The next four days passed in much the same manner, days at the Biolab, evenings at Pakt’s house. Hiram and Sochin, Nolan saw, began to enjoy themselves more and more at the guldman’s residence. They showed in subtle ways how much they liked the idea of a submissive woman catering to their basic needs, one who was far more silent and sweet-tempered than most of the blueskin women of their acquaintance. They were never rude to Pakt’s wife—they had far too much breeding for that—but it pleased and amused them to be lords over members of the gender they had, for most of their lives, been in awe of. Nolan saw them preening, almost expanding, in Pakt’s male-dominated household; he saw their gestures grow broader and their opinions more decided. The changes were so minute that he thought Pakt might not have noticed, but for himself, he began to loathe both of them.

He had taken to staying at the lab later and later just to cut down the time he had to spend with the other blueskins at Pakt’s, and he hoped to be able to return to his apartment within a few days. Ariana Bayless had managed to stitch together a mass transit scheme that made the south gates accessible, but by all accounts, the buses and trolleys were so overburdened with commuters that the system wasn’t really working yet. But soon, he hoped. Soon.

Meanwhile, he tried to avoid Sochin and Hiram while he was at the lab, and put in extra hours after closing time. Which he might have done anyway, since he was on a new project that he was having a hard time solving. It involved trying to come up with a drug for an infectious disease that had mutated to the point where it was no longer completely treatable by three existing medicines. Nolan’s first task was to understand exactly how it had mutated, and then to figure out how to nullify it. He knew he would spend the first few weeks of his research bent over his computer, learning and understanding, and the next few weeks experimenting. At the moment, he was still learning.

“Are you still here?” Melina’s voice demanded one evening five days after he had moved into Pakt’s house. “Why don’t you go home? Do you realize everyone else in the building is gone?”

He looked up at her with a smile, though for a moment her face was blurry with images transferred from his electronic screen. “That can’t be true,” he said. “Aren’t there politicians and security officers and even residents who are in the Complex around the clock?”

“Well, you’re the last one in this office. Go home. What are you working on so hard, anyway?”