Chapter 13 · File Not Body

"Read it." Cassian didn't sit down. He dropped a folder on my desk and stood there, arms crossed, waiting to see if my hands would shake.

They didn't. Not much.

I flipped it open. A photo of me from the port, grainy, taken through a car window. Under it, four lines of type: TARGET: S. HART. MEDIC. NON-MATE. EXPENDABLE.

"Expendable," I said. "Cute word. Who wrote it?"

"Hunter contractor. Same crew that hit the dock two nights ago." He said it flat, like he was reading a weather report, but his jaw was doing that thing where the muscle jumps under the skin. "They had six pages on you before you had six charts in your own clinic."

I closed the folder. My fingers left a smear on the cover — sweat, not blood, this time. "So I'm a line item."

"You're not a line item." He said it too fast. Too loud for a man who never raises his voice. "You're not anything on a page.