When it was over she demanded access to her lawyer, was told she wasn’t under arrest. She demanded her phone, was given a simple no.

She’d been right, then. There wouldn’t be any time to enter the panic code. Wouldn’t be any time to alert the network that she was burned.

It should have been a comfort that she’d told them she was burned weeks ago, as soon as she’d realized Martin Holtzman was dead. That passing on his data was the last act she could ever take for the network.

It was no comfort at all.

Images of Alice kept running through her head. Alice as she’d seen her this morning, in her white bathrobe, her hair disheveled, little Dilan suckling at her breast.

And Dilan. Dilan who was so small, so vulnerable.

Dilan with Nexus in his brain.

Dilan too young for them to coach him to remove it.

Dilan who’d gestated with it. Who might not even be able to thrive without it in his system any more.

Why did I do it? she wondered. Why’d I put my family at risk?

They marched her through hallways, still blindfolded, through a door. She was pushed into a chair.

And then the blindfold was removed.

Sitting across from her, on the other side of a desk, was a well put-together African American woman. Shoulder-length dark hair. A dark business jacket over a maroon blouse. She looked like a business executive.

But Lisa Brandt knew who she was.

“Professor Brandt,” Carolyn Pryce said.

“I want to talk to my lawyer.”

“You’re not under arrest.”

Lisa made to stand up.

A strong hand grabbed her shoulder from behind, pushed her forcefully back into her chair.

“Not under arrest, eh?” she said, anger creeping into her voice.

“You could be,” Pryce said, her tone growing harder. “Your wife could be. Your son could be in non-human internment, indefinitely. Would you prefer that?”

Lisa felt it like a knife, like a dagger sliding up into her heart. That they’d do that? Of course they would. They were monsters. Her face contorted.

“How do you sleep at night?” she asked Pryce. “How do you look at yourself in the mirror?”

Pryce leaned forward.

“You received a package of information from Martin Holtzman. Maybe more than one. Memos. Documents. Don’t bother denying it. I want that information. I want the originals. All of them, exactly as you received them.”

Lisa narrowed her eyes. This wasn’t what she’d been expecting at all. This wasn’t about the underground railroad. “Why?”

“Because,” Pryce said. “I want to know if it’s true.”

“That’s it,” Brandt said, “That’s all of it.”