Milloy walked over to the pair of guards stationed by the front door and with a particularly serious demeanor, which was the normal style of all the Nano security people, spoke with the taller of the two. Pia had never seen that particular man do anything other than stand front and center, eyes forward, like a soldier on guard duty. Even now, as Milloy spoke with him, the man continued to look straight ahead, not acknowledging his interlocutor at all. Finally, the man nodded, almost imperceptibly, and said something to Milloy. Milloy came back to Pia.

“I confirmed it, miss. Nano has no hospital. There’s a nurse employed by the company who has an office near the cafeteria, but I expect you know that. She probably gave you a flu shot last fall.”

“Right, I’m not talking about the nurse. Thanks.” Pia started to leave, then turned back.

“Mr. Milloy, do you always work this building?”

“Why do you ask?” said Milloy. He hadn’t sounded terribly pleased to field Pia’s first question, and now he was sounding decidedly irritated. He’d tried to talk to Pia on several occasions before, but had felt she had deliberately snubbed him.

“There are a lot of buildings on the grounds,” Pia said. “I have no idea what goes on in them. I thought that if you occasionally worked in other buildings you might know which building might have the best chance of having the infirmary.”

“Sorry,” Milloy said with little sincerity.

Pia went back through the iris scanner, took the elevator back to the fourth floor, and followed the corridor back to her lab. She stopped at the door but didn’t enter. Instead, as she had never done before, she kept going. She knew there was a bridge extending from the building housing her lab to the adjacent building on the fourth floor, the same floor as her lab. She had no idea how to get to the bridge, but out of curiosity, she thought she’d try to find it. After about a hundred feet or so, there were some twists and turns until the corridor ended at a set of double doors protected by another iris scanner. Pia looked around. She couldn’t see any obvious cameras, but assumed there would be some built into the fabric of the ceiling, as there were outside of her own laboratory, so there was a reasonable chance she was being observed. If asked by security what she was doing, she decided she’d be truthful, saying she was a curious employee wondering what was behind the doors at the end of the hall where her lab was located.