He’d exited the Capitol, was limping down the outside stairs on his cane, on his way to the passenger load point, when he saw her approaching. Red hair. Fair, freckled skin. Lisa Brandt. It had been years. Her green eyes met his, and she rushed towards him. Her face showed not delight, not hatred, but urgency.

“Martin!”

“Lisa… It’s so good to see you.” He reached out with his free hand to touch her arm. “What are you doing here?”

“Lobbying with CogLiberty. Martin, we’ve been hearing these rumors.” Her eyes burrowed into his and he remembered the intensity he’d always felt at that gaze, the passion, when their eyes had met, when... “Autistic children with Nexus, taken…”

Holtzmann searched those eyes. Did she still feel anything for him?

“…to ERD facilities, Martin. For research purposes. Not child protective services! ERD!”

He stared at her, and all he wanted was to kiss her again or to curl up in a ball or flee.

“Are you listening to me, Martin? Kidnapping children! Do you know anything about this? You have to help.”

The words she was saying caught up to him, and he blinked.

“I… Lisa… I…”

“You do know.” She took a breath and he could see her pulse moving in her lovely throat. She was as beautiful as she’d been fifteen years ago, when he’d been a young professor of forty and she his much younger grad student of twenty-five.

“Martin.” Her voice grew firmer. “How stupid am I? You’d have to know, wouldn’t you?” Lisa shook her head. “Help us. Even you can’t buy into this crap. Help us make the case to Congress. These children are human beings, no matter what the President or the Chandler Act say. Kids, Martin. Help us.” Her voice dropped, softened. “Please.”

Finally her words caught up with him. Holtzmann took a breath, closed his eyes. He let his hand drop from her arm. When he opened his eyes again, she was still there.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, “There’s nothing I can do.”

He turned and limped away, the self-loathing rising like bile through his chest.

“Asshole,” he heard her mutter to his back.

His car picked him up at the passenger load point, a bomb blast radius away from the Capitol itself.

Holtzmann slid into the front seat and put his cane on the passenger side. “Office,” he told it, then reclined his seat. He felt the allure of the opiate surge but he ignored it. Instead he used his Nexus to dial up a thirty-minute nap while the car drove through DC afternoon traffic.

An hour later he watched the children from the observation room, watched them socialize in ways that children with this degree of autism never socialized, watched them weave themselves together into something more than just a group of mentally handicapped kids.

Who are you? he wondered. What will you grow up to be?