“Sensory incorporation,” Doc said.

“Guess so,” Connie said. “Why do you need to know that?”

“Psychological profile.” Doc forced a satisfied grunt, as if that made her lie official and true. The dream question was her personal trick to lower a chimera’s guard. No one ever wanted to hear another person’s dream, but they loved to tell their own. An open ear made the dream-teller feel they had found some special connection. Yaya had been too ornery for it to work.

Connie was more cooperative. “I thought you wanted me to see something, not take an exam,” she said with a calm smile.

“Contamination prevention protocol,” Doc said. She pulled the car onto Green Street and made a U-turn at the Bruen intersection. “I need a chimera’s

point of view on a confidential AlphaBeta Pharmaceutical situation. A chimera who can keep a secret. Your profile reads best.”

“Do I sign a waiver?” Connie asked as the car pulled up outside Doc’s apartment building. Her profile said she never tried to dodge her mandatory checkups, never even asked to reschedule. Obedient to the bone. The Board would have loved her.

“We can’t risk a signature trail.” Doc fixed Connie with a hard glare. “Be warned. If you talk, we’ll know.”

Connie gave an enthusiastic nod. “But this doesn’t look like a lab.”

“That’s what everyone thinks.”

Connie’s blue and green eyes lit up. “Oh, damn. That’s so smart.”

Doc agreed, something to mention to the Board. Next time they wanted a secure lab, they shouldn’t put it in a glass skyscraper where they had to then block up most windows.

“Have you ever heard of the Kentucky Incident?” Doc asked, leading Connie up the short steps and through the front door. Doc doubted Yaya would pop up behind them with scissors this evening. She and Magenta would be on good behavior upstairs.

“You mean the statesmen thing?” Connie asked. “My friends online, they try to sneak info to Kentucky, Alabama—”

“That’s not what I mean.” Doc wasn’t sure what she meant. ABP had burned away most evidence of the Kentucky Incident with such relentless fire that the town’s name was lost to ashes. How would this sweet young woman have heard about what squirmed in Doc’s nightmares?

She sometimes tried to pierce through that awful night to the days before the dragon, when Camille was just another poor girl from Kentucky, her heart filled with pain, adrift in high school halls, where her peers, family, and watchful authorities deep-down knew she wasn’t like them. A girl who liked girls. A chimera.

In the end, she hadn’t quite fit the definition of human anymore.

Doc would never know what happened at that high school dance, whether there had been some Carrie-level prank or whether the straw of an awful comment broke the camel’s back. Camille might just have decided of her own accord that she’d had enough. By then, the impact of whatever injection she’d been given had taken a monolithic toll on her insides. Her only relief was to let the changes loose. She killed everyone she knew and loved and hated. Sources said her father had gone to the school to find her, and she’d killed him too.