Staggered away from the laptop. Breath coming too fast, too shallow. The apartment pressed inward, walls covered with evidence of Morgan's mission, Morgan's purpose, Morgan's identity—
All of it potentially engineered. All of it possibly manufactured by the person Morgan had trusted, had believed loved Morgan, had thought was family.
Morgan's hands found the desk edge. Gripped hard enough that splinters pressed into palms.
No. This couldn't—Morgan couldn't process—
If Dr. Kade had shaped Morgan's entire worldview, if Morgan's sense of justice and purpose was an experimental outcome rather than authentic response to trauma, then who was Morgan? What was real? What remained that belonged to Morgan rather than to Dr. Kade's research design?
The walls covered with case files blurred. Morgan blinked. Forced vision clear.
The Ashford file sat open on the laptop screen. Liam's photograph. Marcus Chen's imprisonment. The pattern of injustice that needed correcting.
That was real. The crimes were real. The children stolen from biological parents through legal mechanisms designed to protect wealth—that was real.
Even if Dr. Kade had shaped Morgan's response, the injustice existed independently. The mission mattered regardless of how Morgan had come to it.
Morgan closed the research files. Moved them to a separate folder. Buried them three layers deep in encrypted directories.
Then deleted the folder path from recent history. Cleared the cache. Removed every trace of having accessed Dr. Kade's research notes.
Morgan couldn't think about this now. Couldn't process the implications. Couldn't confront the possibility that Morgan's entire existence was someone else's longitudinal study.
The Ashford case needed Morgan's attention. Liam needed justice. Marcus Chen needed his son returned.
The mission was real. The mission mattered.
Even if Morgan wasn't.
Morgan returned to the surveillance plan. Mapped routes. Identified security vulnerabilities. Constructed timelines.
Focused on the familiar patterns that gave Morgan purpose, that proved Morgan's existence through action, through delivering justice that the legal system refused to provide.
The research files stayed buried. The knowledge stayed repressed. And Morgan continued forward because stopping—because confronting the truth about Dr. Kade's experiments and Morgan's engineered identity—would mean the complete collapse of everything Morgan understood about Morgan's self.
Better to keep moving. Keep working. Keep collecting debts.
Better to be Subject 7 with a mission than to be nothing at all.