The gaslight flickered and went out. Except that I hadn’t turned it on, had I?

It was definitely off. And the office was definitely gloomy, so gloomy that I could hardly see Her, sitting in the jar, cradled there, but deserving better.

She glimmered, and what little light remained in the room winked against the glass, showing off Her sinuous, swimming shape, twisting in the jar, a very slow whirlpool, or a carousel, or the ethereal winding of a cotton candy machine. She pivoted to show me Her whole self. She unfurled, and I was transfixed.

I couldn’t hear the men outside the door anymore.

I don’t know who Greer was talking to. Hanson, maybe, or Applegate. If they were still present, they’d gone silent. If they were standing on the other side of the door, they said nothing. I said nothing. I watched Physalia zollicoffris.

I looked away.

I opened the door with my left hand. My right hand was holding something, and I could feel it, hard and cold, but I did not look down to see what it was. I did not care. I knew what to do, and I knew where to go.

Into the hall I stepped. I walked. I proceeded.

Down the hall, which was empty. No one whispered, and no chancellor hung about, spreading lies and gossip. No students walked past, shirking their responsibilities in favor of cigarettes behind the boiler room.

(This hallway was the quickest shortcut. They came and went like the tide, always leaving a trail of tobacco vapors in their wake. Like they accused me. Of leaving. What was it? The odor of the specimen. In my wake.)

Like my office the corridor was darkened, though it was midday, I was relatively confident. Midday, and not an ounce of sun to shine through at the ends of the hall, where a trio of great windows reached from almost-floor to almost-ceiling. They looked like the window in my office—no, in my laboratory, where the students come and go—covered in water, that drained down the glass in cascades. The whole building was submerged, as it ought to be.

To make Her more comfortable.

She was behind me, on the table, in the jar. I wished for Her but there was nothing to be done, not now, not yet. Work to do first. Then devotion.

There was no one in the hall with me, and I walked it forever.

My hand snatched out, the one holding the blade. It was a blade, not a scalpel, something larger. Smaller than a machete, larger than a pocketknife. Large enough, at any rate. I lashed and struck like a snake, at nothing, at no one. But there was blood on my hand when I looked down, and it wasn’t mine. None of this was mine. But I was alone.