chimera. She rushed for the testing lab, clueless to what she would say, how she could convince them to stop. If Magenta perceived the chimera as a threat, would Farrow and the other researchers care? The remains were dead, or undead.

If only the lab could classify them, maybe Doc would have an angle for convincing Farrow and the others to leave the dead or undead alone.

They only knew the Board wanted results. No matter the price.

A meek hum rang through the lab, some machine still powering up. The population of yellow suits had doubled since Doc’s visit downstairs. Her eyes fell on the casket as two agents pressed its lid shut. Sabin lay inside.

“Unit secure,” Farrow said. She pointed at one monitor, and then another.

Her technicians scurried, and that meek hum in the walls gained soprano strength.

Doc pushed through the yellow crowd and spun Farrow around. “Shut it down,” she said.

Farrow cocked her head to one side, awaiting an explanation.

Doc could only do so much. “Magenta’s going to change. She won’t do the same she did before. It’s been too much time!”

Gathered gas masks now faced Doc. They had to think she’d lost her mind, and she couldn’t blame them. She wasn’t making sense.

The hum grew thunderous. Though nothing visible pierced the shell that surrounded Yaya’s and Magenta’s remains, the yellow pool bubbled and their conjoined flesh twitched. Power pumped through their electrodes. A jolt rippled down one tentacle from the main shell to the plastic casket where Sabin lay unconscious.

Farrow wasn’t paying attention to Doc anymore. She looked between her monitors and the shell. “Let’s see what she does this time.”

The gas masks turned from Doc. She didn’t know how to put into words that everyone present was making a mistake. If Magenta felt threatened—

The outstretched tentacle twitched. Its tip slapped at plastic and then dropped onto Sabin’s arm, where its barbs snagged their skin. Likely this looked no different from the last time Magenta had touched Sabin and left that ragged wound on their gut, but there was no conscious Yaya to tear them apart if that was how the connection had ended before. Now the tentacle sank deeper into Sabin’s flesh.

“Temperature flux,” said one technician beside a glowing screen. “Enzyme transfer?”

“If we’re lucky, we’ll see reactive regeneration on the live chimera’s end,”

Farrow said, addressing the room. “We can then study exactly what’s changing on a molecular level.”

“You have no idea,” Doc said. “It’s no different from the October 12

injection. We keep slapping things together, hoping they’ll stick, playing guesswork at function, but it’s the double-zero virus release again and again.

We’re playing with sand to see how it might spill. It’s more substance abuse than science.”

Farrow didn’t get a chance to answer. Gasps filled the room, another melody beneath the walls’ hum, and Doc turned back to the shell and casket.