He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His expression shifted rapidly; through the pain there was a sudden flash of pure astonishment, and then an almost amused comprehension of the full strangeness – and maybe even the perverse virtuosity – of the feat to which he’d been subjected. For an instant, he really did look like someone admiring a brilliant, vicious, bloody practical joke at his own expense.

Then he said clearly, between enforced robotic gasps: “I … don’t … think … this … is … a … good … id … dea. I … don’t … want … to … talk … any … more.”

He closed his eyes and sank back on to the table. His vital signs were descending rapidly.

Lukowski turned to the pathologist. He was ashen, but he still gripped the boy’s hand. “How could the retinas function? What did you do? You stupid —” He raised his free hand as if to strike her, but he didn’t follow through. The bioethicist’s T-shirt read: ETERNAL LOVE IS A LOVEPET. MADE FROM YOUR LOVED ONE’S OWN DNA. The pathologist, standing her ground, screamed back at Lukowski, “You had to push him, didn’t you? You had to keep on and on about the brother, while his stress hormone index climbed straight into the red!” I wondered who’d decided what a normal level of adrenaline was, for the state of being dead from knife wounds but otherwise relaxed. Someone behind me emitted a long string of incoherent obscenities. I turned to see the paramedic, who would have been with Cavolini since the ambulance; I hadn’t even realized that he was still in the room. He was staring at the floor, his fists clenched tight, shaking with anger.

Lukowski grabbed my elbow, staining me with synthetic blood. He spoke in a stage whisper, as if hoping to keep his words off the soundtrack. “You can film the next one, okay? This has never happened before – never – and if you show people a one-in-a-million glitch as if it was—”

The bioethicist ventured mildly, “I think the guidelines from the Taylor committee on optional restraints make it clear—”

The pathologist’s assistant turned on ver, outraged. “Who asked you for an opinion? Procedure is none of your business, you pathetic—”

An ear-splitting alarm went off, somewhere deep in the electronic guts of the revival apparatus. The pathologist’s assistant bent over the equipment, and bashed on the keypad like a frustrated child attacking a broken toy, until the noise went away.

In the silence that followed, I almost closed my eyes, invoked Witness , stopped recording. I’d seen enough.

Then Daniel Cavolini regained consciousness, and began to scream.

I watched as they pumped him full of morphine, and waited for the revival drugs to finish him off.

Chapter 2