'Pleeaase,' he hissed, as he started taking off his clothes. 'Pleeeassse,'

'YOU WANT THIS. YOU ACHE.'

Thomas simply turned and walked from the room. He could hear Halasz muttering, 'But… but…' He went to the bathroom and sat in front of the toilet for a while. He stared at the rind of dust rimming the faux-brass register, wondered about germs. 'No! Just a little longer, please…' floated down the hall, followed by noises too human… too human to be animal.

He did not vomit.

'Soooo good…'

He could not think. He could not feel.

'Soooo…'

When he returned to his office, all was ashen-faced silence. The computer was off. Sam began softly sobbing.

'That is some fucked up shit,' Gerard was saying.

The four of them, Thomas, Sam, Gerard, and Dean Heaney milled around the living room. Agent Atta was in the kitchen, talking on her palmtop after having chased away the locals and the Evidence Response Team.

'Did he hypnotize him?' Gerard asked.

Thomas ran a slow hand over his scalp. 'No. Hypnosis doesn't work that way. The notion of the all-powerful hypnotist and the all-compliant subject is a myth.'

A scowl flexed across the agent's pudgy-handsome face. 'But I saw this act in college once where—'

'Half-true, half-bullshit,' Thomas interrupted with a heavy breath. 'Researchers have discovered that many participants actually follow the hypnotist's instruction just to please the crowd, not the hypnotist.'

Gerard shook his head, wild-eyed and unconvinced. 'I know what I saw.'

'But then, you are an idiot,' Sam said. 'Didn't you see the bandages?'

The big man sneered. 'I was talking about college.'.

'So you think it's another brain thing, professor,' Dean Heaney asked.

Thomas rubbed the back of his neck. Every time he blinked he saw… too much.

'Gotta be,' he said after a moment. 'Some kind of surgical intervention, probably in the anterior cingulate gyrus and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex—but you'd have to ask a neurologist.'

'The anterior what?' Gerard asked.

'The parts of the brain involving executive functions.'

'Oh.'

'Just so you know,' Sam said, 'he means the will—the parts of the brain involving the will.'

There was poison in the air—Thomas could feel it—and they only had one another as targets.

'Good thing you clarified that for me, Logan. I thought he was talking about the president's last dump.'

'Sorry, Ger,' Sam said with mock contrition. 'I didn't mean to sound condescending—you know, talk down to you