“Look,” the scientist snapped. “None of you understands what has happened here. Cerisa Daylen was not the only biologist clever enough to create a lethal virus—but until she did it, no one else thought to try it. We think we’ve stopped her epidemic—and we think we can stop Nolan’s. But there are gulden biologists who are fully skilled enough to design new germs, new diseases, that we’ll know nothing about until they begin to destroy the indigo race. That’s what Nolan did. He reminded the gulden that they have a weapon every bit as sophisticated as ours—and he warned us that the weapon was already in gulden hands.”

She began to push her way through the crowd, but the reporters kept shouting questions at her. “Which gulden scientists can manufacture such a disease?” “Do you really believe we’ve reached an age of biological warfare?” “One more question about Nolan Adelpho—” But she ignored them all, answered no more questions and finally made her escape. When she had finally disappeared from view, one of the broadcasters turned to the screen and announced, “That was Melina Lurio, a scientist at the Biolab for almost four years. She first joined Cerisa Daylen’s team the summer the tiseese virus was sweeping through the albino community—”

Kit stopped listening. Melina. Now she remembered. She had met Melina at Corzehia’s ill-fated party, and they had talked of pointless things, but the indigo woman had been kind. And Nolan had mentioned her name to Kit with great affection; they must be close friends, she thought. She could not remember him mentioning anyone else’s name—except for Leesa’s—and the media had already established that Analeesa Corova had no clue as to Nolan’s whereabouts and would not willingly speak to him if she had. They had also discovered he was not at his city apartment. His family, while maintaining a stony silence on his behavior, had proved to the satisfaction of the authorities that Nolan was on none of the Adelpho properties.

But perhaps this Melina Lurio might know where Nolan was.

Kit fetched Sereva’s copy of the city directory and looked up Melina’s name. Yes, just as one might expect from that skin color and that chic appearance: She lived in one of the trendier indigo neighborhoods, deep in the city itself. It would be no trouble at all to find her.