His expression cleared somewhat, and Trent frowned. “I’m not leaving.” He stood, so fast that his chair rolled backward. Lab coat furling, he scooped up his dropped pen, proving he could do businessman, playboy, and lab rat equally well. “You need to leave,” he said as he jotted something into a lab book. “Go. Now. Before Ku’Sox finds you.”

Go? Now? I wasn’t a dog, but seeing as I had no easy way of leaving other than Jenks summoning me back, I crossed my arms and stared at him. Ku’Sox wouldn’t know I was here unless he walked in the door or I tapped a line. My eyes went over the assembled machinery, all humming and clicking. Obviously he and Ku’Sox had come to some understanding. Damn it, I thought we had a plan. Must be the cost analysis had finally tipped the scales.

“Is that it?” I said, and Trent looked up, still standing hunched over his book, his back almost to me, stiff and cold.

“Is that what?”

I gestured at the instruments. “The machine that saved my life?” It was as close as I would go to an outright accusation of his helping Ku’Sox, and his ears reddened.

“No, it’s better by about three generations,” he said, still making notes. “Once I get the strand of DNA I want, I incorporate it into a mild-acting virus that targets the mitochondria. I’m not entirely happy with the strand I’m currently using. I didn’t have a chance to clean it before proliferation.” His pen stopped. Slowly he straightened and looked down at his lab book. “It has a seventy-seven percent perfection, which will cause problems in some of the subjects, but Ku’Sox is a butcher, and if twenty-three percent of his children die, then he will be happy with the seventy-seven remaining.”

I blanched, turning to look at the empty bassinet and the rows of babies—eating, sleeping, crying. There had to be at least a dozen out there. “That’s inhuman.”

Trent gazed at the nursery, a lost expression on his face. “He would’ve been happy with twenty percent.”

My lips curled. “You’re helping him,” I accused, and Trent’s eyes narrowed. “You told me you’d never give him what he wanted!”

His eyes bore into mine. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“Hey, if the lab coat fits.”

Making a low sound of discontent, Trent hunched back over his book. Thinking that might have been harsh, I went to the nursery window, my hand cold when it touched the glass. It was obvious that the women could see us, but they went about their business with a blind furtiveness that told me they knew they were alive on sufferance—until Ku’Sox didn’t need them anymore. “He took their nurses, too?” I asked in guilt. I couldn’t save everyone.

“In some cases.”