The generators, plural, were in the closet Jack had indicated, along with several cannisters of fuel. Cora eyed them with undisguised dismay.

“This is a fire hazard,” she said. “And who needs three generators? Are these supposed to be for the whole school?”

“No, they’re for private use, and I can hear you,” called Jack.

Cora’s face flared red. “Great,” she mumbled.

Christopher touched her shoulder, expression concerned. “Hey,” he said. “It’s not you. That’s just how she is. She doesn’t mean anything by it. You know how mad scientists in movies are always muttering about showing those fools who laughed at them in the academy? Well, she’s sort of like that, only crankier, because she didn’t even get to go to the academy. Help me move one of these things.”

Together, they were able to hoist the smallest of the three generators—which was deceptively heavy, and raised questions about how Jack had managed to get it down the stairs in the first place—and shuffle-walk it across the basement to the autopsy table. The tablecloth was gone. Alexis was stretched out with her hands by her sides, her temples, throat, wrists, and ankles glistening with conduction gel. Jack had located electrodes somewhere, applying them to Alexis’s temples, throat, ankles, and the insides of her wrists; they were connected to wires that extended to the leading ends of both pairs of jumper cables. The wires were wrapped firmly around the clamps, forming two braided bridges between them and Alexis’s body. As for the other end of the cables …

Cora stopped, nearly dropping her end of the generator. “No,” she said, with surprising strength. “I’m not going to help you—you can’t—no. This isn’t okay. You can’t do this.”

“Do what?” asked Jack, daintily wiping away a smear of conduction gel that had extended too far down Alexis’s neck for her liking. “Science? Because I assure you, I can do all the science I like, and you won’t be the first to try and stop me. I know what I’m doing. Please don’t try to interfere.”

“It’s all right, Cora,” said Kade soothingly. “Alexis is from the Moors.”

Cora stared at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means she’s dead,” said Jack. Her voice remained calm, like she was remarking on the weather. “My sister killed her, rather violently, I might add; my sister used these hands—” The veneer of calm broke, snapped cleanly in two, as Jack stopped talking and balled the hands in question into tight fists, her shoulders going hunched as she struggled to keep herself under control.

“It’s all right,” said Sumi. “A tool is only a weapon when it’s held by people who want to use it the wrong way. Or maybe it’s the other way around, I don’t know, but you’re not her. You’re not.”