He folds himself down into a convenient chair. She watches him move. There's a careful grace about him, there always has been. He moves as though always afraid of damaging something.

"I thought you might do this," he says after a while.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know myself until, well..."

He waits for her to continue.

"I want to know what's going on," she says at last. "Maybe they really are playing straight with us this time. It's not that unlikely. Maybe things aren't as bad as we thought..."

Lubin seems to consider that. "What about Fischer? Do you want me to—"

She barks a short laugh. "Fischer? You really want to drag him through the muck for days on end, and then haul him onto some fucking beach where he can't even stand up without breaking both his legs? Maybe it'd make Mike feel a bit better. Not much of an act of charity for Gerry, though."

And not, she knows now, for Lenie Clarke either. She's been deluding herself all this time. She felt herself getting stronger and she thought she could just walk away with that gift, take it anywhere. She thought she could pack all of Channer inside of her like some new prosthetic.

But now. Now the mere thought of leaving brings all her old weakness rushing back. The future opens before her and she feels herself devolving, curling up into some soft prehuman tadpole, cursed now with the memory of how it once felt to be made of steel.

It's not me. It never was. It was just the rift, using me...

"I guess," she says at last, "I just didn't change that much after all..."

Lubin looks as though he's almost smiling.

His expression awakens some vague, impatient anger in her. "Why did you come back here anyway?" she demands. "You never gave a shit about what any of us did, or why. All you ever cared about was your own agenda, whatever that…"

Something clicks. Lubin's virtual smile disappears.

"You know." Clarke says. "You know what this is all about."

"No."

"Bullshit, Ken. Mike was right, you know way too much. You knew exactly what question to ask the Drybacks about the CPU on that bomb, you knew all about megatons and bubble diameters. So what's going on?"

"I don't know. Really." Lubin shakes his head. "I do have—expertise, in certain kinds of operations. Why should that surprise you? Did you really think domestic violence was the only kind that would qualify someone for this job?"

There's a silence. "I don't believe you," Clarke says at last.

"That's your prerogative," Lubin says, almost sadly.

"And why," she asks, "did you come back?"

"Just now?" Lubin shrugs. "I wanted— I wanted to say I'm sorry. About Karl."

"Karl? Yeah. Me too. But that's over and done with."

"He really cared about you, Lenie. He would have come back eventually. I know that."

She looks at him curiously. "What do you—"