Holtzmann met Stockton’s eyes. “Mr President, if I had to guess, I would say that these children, if raised in groups or in constant contact with others of their kind, will grow up to be extraordinary, in both the amount they’re able to absorb over the course of their lives, and their ability to reason and problem solve as a group.”

The President held his gaze. “Well above human norm, would you say, Dr Holtzmann?”

“Yes, sir. Well above. Many times above. They’ll accomplish things we can only dream of.”

The President nodded. “And how is progress on the vaccine?”

It cut Holtzmann to hear that question. It was a physical pain to go from a discussion of the immense wonder and beauty of these children to a question of how to prevent new ones from being born.

“It’s coming along, Mr President. In mice, we have encouraging early results. We can train the immune system to component molecules of Nexus before they reach the brain.”

“When can we deploy it?” Stockton asked.

“It’s very early, Mr President. Best case? Another year or two to get it working reliably and then map this research to humans, and then three to four years of human trials.”

The President frowned. “Four to six years? That’s not acceptable, Dr Holtzmann. We need to be deploying this next year. You need to fast-track this.”

Holtzmann blinked. “Mr President, those numbers are the fast track. We’re bypassing every FDA step we can and cutting every corner we can to get it done so quickly.”

Stockton drummed his fingers on his desk, clearly annoyed.

“Talk to me about the cure.”

Where the vaccine question had cut, this stabbed. It drove deep into his soul. To take a supremely gifted child who could touch the mind of another and rip that ability out of it…

He took a breath, kept his voice neutral. “Mr President, so far, we haven’t found any safe and effective cure.”

“What does that mean?”

“The cures we’ve tried kill the mice, Mr President. We have some ideas of ways to proceed…” He thought of Shankari’s back door, which should at least work on children exposed to the most recent version of Nexus. “…but it’s too early to say if they’ll work, of if they’ll work on all populations.”

Stockton continued to drum his fingers.

“Dr Holtzmann, let me make it clear what’s at stake. These Nexus children are a threat. If we’re unable to prevent the spread of Nexus to more children, and we’re unable to cure children that have been exposed, we’re going to have no choice but to be interning them. Thousands of them, at least. Now, I don’t want to do that. The public doesn’t want to do that. But I will do that if there’s no other option.”