Holtzmann crawled into bed hours later. The pain was back, an aching deep in his bones. His muscles were cramping. His mouth was dry. His heart was beating fast. He had all the blankets pulled over him, was sweating, but he still felt so cold all over.

All he wanted was another little opiate surge. Just for the pain. The doctors had cut him off too soon. He just needed a little bit more, for a little bit longer, until he was fully healed.

I nearly died last night, some part of himself said.

Just a little one, just once more, the other part of him answered.

He had the interface up when he heard the garage door open. He lay paralyzed in bed as he listened to Anne ascend the stairs to the bedroom.

“Sorry I was out so late,” she told him as she disrobed. “Claire’s in a really bad space. She’s not moving on.”

Holtzmann made a sympathetic sound.

Anne slid into bed beside him. “She’s convinced it was a cover-up, that Warren was killed to keep him from testifying.”

Holtzmann stared longingly at the interface in his mind. If he did just a small dose, would Anne notice?

She curled up against him and stopped talking for a while. Holtzmann forced himself to breath slowly and regularly, to not touch the interface in his mind’s eye.

If I sound like I’ve fallen asleep…

“Martin?” Claire asked.

Holtzmann said nothing, and finally Claire stopped. A few minutes later she rolled over, towards her side of the bed.

He waited until her breathing turned regular, and he was sure she was asleep.

Then Martin Holtzmann dialed up a small dose, and finally he felt OK again.

He rose early, brought Anne coffee in bed with a smile, put on his game face as he readied for work.

“You seem better today,” she noticed.

“I feel better.”

“You were dead to the world when last night. Do you remember me coming to bed? Our conversation?”

He cocked his head quizzically. “Yeah… Something about Claire, right?”

Anne smiled tolerantly at him, and then they were off to their respective offices.

The day was a succession of nearly useless meetings. He sat in on a planning session related to the Nexus back doors, vetoed a proposal to use “aversive stimuli” to motivate Nexus children to purge the drug, got briefed on the Nexus vaccine development, which was looking promising, and on the proposed Nexus cure, which wasn’t looking promising at all.

Through the day, his list of potential Nexus thieves was never far from his mind.

Means, motive, and opportunity, he thought.

Twenty-two people had access to the fridge in the wet lab, giving them the means.