She glanced over at Turner. He could not hear what she wanted to say to her boss.

“We need to meet, George.”

“Safe room. See you there.”

Hanging up, she directed her attention to Turner. “You recommended Colonel Bryan. You allowed him to penetrate our operation. When there’s an investigation—and there will be one, I assure you—the first question is going to be why you proposed him for this duty.”

“He was appropriately trained and cleared according to legal requirements.”

“Then what is he? Who is he?”

“Someone who has done us harm. So you need to take action immediately, and I will be watching, you can be sure.”

“Doctor, he moves like a hybrid, but you recommended him! What am I dealing with, here?”

Turner did not reply.

As she got up from her workstation, the world seemed to recede, reality itself to implode into a tiny, white-hot pinpoint of betrayal and anguish. She had made love with—what? A thing? What was he?

No wonder he’d been so indifferent to her afterward. He was an automaton, a sophisticated robot. She’d made love to a machine.

“I’m leaving,” she said. “You can’t stay here.”

He stood up and came toward her, looking down at her from his considerable height, a great, looming skeleton, glaring at her with a strange— was it curiosity?

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

He remained silent.

“This will be contained,” she said. “Mark will be dealt with.” She stepped out into the silent corridor, waited for Turner, then locked her door and activated the alarm. Her flesh crawling to be near him, they passed the long row of locked gray doors in silence and came to a stop before the elevators. Distantly, wind roared. The storm had picked up.

How could she ever explain herself? She’d been completely duped, and her own blind, stupid, adolescent infatuation was responsible. She’d never grown up properly, look at the childish way she relished the power this job gave her, look at her immature overreaction to a man—if you could even call him that—whom she’d slept with exactly once, and look at the consequences.

She turned a corner, saw two people, a man in a gray, worn suit and a woman with him, prim, studiously casual, her expression carefully neutral. As she approached the elevator bank, they stopped talking together and stood in silence. On this floor, you didn’t greet people and you didn’t converse with your colleagues when people outside of your section were present. In fact, on this floor, you wished they weren’t there.

She and Dr. Turner and the silent two went down together, she to the third floor, they to wherever.