The President put the ribbon around his neck and Holtzmann almost choked around his thank you and nearly flinched when they shook hands. He smiled a rictus smile for the cameras and he thought it was over, but the President kept a firm grip on his hand, and then pulled him close, so close Holtzmann could smell his aftershave and feel the football hero size of the man. Then the President spoke, his voice pitched for Holtzmann’s ears alone.

“I’d like you to brief me on the Nexus situation, Doctor. And especially those Nexus children you’re investigating. Two weeks. You, me, and Director Barnes. My chief of staff will set it up.”

Holtzmann swallowed, and then the President was past, and it was over.

He nearly collapsed into the men’s room stall, after, and pumped a tiny bit more into himself. He felt the sweet relief of tension leaving his body, of the anxiety he’d felt before the President evaporating.

Just this once, Holtzmann told himself. A special exception.

He let the fear fade, then chased the endogenous opiates with another boost of norepinephrine to get himself moving again.

Barnes was waiting for him when he emerged.

“Everything OK, Martin?”

Holtzmann smiled, and waved vaguely at his head, the skull fracture he’d received that day. “Just… still some aftereffects. Almost gone.”

Barnes nodded.

“Any luck tracking down the source of the Nexus yet?” he asked.

Holtzmann shook his head. “I have a team on it full time. We’ll find an impurity. Something will tip us off as to where it came from.”

Barnes nodded. “Keep looking.” Then they were off to the Capitol to make the case for the bills the President wanted.

Holtzmann told a dozen legislators that they needed tighter controls on chemreactors and precursors that might lead to Nexus. In between he passed through half-a-dozen more Nexus detectors, all of his team’s design, all with the holes he’d put there for himself. He swore to another senator that giving an autistic child Nexus was clear child abuse, as bad as giving a child heroin. The senator shook their hands and said she’d consider her vote. By that time all Holtzmann wanted was to find a bathroom and give himself another jolt of his own opiates to drown his sick self-loathing.

“Why bring me?” he asked Barnes.

“You’re a respected scientist, Martin,” Barnes replied, smiling that unnerving smile of his. “You have far more credibility than anyone I could bring from enforcement division. And, of course, you’re a national hero.”

Holtzmann grunted and got on with the day’s hypocrisy.

Holtzmann’s part was done at 4 o’clock, while Barnes went on to another meeting. He was tired and achy and clammy and jonesing, but he’d gotten through it, and now it was done, and he was absolutely not going to use the opiates again except for pain or sleep.