"Yeah, I got here last night. My name's Turk."

"I saw you from the garden. You and the other two." The boy added, "I'm Isaac."

"Hi, Isaac. Looks like everybody's pretty busy this morning."

"Not me. They didn't give me anything to do."

"Me neither," Turk said.

"They're going to blow up the bioreactors," the boy confided.

"Are they?"

"Yes. Because—"

But suddenly the boy stiffened. His eyes widened until Turk could see the small uncanny flecks of gold around the irises. "Whoa, hey—you all right?"

A terrified whisper: "Because I remember—"

The boy began to topple over. Turk caught him in his arms and called for help.

"Because I remember—"

"What, Isaac? What do you remember?"

"Too much," the boy said, and wept.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

By dawn Brian Gately was on a transport plane lofting out of Port Magellan's major airport, strapped into a bench seat with Weil on one side of him and Sigmund on the other. Elsewhere in the plane was a group of armed men—not quite soldiers, since they wore no insignia on their flak jackets. The interior of the plane was stripped-down and possessed all the homely comfort of an industrial warehouse. Brian could tell day was breaking by the red glow coming through the porthole-sized windows.

Weil had ordered him to the airport well before dawn. "In the event that we get involved in negotiations,"

he had said, "or in any other talking-type situation—a post-event interrogation, say—we'd like you to be the one who interacts with Lise Adams. We think you'd be better than someone she doesn't know. How do you feel about that?"

How did he feel about that? Shitty basically. But he could hardly say no. He might be in a position to protect her. He certainly didn't want her questioned by some hostile DGS functionary or one of these mercenaries. She was in the wrong place for the wrong reasons, but that didn't make her a criminal, and with luck Brian might be able to defend her from the threat of prison. Or worse. His memory of the photo of Tomas Ginn's body throbbed in his head like a fragile aneurysm.

What he told Weil was, "I'll help if I can."

"Thank you. We appreciate that. I know it's not what you signed up for."