Once I saw the tapes had been stolen, I called Sunshine Ray. He didn’t answer. I left a message, then tried to sleep, daylight framing the closed curtains. But I kept shuddering awake, as if the ghost were there again. It couldn’t be Pavel, of course, but someone had followed me, someone had stolen the tapes, and he could only be from Rubicon.

Who’d sent him? I thought of Kenneth Sample, the CEO. His job was to protect the product Rubicon was selling to investors, the military—to me.

Everything we’ve developed here, Sample had said at the lab in Arcade, and every step of the trial, will be a matter of historical record.

When they first met, he told me, he’d vowed to protect Eva’s vision. Was that why he’d sent the ghost—to make sure I wouldn’t spoil her rise into medical stardom? That would explain why, each time I’d seen the apparition, I’d lost a chunk of my reporting—the recording of Zeke thrashing in the bed, my notes on the Wigwam Deck confrontation—things Rubicon wouldn’t want on the record. He’d crept into my bedroom and stolen the story.

I slipped into a shallow sleep, but when I awakened, all the sheets kicked off, I realized that something about my Sample theory didn’t add up. He had the money, yes, and Rubicon had the reach, but how would he have a clue what my notebooks contained?

On a hunch, I dug out the number for Baker Watt’s office in Arcade. When he picked up, I asked him how things were going.

“The trial’s nearly wrapped,” he said. “They’re discharging the last subjects from Ascension on Friday.”

“And then what?”

“And then my contract’s up. I’ll be sorry to say goodbye to Rubicon. Once you’re part of something like this, everything else seems trivial.”

“I understand what you mean.”

“But my Rubicon stock means I can afford to wait a while for the next opportunity. So what’s this all about?”

I told him I was calling with a bit of a strange question.

“That’s okay,” he said. “Shoot.”

“I got started on this story after we met,” I said. “You remember?”

“Of course.”

“I’m curious, looking back—why did you want me to meet Dr. Kriss?”

Watt paused and said, “I’m not sure I follow.”

“I mean, you said you wanted to help me understand the trial.”

“Yeah, that’s what you wanted, right?”

“Right. But why Dr. Kriss? Why not someone else at Rubicon—Kenneth Sample, for instance? Wouldn’t he know more about the overall operation? Doesn’t he control it?”

There was a long silence.

“Hello?” I said.

“Are you recording this?”

“No.”

“Let me call you back,” he said, and hung up.