If he hadn’t been working for the folks who’d shot me and tried to turn my brain into their own personal playground, I’d have felt sorry for him. As it was, I simply drifted out the door and left him to his fate. Passing the woman was like getting too close to a furnace. I shied away from the magic-dampener she was wearing before it could force me back into my normal form.

“Check the backups,” she shouted.

“Everything’s fried!” called the second vampire. “The backups are dead. Looks like the fire started in here.”

Grief struck me with those words, though I wasn’t sure why. If Talulah had found a way to fry the backup servers, so much the better.

“Why aren’t the fucking sprinklers working?”

Presumably because Talulah had disabled those as well, to help cover my escape and destroy whatever information they’d gotten from my head.

“Dr. Palmer’s gonna kill me,” moaned Darren.

My movement seemed to be a matter of focusing my awareness on a particular part of the mist. The rest shifted to gather around that center point. I felt like a gaseous inchworm scooting down the hall.

I gradually learned to smooth out my motion. I slipped beneath a door and into the stairwell, where I allowed gravity to drag me to the ground floor. I’d been seven or eight stories up, but where? Had they kept me in Admin where Babs could keep an eye on me? Medical, in case something went wrong?

I thinned myself over the floor, striving for invisibility. I extended a tendril of mist through the main doors and looked around outside. The light of the setting sun might as well have been the flame from an acetylene torch. I pulled back, but I’d seen enough to recognize the Franklin Research Tower. They’d locked me up in my own damn building!

I’d only meant to take Darren’s ability to shapeshift into mist. How had I ended up with his vulnerability to sunlight, too? I filed that question away with a hundred others, all waiting their turn on my research whiteboard.

If I was stuck here until sundown, I might as well take advantage of the time. I wondered if Babs and Kiyoko had cleaned out my office yet . . .

UNITED STATES WILL ALLOW U.N. INSPECTIONS OF
NEW MILLENNIUM FACILITY

WASHINGTON—Following a contentious debate, the U.S. government has agreed to allow a United Nations team to inspect New Millennium in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Members of the U.N. Security Council have pushed for inspections since New Millennium was first opened, but until recently, all resolutions were vetoed by the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

That changed earlier this week, following revelations that a high-ranking researcher at New Millennium had been involved in terrorist attacks. The new resolution passed ten to five in favor.