“Only five points in twenty seconds?” Brady says. “Better step it up, Detective.”

Hodges taps faster, eyes moving left and right, up and down. He no longer has to squint when the blue flashes come, because he’s used to them. And it’s getting easier. The fish seem bigger now, also a little slower. The music seems less tinkly. Fuller, somehow. You and me, you and me, oh how happy we’ll be. Is that Brady’s voice, singing along with the music, or just his imagination? Live or Memorex? No time to think about it now. Tempus is fugiting.

He gets a seven-fish, then a four, and then—jackpot!—one turns into a twelve. He says, “I’m up to twenty-seven.” But is that right? He’s losing count.

Brady doesn’t tell him, Brady only says, “Eighty seconds to go,” and now his voice seems to have picked up a slight echo, as if it’s coming to Hodges from the far end of a long hallway. Meanwhile, a marvelous thing is happening: the pain in his gut is starting to recede.

Whoa, he thinks. The AMA should know about this.

He gets another pinky. It turns into a 2. Not so good, but there are plenty more. Plenty, plenty more.

That’s when he starts to feel something like fingers fluttering delicately inside his head, and it’s not his imagination. He’s being invaded. It was easy, Brady said of Nurse MacDonald. It always is, once you get inside and start pulling the levers.

And when Brady gets to his levers?

He’ll jump inside me the way he jumped inside Babineau, Hodges thinks . . . although this realization is now like the voice and the music, coming from the far end of a long hallway. At the end of that hallway is the door to Room 217, and the door is standing open.

Why would he want to do that? Why would he want to inhabit a body that’s turned into a cancer factory? Because he wants me to kill Holly. Not with the gun, though, he’d never trust me with that. He’ll use my hands to choke her, broken wrist and all. Then he’ll leave me to face what I’ve done.

“You’re getting better, Detective Hodges, and you still have a minute to go. Just relax and keep tapping. It’s easier when you relax.”

The voice is no longer echoing down a hallway; even though Brady is now standing right in front of him, it’s coming from a galaxy far, far away. Brady bends down and stares eagerly into Hodges’s face. Only there are fish swimming between them. Pinkies and blueies and reddies. Because Hodges is in the Fishin’ Hole now. Except it’s really an aquarium, and he’s the fish. Soon he will be eaten. Eaten alive. “Come on, Billy-boy, tap those pink fish!”