Clinical-research compliance attorney Elena Wexler is hired to review a pediatric biotech trial in Dunwich, Massachusetts. The job looks like ordinary regulatory cleanup: anomalous parentage fields, missing signatures, emergency amendments, and a nervous ethics board. Then the records begin answering before they are filed. Children disappear without leaving the trial. Family ties are converted into permissions. And the institutions built to protect human subjects start recognizing something outside the room as a party to consent. To interrupt the protocol, Elena must confess the harm she once helped bury and build a record that names people before categories.