NADIA'S POV
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The name lands in the room like a dropped knife.
Precursor.
Roman says it quietly, like a word he has been avoiding for a long time and is only now allowing himself to say out loud. And the moment he says it, something in Nadia's chest - that dark, humming thing she has been managing since day one - goes absolutely electric. Like it knows the word. Like it has been waiting to hear it.
She does not let herself react. Not yet.
"Talk," she says. "Ten minutes. Start now."
Roman looks at Jess. Jess looks back at him with her arms crossed and her jaw set in the way that means she is staying exactly where she is and anyone who has a problem with that can manage their own feelings about it. Roman looks back at Nadia. Makes a decision. Starts talking.
"The Precursor Network existed before the Watchers," he says. "Forty years ago, the Watchers broke away from it. We thought the Network was finished. Shut down. Gone." He stops. Then - quietly, like it costs him something - he adds, "I was wrong."
"What did the Precursor Network do that was so bad the Watchers had to break away from it?" Nadia asks.
Roman is quiet for exactly two seconds. Two seconds is a long time when someone already knows the answer.
"They didn't just study returned subjects," he says. "They built them."
The warehouse goes cold.
Jess makes a small sound. She covers it fast, but Nadia heard it. She files it. She keeps her eyes on Roman.
"What does that mean?" she says. "Built them."
"The Network believed that death - the right kind of death, under the right conditions - could be used to create people. People who came back with specific abilities. Specific purposes." His jaw is tight. "They weren't studying the outbreak. They were preparing for it. Using it. Selecting people they thought could be useful afterward and engineering the circumstances of their deaths."
The word engineering lands on Nadia like a stone dropped from a high place.
She thinks about the shelter. About Daniel reading the charges. About the gates opening and the infected coming within forty seconds like they were already waiting. Like someone had placed them. Like the timing was too clean to be an accident.
She thinks about that for three full seconds.
Then she thinks about Marcus Teel on that security footage. Alive. Unchanged. Walking through her hospital at eleven PM like a man who had somewhere to be.
"Marcus Teel," she says.
Roman goes still.
"He was in my shelter. I watched him die. I was standing ten feet away." She keeps her voice level. "And he is walking around this city looking exactly like he did two years before the outbreak started." She looks at Roman directly. "The Precursor Network didn't just select people. They brought people back. And they chose who came back and who didn't."
Roman says nothing.
And his silence is the worst answer she has ever received.
"Was I selected?" she asks.
He opens his mouth.
"Don't manage it," she says, sharp and fast. "Don't decide how much I can handle. Was I selected by the Precursor Network to die and come back?"
"I don't know," he says. "That is the honest answer. I don't know how far back their planning goes. I don't know how long they were watching you before the outbreak. I didn't know they were still operational until thirty seconds ago." He looks straight at her. "But yes. The way you came back - how complete it was, how fast you stabilized, the thing in your chest and how strong it is - it is not consistent with accidental return. Someone prepared the conditions for what you are."
Nadia breathes in. Breathes out.
She is three months before the end of the world and she has just learned that her death might not have been an accident. That even the worst night of her life - the gates, the charges, the teeth - might have been someone else's plan.
She sits with that for five seconds. Then she stands up and picks up her pen.
"Okay," she says.
Jess blinks. "Okay?"
"Okay. We work with what we know." She speaks fast and clean, the way her brain moves when a patient is crashing and there is no time to feel anything except the next right step. "Roman, you need to find out who inside the Watchers is feeding information out. That is the most urgent problem we have. Jess, I need you to pull everything you found on that insurance investigation and send it to a separate device - nothing connected to the hospital network. And I need both of you to keep Marcus Teel's face in your heads, because if the Precursor Network is running him, he is not going to stay away from this warehouse."
She looks at Roman.
"And you and I are going to have a much longer conversation about who decided I needed to die and come back. But that comes after we deal with the traitor in your organization."
Roman nods once. He takes out his phone to call Otto.
Jess starts moving the supplies, quiet and fast, the way she moves when she has decided to trust someone and is acting on it before she can second-guess herself.
Nadia turns to her lists. She picks up her pen.
And then Roman's phone rings.
Not Otto. Not a number in his contacts. He stares at the screen for half a second - which is the longest she has ever seen him pause - and then he answers it and puts it on speaker without her asking him to.
A voice comes through.
She has heard this voice before. Once. Last night in a hospital hallway when she was walking to the stairwell.
The Opposition.
"Roman," the voice says. Smooth. Careful. "We know about the Precursor Network file you just accessed. We know what you told her." A pause. "We also know something you don't. Something about Nadia that changes everything. Something the Network put in her before she came back."
Nadia's hand goes still on the page.
The dark thing in her chest - the thing that pulses and hums and sometimes feels like a second heartbeat - does something it has never done before.
It pulls. Toward the phone. Toward the voice.
Like it recognizes it.
Like it was made for it.
"Tell me," she says.
The voice says, "Not over the phone. Come alone. Come now. And Nadia - do not bring Roman. What I'm about to show you is the reason the Precursor Network built you. And when you see it, you are going to understand why Roman Vael was never meant to be on your side."
The line goes dead.
Nadia stares at the phone.
Roman is watching her. Jess is watching her. The warehouse is completely silent.
She looks down at the dark thing in her chest.
It is still pulling.