Chapter 48: Masking

Chapter 48: Chapter 48: Masking

Nero held Sebastian’s gaze.

Sebastian could see exactly how little he liked it.

Finally, the enigma reduced his output by only five percent.

Sebastian felt the difference immediately as the warmth beneath his skin cooled and an uncomfortable pressure began gathering behind his sternum, making his next breath require conscious effort even though he refused to let any of that show on his face.

The manual pulse reading climbed. The monitor remained unchanged. Every physician in the room went still.

Nero’s tablet lowered.

"Put it back."

"Thirty seconds," the specialist said.

"No."

"Nero."

Sebastian did not raise his voice.

The enigma looked at him again, and Sebastian deliberately relaxed his shoulders even as his fingers curled against the edge of the examination bed.

"I’m fine."

Nero’s eyes narrowed.

"You said that this morning."

Sebastian almost smiled. "So did the machines."

Claude looked between them, worry visible now despite every attempt to conceal it, then turned toward the monitor as something on the display caught his attention.

"Sebastian."

Sebastian shifted his gaze toward him, relieved to have an excuse to stop looking at Nero. His hands remained planted beside his thighs, knuckles white against the pale examination mattress.

"Say that again," Claude said.

"What? That I’m fine?" Sebastian raised a brow.

The monitor changed.

The elevated pulse settled. Respiratory strain decreased. Vascular stress returned toward baseline within seconds, while the pheromonal instability indicator flattened until the screen once again presented the same irritatingly reassuring values it had displayed throughout Sebastian’s collapse.

Claude stared.

The senior Sahan specialist stepped closer.

"Don’t move."

"I wasn’t planning to."

"Sebastian," Claude said slowly, "does your chest hurt?"

"A little."

The pressure sharpened while he spoke.

Sebastian instinctively pushed it aside.

The graph flattened.

Claude’s expression changed.

"Stop doing that."

Sebastian frowned. "Doing what?"

"Masking."

The accusation offended him enough that he forgot the discomfort for a moment.

"I am not masking."

Nero made a quiet sound from across the room.

Sebastian turned.

The enigma had abandoned his tablet entirely now, forearms resting against his thighs as he watched from the chair.

"Do you have something useful to contribute?"

"You are absolutely masking."

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. "I know the difference between maintaining composure and falsifying a medical examination."

Claude stepped closer before Nero could answer.

"I don’t think you’re doing it consciously."

That stopped him.

Claude pointed toward the monitor.

"Every time you decide something is tolerable, the system agrees with you."

Sebastian glanced at the screen.

The values were calm.

"That makes no sense."

"Your continuous monitoring has been inexplicably normal for days," Claude said. "Even when the laboratory markers confirmed you were approaching berserk, the real-time values barely moved. This morning you were bleeding from your eyes and lungs while the system continued reporting stable regulation."

The Sahan specialist was already pulling up the last several minutes of data, enlarging the graphs across the wall display.

"We assumed the equipment was failing to detect the transition," she said. "It may be detecting exactly what his pheromonal system is presenting."

Sebastian looked at her.

"You think I’m manipulating the readings."

"Not deliberately."

Claude’s gaze remained fixed on him.

"You have spent years functioning through pain, suppressing pheromonal instability, and remaining operational in environments where showing distress could compromise everyone around you. Your body may have learned the same discipline."

Sebastian gave him a deeply unimpressed look.

"My blood pressure does not care about military professionalism."

"Ordinarily, no," the specialist said. "Your pheromonal system does."

She moved one of the sensors along the side of his throat and watched the data alter almost immediately.

"If you are unconsciously using pheromonal control to suppress the physical expression of stress, the monitors calibrated around that system may be reading the version of your physiology you are forcing outward rather than the actual strain underneath."

Nero stood.

Sebastian looked toward him.

The expression on Nero’s face had become unpleasantly serious.

"No."

Sebastian’s brows drew together. "No, what?"

"No more masking."

"You do not get to order that."

"I’m not ordering you."

"You sounded remarkably like you were."

Nero stopped several feet away, close enough that Sebastian could feel the reduced pheromonal field more distinctly but not close enough to interfere with the test.

"I watched you cough blood into my shirt while every machine in the room said you were stable. If you are somehow teaching those machines to believe whatever lie you tell yourself, I would prefer you stop."

Sebastian’s jaw tightened.

"I am not lying to myself."

Nero only looked at him.

That was worse than an argument.

Sebastian knew what Nero saw: three years of symptoms hidden from Claude, increasingly aggressive suppressants, military deployments continued long after Sebastian had recognized the first markers, and a morning spent insisting he could function until his body physically folded in Nero’s arms.

He looked away.

Claude crossed his arms.

"I need you to stop managing what you feel long enough for us to measure it."

"That is an absurd request."

"It is a medical request."

"I cannot simply decide to become incompetent at controlling myself."

"No one is asking you to lose control."

"That is exactly what you’re asking."

"We are asking you to stop disguising pain."

Sebastian’s expression hardened.

Then he caught movement beside Claude.

Nero had not said anything.

He did not need to.

The warning in those purple eyes was unmistakable, stripped of teasing or triumph and carrying enough remembered fear that Sebastian could almost feel the blood drying against Nero’s shirt again.

Sebastian exhaled.

"Fine."

Claude nodded toward the monitor.

"Close your eyes."

"That seems unnecessary."

Nero warned Sebastian, his voice so low that the glass around them vibrated.

Sebastian closed his eyes.

"Now stop trying to look fine." Claude continued without looking in Nero’s direction.

His first instinct was to say that he was not trying.

He swallowed the response. For several seconds nothing happened.

Then Sebastian allowed himself to notice his body rather than organize it.

His chest hurt.

More than a little.

The pressure beneath his sternum was deep and burning, spreading toward his ribs with every breath. His head had begun aching behind his eyes, his glands felt swollen and painfully warm, and there was a tremor running through his thighs that he had been suppressing so automatically he had not consciously registered it.

He let his shoulders drop. His fingers unclenched.

The monitor alarmed.

Sebastian’s eyes opened.

The room had transformed.

Pulse climbing. Blood pressure elevated. Respiratory stress well outside the previous baseline.

Pheromonal instability indicators that had remained almost motionless for days were now rising across the screen in jagged increments, followed by receptor values the Sahan system had previously failed to capture at all.

Nobody spoke for several seconds.

Claude looked sick.

The senior specialist looked intensely focused.

Nero looked furious, but not at Sebastian. That would have been easier.

"Those are the real readings?" Sebastian asked.

"We think so," Claude said.

Sebastian stared at the display.

The difference was enormous.

The specialist changed several parameters and watched the data continue flowing.

"This explains why the alarms never triggered. Your system never presented the physiological escalation in the expected way because you kept forcing it back under your functional threshold."

Sebastian swallowed.

Claude looked at him with twelve years of accumulated frustration.

"How long have you been doing this?"

Sebastian almost said he did not know.

Then he caught Nero’s expression.

He made himself answer properly.

"Probably years."

Claude closed his eyes briefly.

"Of course."

"I didn’t know I was affecting the monitors."

"I believe you."

That somehow made Sebastian feel worse.

Nero stepped closer.

His pheromones increased back to their previous level without anyone needing to ask.

Relief moved through Sebastian almost immediately, warm and deep, but this time he did not force his body to conceal what remained underneath.

The numbers slowly improved.

Pulse declined by several beats. Respiratory effort eased. The pheromonal stress markers stopped climbing, but they remained elevated instead of collapsing into the beautiful false normality Sebastian had been presenting before.

The senior specialist watched the change with grim satisfaction.

"There."

Claude nodded.

"That is data we can actually use."

Sebastian looked at the monitor and hated every number on it.

Nero stopped beside the examination bed.

"From now on, you tell them when something hurts."

Sebastian looked up at him.

"You are enjoying having medical authority far too much."

"No."

The answer was quiet enough to erase the joke.

Nero’s gaze flicked toward the screen.

"I’m enjoying finally knowing when you’re not fine."