Chay arched his thick eyebrows. “That was foresighted.”

“I was thinking overtime. I was trying to account for everything.” Nolan reached into his pocket and pulled out the second bottle of pills, the untouched container, and he laid this and a sheaf of folded papers on Chay’s desk. “There. That’s everything. My notes, my models, my drugs.”

“So if I take these—samples—of yours, I will be cured? Assuming I do in fact have this dread disease?”

“I don’t know,” Nolan said, and he heard the strain scraping through his voice. But he could not continue like this, carrying on this dispassionate cool debate. His blood was shrieking in his veins, his body was dancing with adrenaline. “They may have no effect. They may have a miraculous effect. You may not be as sick as I think. Your constitution may be stronger than that of the men in prison. I have given you the information as I know it. I have brought you the only tools I could fashion. It is your choice to believe me or not. I am finished.”

Again, Chay watched him with that unwavering regard, weighing him, dissecting him. Nolan wondered wildly what this stranger could possibly discover behind his mild eyes and innocuous face that all his friends and family had never been able to discern, for not one of them would have pictured him in this place, on this mission, with these companions.

“Not quite finished,” Chay said. “I have one more question. Why are you here? Why did you bring me this information?”

“How could I not?” Nolan cried, no longer able to maintain his calm demeanor. “To know that genocide was being committed and I had the key to preventing it? How could I sit quietly in my chair and let it happen? But who else could I tell? Cerisa Daylen had designed the disease—could I run to her for help? The very woman who controls the city devised the plan—should I have gone to her? I didn’t know what to do! Until I saw Kitrini.” Nolan’s voice came to a dead stop as he fought to regain control. He watched Kitrini a moment, but she was still silent, still immobile. When he spoke again, his tone was quieter. “And I remembered that she knew you. And I thought her company would find me a way into your presence. And I thought you were the one who needed to know.”

“You have done a great act of bravery,” Chay said, “or a great act of betrayal. For your own people will look at this as such.”

“Some of them, maybe,” Nolan said in a voice barely greater than a whisper. “Not all. Not all of them are so unenlightened and afraid that they would wish to see an entire nation dead.”