“Dr. Abbey?” I asked. She looked toward me, expression that of a teacher who wanted to encourage a favorite student to come up with the right answer before the final bell. “What do the reservoir conditions really do? Do you know?”

“Of course I do.” She smiled, setting her drink aside as she stood. “Come on. I think it’s time I took you for a tour of the lab. You need to understand what we’re doing here.”

“I’ve always liked a good perversion of science,” said Becks. At least one of us was remembering to keep things light. “Let’s take the tour.”

Yes, said George, sounding oddly subdued. Let’s.

Kelly didn’t say anything. Maybe that was for the best.

We left ourdrinks behind and followed Dr. Abbey from her cramped cubicle to the main floor of the lab. Joe padded along at the rear of the group, claws making an unnerving clacking sound against the bare linoleum. It was impossible to forget that he was there, or that he was—all protests aside—more than large enough to undergo full amplification. He could kill us all before anyone had a chance to reach for a weapon.

But he won’t, said George, picking up on the thought. I don’t think Dr. Abbey’s quite that crazy.

“Says the one with the least to lose,” I muttered.

Dr. Abbey looked back at me, brows raised. “What was that?”

I offered her a sunny smile. “Just talking to my dead sister. She lives inside my head now. She says you’re not crazy enough to let your dog go zombie and eat us all.”

“She’s right,” Dr. Abbey agreed, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that I was talking about carrying on conversations with a dead person. It was weirdly jarring. “Even if Joe could amplify—which he can’t, after all the work we’ve done—I wouldn’t let him do it outside a sealed room. There’s too much here that he could damage.”

“Like these?” Alaric stopped, frowning at a tank that contained about a dozen things that looked like guinea pigs with too many legs. Becks followed his gaze and let out a shriek, jumping backward.

“Goliath tarantulas,” said Dr. Abbey. “Average weight of the specimens in that tank is between four and six ounces. It’s taken generations to breed them up that large.”

“Why would you want to?” demanded Becks. “They’re horrible.”

“They’re infected,” said Dr. Abbey. We all turned to stare at her. She continued blithely, “The biggest female has amplified twice so far. Once she got sick enough that she started displaying stalking behavior and infected three other spiders before she could be contained. One of them didn’t recover. A pity. He was from a very encouraging line. Come on, there’s a lot to see.” She resumed walking, obviously trusting us to follow her.

“Spiders can’t amplify,” said Kelly, sounding uncertain.

“Keep telling yourself that,” said Dr. Abbey, and kept walking.