There was nothing to do but to take her to a safer place, so I did. I moved more slowly this time, and, holding her all the more firmly, pushed her head down against my chest so she wouldn’t be tempted to look about her. I took her swiftly to the topmost roof of Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals, miles from the cathedral and miles from the old city, where she was surrounded by parapets of substantial width and height.

She was shaking ever more violently than before. She walked fast over to the nearest parapet wall, and sat with her back against it, her knees raised and her arms hugging her chest. Her loose black hair was mussed and she pulled her trench coat down over her knees, over her wool pants, as if she were freezing cold.

“You want to tell me what you plan to do?” I asked.

I expected her to be furious, to hit me with a volley of insults for this vulgar display of power, this vain attempt to seize the upper hand, when in fact I didn’t really have the upper hand. But she did none of this.

“I’m ready to do it,” she said. “I’m going to wait for sunrise of course, when you are unconscious naturally, and then I’m going to do several things, flush out your blood and replace it entirely with Replimoid blood, open your skull—which you won’t feel of course—and attempt to remove Amel intact into the waiting brain of another body that is ready and filled with Replimoid blood as well. Then I’m going to close up your skull, and close up the wound, and leave you there, bound, unconscious until sunset, at which time I believe your incisions will be healed, your hair will have grown back, and you’ll be able to free yourself easily from your bonds. You can then leave the laboratory at your leisure because we will be long gone.”

“And you think I’m just going to let you do this,” I said, “when there are no guarantees that I’ll survive, or that Amel will survive?”

“I have to try it, and I am as prepared as I will ever be,” she said.

Why was I doing this? I wondered. Why was I putting her through this when I was prepared in fact to give up? Just when I’d decided to give up, I couldn’t say. Might have been a week ago or a month ago. Might have been at the council table after she’d finished her long story, and I was drinking her blood and I saw her with Amel—Amel who was still silent now and saying nothing—walking through the ancient laboratories of Atalantaya. I felt a misery so heavy that I wasn’t hearing her anymore.