“Wouldn’t fit you anyway,” he said, bending back to his work. “There was no saving her, but I could learn from her. It’s for the greater good, Greg.” He pulled one side of his mouth back in a crooked smile.

My fingers flexed. I could feel my heartbeat in my temples. My tongue scraped the dry roof of my mouth, sticking to my clenched teeth. I counted and breathed. Thirty to one, a breath every five seconds. I can’t change this, I can’t change him.

“Did you run more tests? On Alan?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Alan!” Another ten seconds, another two breaths.

“Right. Yes, look.” He went to a cupboard and pulled out a tray of black vials. No. Vials filled with black. “The liquid samples have turned to gas. It appears that the lack of oxygen in the vials slows the reaction, but it doesn’t stop it. However, there’s no increased pressure in the tube. The reaction doesn’t seem to have released any energy.” He held the tray under my nose, his eyes rolling with excitement.

“So . . . ”

“That’s not possible. All reactions have some sort of energy exchange involved. You can’t go from a liquid to a gas without it—this is outside the laws of chemistry.” Saliva collected at the corners of his mouth as he spoke faster, fogging the glass vials with his rapid breath.

I took a step back, tearing my eyes from the tray of dark tubes, and looked for the clock. It perched hidden in the shadows, high up on the wall.

“I need to get back to work. I can’t be late again.”

Dan lowered the tray, sneering. “Or what? Another job you can’t hold down?”

“No. I promised Miss Bessley lunch today.”

Dan shook his head, turning to put his tray of dark vials away.

Collecting The Village body bag, folding it, I watched the girl on the table. “What was her name?”

“Don’t know,” Dan said.

***

Alice Stowe ate three pounds of gravel from the garden. Sometime in the early hours, she left her room in her best dress and hat, sat in the gazebo, and ate rocks from a chocolate box. She died that evening, without a single tooth left.

I clocked out, changed, and went to the clinic. She was there, in the cooler, in one of my black bags. I rolled her out and unzipped the bag.

The spots were already there—huge, this time, and swollen. The skin felt cold and taut under my fingertip.

It ruptured. The dark liquid spilled over my finger, filling the space under my nail and pooling in my cuticle. It felt like my finger had been encased in ice. The black smoked off my finger with a soft hiss, the vapors sucking in toward my mouth and billowing on my breath.