She turned and slapped him, yanked her arm away. “Don’t touch me!” More students looked their way now. Lisa whirled, then strode away.

He did the last thing he could, then. He opened his mind to her, reached out to her, hoping against hope…

He felt nothing there. But she stumbled, surprised, maybe, and turned, and looked at him.

He beamed his sincerity to her, his sincerity in offering her the proof she wanted, his deep desire to see Rangan Shankari go free.

He couldn’t feel her. But she held his gaze, then stepped towards him.

“Give me an account,” she whispered. “Where you can be reached.”

He told her. Told her the name of an account he kept on a Nexus message board, an account whose existence was enough to hang him.

Then she stepped back, and spoke loudly, for any passerby to hear. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. Good luck.”

Then Lisa Brandt turned and walked away.

Holtzmann was in a daze as he took the train back to DC. At home he logged into the Nexus board. There was a message there, from an account he’d never seen before.

[Send the evidence. Then we’ll talk.]

He sent his own note in reply.

[Will send half. The rest when my friend is out.]

The reply came back in less than a minute.

[Agreed.]

Holtzmann sat down at his secure terminal in his second-floor office, connected to work, and started collating the files. He heard Anne come home while he worked. He yelled out a hello, but she didn’t answer from downstairs.

He pulled the data together. Records of experiments on the children. Manifests of their ages and names. A recording of the torture used to force Nexus out of a nine year-old autistic boy. Blueprints for “long-term residence” facilities that were little more than concentration camps. Plans and imperatives for the Nexus “cure” and “vaccine”.

He made sure none could be tied specifically to him, then downloaded the files. He ran it all through a filter, cutting the documents and images and video into right and left halves. The right half he fired off in reply to the message. The left half he uploaded to his own account on the message board, but didn’t send. For that, they’d have to deliver.

Anne was in the kitchen when Holtzmann went downstairs.

“Hi,” he said.

She turned and stared at him. “Where were you today, Martin?” Her face was cold, hard.

Holtzmann blinked.

“At the office.”

“No, you weren’t. I checked. You’ve been sick since Friday.”

Holtzmann reached for some explanation.

“And who’s Lisa Brandt, Martin? Wasn’t she a student of yours?”

Holtzmann’s chest caught in his throat.

“Is she who you went to visit in Boston today?”

“Anne…”

“I have access to the accounts and the phone records, Martin. I’m not stupid.”

“Anne, it’s not what you think…”