After the Duke appointment, news of Dr. Kriss ran dry. I could only assume that at some point she’d been headhunted for Rubicon Tech, but exactly why they wanted her, what made her one of the world’s best doctors, wasn’t on the record.

I considered putting Lane Porter on the case. He’d unpacked a row of action figures on his desk—shirtless he-men, ghoulish villains—and I watched him flit around the office like a bumblebee, pollinating stories with freshly gathered facts. My Bystander colleagues seemed to find him useful. It was sort of cute how he worked behind those toys and then sprang up with some complex question unraveled. Every now and then he’d come by my desk and ask if I needed anything, and the offer was tempting. But I hadn’t told anyone except Mort what I was following, and didn’t want to jinx it.

In the meantime, I called Dr. Massengale a few times, but it kept going to a robot that intoned his phone number and then said his inbox was full. When I finally called the main switchboard at Ascension Hospital and asked for him, I was told he’d been reassigned.

4.

It surprised me to hear that Dr. Kriss wanted to meet in a Midtown Irish bar. I had every reason to believe Rubicon had reassigned Massengale just for talking to me, so I’d expected some corporate cloister built for secrecy. I’d forgotten it was possible for someone like Dr. Kriss simply to be kind of lame and not know anywhere good to meet in the city.

It was January, the sun glaring from a bald sky, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the bar’s interior, sticky with beer. Dr. Kriss was the only one in there. She’d arrived early and eaten a burger. The big white plate sat between us through the interview, smeared with ketchup.

The doctor pulled out the headphones of her iPod and placed the all-white object beside the plate. She seemed about a decade older than me, her eyes like light passing through cola, her blond hair dark, as if some soot had been rubbed in.

When I took my jacket off, she said, “We’re twins.”

We’d both worn white blouses and red skirts. I smiled, a little uncomfortable with the coordinated look, and asked if I could set the tape recorder running, an ungainly black box beside the iPod. You can often detect a flicker of hesitation when the tape starts and the subject knows they’re being recorded, but she just nodded as her voice ran on.

She had her laboratory in Arcade, she said, but had just come from Florida, a city called Retreat, to meet with executives at Inland Medical.