Chapter 220: I Tried
"Before we start," Ariana said, turning away from the screen and crossing back toward her desk, "I need you to understand something about how this is going to work from here."
"That sounds ominous."
"It's not ominous, it's procedural, which is somehow worse to most people." She pulled open a drawer and retrieved a fresh stack of blank forms, setting them down with a precise little tap. "Yesterday was baseline. Today, if you're agreeing to actually find out what's happening to you, we move into controlled testing. That means deliberate exposure to specific stimuli, in small, monitored doses, so I can chart your reactions properly instead of guessing from secondhand reports about fights you got into before I ever met you."
"You want to recreate the conditions that triggered my growth spurts."
"I want to recreate them safely, in increments small enough that if something goes wrong, I can stop it before it becomes a problem neither of us can walk away from." She looked at him directly, and for once the sunglasses didn't feel like they were hiding anything performative — just a woman being plainly serious. "I am not interested in nearly killing my brother to satisfy my own curiosity, regardless of what you may have decided about my character in the last two days."
"I haven't decided anything yet. I'm still collecting evidence."
"Fair. Continue collecting. I'll wait." She allowed herself a small, brief smile before sobering again. "But I mean what I said. Controlled. Incremental. You tell me the moment something feels wrong, and we stop immediately, no arguments, no pushing through it to be impressive. Understood?"
"Understood."
"Good." She pulled a chair around and sat across from him, suddenly business-like in a way that felt almost like a different person entirely — not the cold professional mask from outside, not the playful tease from the inn, something steadier sitting between the two. "Let's start with what we already know triggers something. Combat. Stress. You mentioned that the fight with Claire pushed you further than you expected. I want details. Everything you remember about how it felt, physically, before and after."
Aaron thought back. It wasn't a comfortable memory to revisit — the fight itself had been born out of necessity, not enjoyment, and the version of himself that had emerged from it had unsettled him almost as much as it had apparently unsettled Claire watching from the other end of it.
"There was a moment," he said slowly, "where everything got quiet. Not literally — there was still noise, still motion — but inside my head, it went quiet. Like something that had been arguing with itself finally agreed on what to do." He paused, trying to find better words for something that hadn't translated well into language the first time he'd tried explaining it to Eva and Claire either. "After that, things moved differently. Like I wasn't deciding what to do half a second before doing it. The decision and the action happened at the same time."
Ariana wrote quickly, her pen moving in short, efficient strokes. "Adrenaline-linked activation. That tracks with several documented bloodline patterns, though the speed of it concerns me a little. Most documented cases show a gradual sharpening over multiple exposures, not an instant full-body shift in a single fight." She glanced up. "Did anything physically change during it? Visible changes, not just performance."
"My eyes, probably, though I couldn't see myself to confirm. Claire said something about it after. And the lump — the wings — they felt warmer. Heavier, almost, like they wanted out."
"Wanted out." Ariana's pen paused over the page. "That's a specific phrasing. Was that your impression, or an actual sensation?"
"Sensation," Aaron admitted. "Like pressure building behind a door that wasn't all the way shut."
She wrote that down without comment, though her expression had shifted into something more focused, more careful, the kind of look a person gets when a piece they've been turning over finally clicks into a shape they recognize.
"I want to test something," she said. "Nothing dangerous. I want to see if I can replicate a small fraction of that pressure artificially, under controlled conditions, and watch what your body does with it before it escalates into anything resembling what happened in that fight."
"How do you replicate combat stress without actual combat?"
"Carefully," Ariana said, standing and moving toward a cabinet along the far wall. "And with several less violent substitutes that achieve a similar physiological effect without anyone needing to throw a punch."
She returned with a small case, setting it on the desk and opening it to reveal a series of vials, each containing a faintly glowing liquid in different shades — pale yellow, deep red, a cloudy white that seemed to shift faintly even sitting still.
"These are mana-infused stimulants," she explained, catching his wary look. "Used in low doses for endurance training among certain races. They mimic the adrenal response of combat — elevated heart rate, sharpened reflexes, a surge of available mana to the bloodstream — without any of the actual physical danger of being hit by something. I want to administer the lowest possible dose and monitor your reaction in real time."
"And if my body decides the lowest possible dose is still enough to trigger something bigger?"
"Then I stop it," she said simply. "I have suppressants on standby specifically for that scenario. This isn't my first controlled trial, brother, regardless of how chaotic I might seem during the parts that don't actually matter."
Aaron studied her for a long moment, weighing the request against everything he'd already learned about her in the span of two days — the blackmail, the hidden cameras, the casual blood draws, but also the genuine concern in her voice when she'd checked on Alyssa, the careful procedural seriousness she was showing now.
It was, he was beginning to realize, an uncomfortable combination. She wasn't simply reckless, and she wasn't simply cold. She was both things layered together, not unlike the pattern she'd shown him on the screen — two things that should have contradicted each other, somehow coexisting in the same person without canceling out.
"Fine," he said. "Lowest dose. You stop the moment I say stop."
"Agreed." She selected the pale yellow vial, drew a small amount into a thin syringe, and held it up for him to inspect before approaching. "This is the mildest of the set. If your body responds even faintly the way I expect, I'll have enough data to plan the next step properly instead of guessing."
She administered it into his forearm with practiced precision, far gentler than the fingerprint scanner's surprise needle had been the day before, and stepped back immediately to monitor the readout on the same flat device she'd used on Alyssa.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then warmth spread from the injection site, slow at first, then quicker, climbing up through his arm and settling somewhere in his chest like a held breath finally being released. His heartbeat picked up — not alarmingly, but noticeably, a steady acceleration that felt less like panic and more like anticipation, the body gearing up for something it expected to need soon.
"Heart rate climbing," Ariana reported, watching the device. "Within expected parameters. How do you feel?"
"Alert," Aaron said, surprised by how accurately the word fit. "Like I just woke up properly for the first time today."
"Good, that's the intended baseline effect." She continued watching the readout, her brow furrowing slightly. "Mana resonance is responding faster than I anticipated for this dosage, though. Climbing steadily, not spiking, which is actually reassuring — spikes are what concern me, steady climbs I can track."
Aaron felt it too, the slow gathering warmth behind his shoulder blades, the same pressure-behind-a-door sensation he'd described from the fight, though fainter now, more like a polite knock than the door actually straining against its frame.
"The wings," he said. "Same feeling as before. Smaller."
"Show me." Ariana moved quickly, repositioning to get a clear view of his back without him needing to remove his shirt this time, holding the device close to the fabric. "Saturation's elevated around the shoulder region specifically. Not enough to trigger visible growth, but the pattern's consistent with what we'd expect if this dose were a smaller version of whatever your body experienced during that fight."
"So the theory holds."
"The theory holds," she confirmed, satisfaction creeping into her voice despite her attempt to keep things clinical. "Combat-adjacent stress responses trigger growth-phase activity in your biology, the same way mana-rich water triggered it in Alyssa's. Different mechanisms, similar underlying principle — your body responding to specific stimuli by accelerating development rather than maintaining it at a steady pace."
She made another note, then glanced up at him properly. "How do you feel now? Be honest. I'd rather end this early than push past something useful."
Aaron took stock. The warmth had settled into something manageable, the alertness still present but no longer climbing, his shoulders carrying a faint residual heaviness that wasn't unpleasant so much as simply noticeable.
"Stable," he said. "Nothing escalating."
"Good. I'm ending the trial here, then, while we're still comfortably within safe parameters." She set the device down and reached for a second syringe, this one containing a clear liquid. "This will neutralize the stimulant fully within a few minutes. No lingering effects, no rebound crash."
She administered it with the same careful precision as before, and within minutes, Aaron felt the warmth recede, the alertness settling back down into something closer to his normal baseline, the pressure behind his shoulders easing without ever having fully built into anything dramatic.
Ariana sat back, reviewing her notes with visible satisfaction, the kind of expression that belonged to someone who had just confirmed a theory they'd been quietly nursing since the moment they first saw a strange-eyed brother walk through their door.
"This is good data, brother," she said, finally looking up. "Genuinely good. I think I understand the mechanism now, even if I still don't know the full shape of what you're becoming." She tapped the folder closed. "Tomorrow, we push the dose slightly higher. Carefully. Incrementally. And somewhere in that process, I think we're going to start seeing exactly what you're capable of turning into."
Aaron rubbed his shoulder, the last of the warmth fading entirely now, and thought about the layered pattern still glowing faintly on the screen across the room — blue and gold, woven together, still mostly a mystery even to the person most invested in solving it.
"Tomorrow, then," he said.