Kate didn't really need to check her bracelet; she'd had it memorized from fairly early on, if only because she'd looked at it so often in the beginning, trying to puzzle out the identifiers. "That's awful for him," she said first, brain latching onto the information about Reginald's experience before anything else. It was a stalling tactic, fingertips already fiddling with the bracelet, turning it so the identification number faced her. She didn't need to check it, but she did anyway. Because if Reginald was right, her fourth number should be a zero. Because she didn't have any biological siblings. Blake and Sam were safe - they didn't share Kate's genetics. Which meant her number was a zero. She glanced down. 5361AUN5.
It was like a punch to the gut, one that locked up her muscles and tightened her chest so that it was hard to breathe. "That can't be right," she said after a moment. Her expression didn't change, her tone mild, polite, and a little distant, with a faintly breathless quality to it. Behind the veneer of calm, her mind was racing. Maybe her mother had a sibling who'd had a child. Maybe Kate had a cousin she didn't know about. "My fourth number is a one. So I'm sorry to say, either Reginald's system is incorrect or they mistyped my ID." Except she'd never been the type to spend much time lying to herself, and in a second she'd come around to accepting what was in front of her face. Or, more accurately, hidden in her desk drawer.