Ink just shook his head. “We’re fucked.”

He should know. He was the strongest of the three, but he could feel himself going down. He leaned against the wall because he no longer trusted his balance. The weird sensation of starting to separate from his body was crawling through him. It was getting harder to coordinate his senses.

A moment ago he had experienced a terrifying panic when he realized he did not know where his left foot was. He knew he still had a left foot—he could feel it—but he could not figure out where it was in relation to the rest of him. He’d had to look down to locate it.

“Maybe Barrow is just late,” Ox said. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, rocking back and forth. “Caught in traffic or something. He’ll be here. The Piper can’t afford to let us get picked up by the Foundation. We know too much.”

“By the time anyone finds us, we’ll be dead,” Ink said. “We won’t be doing any talking.”

“We have to call nine-one-one,” Trev said. “We don’t have a choice.”

“What good will that do?” Ink closed his eyes. “You know what the Piper said. The only thing that can stop the deterioration is the serum. The ER medics will assume we OD’d on some street drug and shoot us full of some shit that will kill us even faster.”

“It’s our only chance,” Trev insisted.

“We’ve got some time left,” Ox rasped. “A few hours, maybe. I’m telling you the Piper won’t let us die. He needs us. We’re valuable because we can handle the enhancement treatments. He can’t afford to lose us. Barrow will be here soon.”

Ink didn’t argue. He desperately wanted to believe the Piper hadn’t abandoned them, but hope was draining away very quickly. Reality was setting in, and it was horrifying.

“The Piper lied to us,” he said. “He lied about everything. Know what I think? I think he knew from the start that we were going to have a short shelf life. He planned to let us expire.”

“What about him?” Trev said. “And Barrow? They take the same treatments. Been doing it for decades.”

“Think about it,” Ink said. “The Piper makes the serum. He controls the machine. How do we know that he and Barrow inject the same stuff they give us? How do we know the machine is broken? Maybe they’re still getting the full enhancement treatments.”

Ox shook his head. “I don’t think so. The Piper and Barrow both look like they’re getting sick, if you ask me.”

“Any way you look at it, they used us,” Ink said. “We screwed up. Now we’ve become a problem, because we screwed up and we know too much. They’re going to let us die.”