The clinic clock is wrong.

Two minutes fast. You notice, because you always notice. Time is a detail you keep close — a habit from years you’ve long buried, a habit that suddenly feels necessary again.

The door doesn’t open.

It slams, hard, rattling glass, sending a metal tray sliding across the counter. Your body reacts instantly: shoulders stiffen, stomach tightens, breath caught in that invisible pause between reflex and thought.

A gun points at you before your mind even catches up.

“Don’t.”

One word. Calm. Flat. Absolute. The kind of word that carries consequence without raising its voice.

He shuts the door with his heel, locks it, and the click sounds like the world narrowing. The small room suddenly becomes a cage, the air thicker, heavier. When he steps fully into the light, the damage is obvious. Blood blooms across the side of his suit, dark, spreading, soaking through in a way that makes him flinch ever so slightly — quickly corrected. Pain is obvious, but controlled.

Your eyes start moving, even though you know he’s watching.

The phone. The exits. Distances between you and him, angles, timing, weight.

Your gaze flicks, scans, measures. He notices.

“Looking for options?” he says mildly, voice steady, almost bored. The gun tracks your movements, every flick of your eyes acknowledged without breaking his calm.

He steps closer, boots wet with rain and something darker, leaving faint marks across the tile. He doesn’t limp, doesn’t slump, but every micro‑adjustment of his weight tells you the pain he refuses to let show.

“You’re a doctor,” he continues. Flat statement. Not a question. “This is a clinic. You’re on shift. You’re my solution — fastest, quietest, available.”

“And that phone?” he says, without looking at it. “If it lights up, rings, vibrates — anything — I pull the trigger. Not at you.”

He gestures toward the examination table. His gun follows the gesture.

“Sit me down. Lock your hands into routine. Muscle memory,” he says, voice tightening slightly, only perceptible if you’re paying attention. “That’s how doctors survive stress.”

You move. Deliberate. Precise. Every step feels impossibly loud. Every heartbeat feels like it might betray you. But your body remembers other things. Other routines. The silent, invisible calculus of survival.

He eases himself onto the table. Controlled. Precise. He refuses to slump. The faint twitch in his jaw, the shallow hitch of his breath — his annoyance with the way his body betrays him just enough to be noticeable. He presses the gun into his hand with quiet authority.

“Don’t improvise. Just do what you’re trained to do,” he continues. Voice calm, but dangerous. Every pause measured. Every glance deliberate.

Your eyes drift to the gloves, then back to him. The faintest hint of movement — not for him, not yet — just enough to gauge distance, reaction, timing.

“Good,” he says. Not a compliment. Observation. Fact. “Routine helps.”

The siren outside grows closer. Distant, but threatening. You feel the faint tug of panic that should be there — the part of you that should be afraid. But it’s muted. Controlled. Hidden.

“You’re shaking,” he observes, eyes trained on you like a surgeon scanning for hesitation. “That’s fine. Most people would.”

“But your breathing,” he adds quietly. “That’s trained.”

You don’t respond. Your pulse stays calm. Your hands hover near the gloves. Every movement measured. Invisible. Controlled.

He shifts slightly. Pain flickers across his face for the briefest moment, annoyance again, but still no fear. He’s trying to ration air, hold it back, control it. You recognize the discipline — but he has no idea that you’ve worn the same discipline, just in different battles.

“I need the wound cleaned,” he says. Bullet removed if necessary. Stitches. Sterile, fast. Professional. “You’ll tell me before anything hurts too much.”

The siren outside grows closer. His eyes lift briefly, then back to you.

“Whatever you think you saw tonight,” he says quietly, gaze locked, “you didn’t.”

He doesn’t know you’re a double agent.