He took a step closer to her, looked and stopped his laugh with something close to a click. He was staring at her now as though he’d never seen her before, as though he’d never seen a human being before. His eyes were open wide and very dark, all pupils. The pills.

After a long moment, he turned and lurched out the side door. In his hand, he carried the gasketed handmade diving balloon. He was heading for the isolation tank.

Behind him, in the window, Tibbet and Eh stood watching, as he connected the hose, turned on the air pump, rolled the balloon down over his face and clambered into the tank.

* * *

The next afternoon, Tibbet lugged a 25-pound bag of salt across the lawn to the isolation tank. Cora waded to the end of the pool to watch him pour the whole bag into the tank and stir it until it was absorbed. He was making it salty like the Dead Sea, so Blum could float in the water without a breathing apparatus. She thought probably this was Tibbet’s idea. If Blum drowned, the research center would close.

* * *

She talked to Junior like a mother, emphasizing the rise and fall of her voice, talking in a high pitch closer to his, baby talk, vacuuming up his poo, putting away his toys, watching how much he ate and slept, making sure he was healthy, teaching him colors and shapes and the alphabet. She worked and worked, striving to get him to talk, knowing that progress was all that would keep him and Mother and Kat safe from Blum, that would let her stay here with them, protecting them.

Each morning, she went down to the lagoon to feed Mother and Kat, and to help Tibbet test Mother and Kat’s ability to communicate about the matching shapes. Each morning she was relieved to see no new surgical incisions on their heads. Both of them looked healthy and strong. And each time Tibbet walked into the water, up to his waist, they would click at his gut and be gentle with him.

Both Junior and she were trapped together the rest of the day, every day, struggling through water that was too high for her and too low for him, no one else here but the other. Their tempers fraying.

And Junior would thump against her, wanting to play or trying to hump the back of her leg, rough in the way of the dolphins. He was a teenager, so much stronger and faster than her, weighing almost three times more. She was bruised and scratched up. She jabbed at him with the broom’s bristles when he was too rough. He would jerk away, not liking the feel of the bristles on his skin.

One morning, maybe six A.M., she was just getting out of bed and walking toward the shower, when he shoved her without warning from behind. Whether or not he meant to make her fall, she did, chin first, hitting the side of the pool, biting the corner of her tongue. A flash of pain, the copper taste of blood. Furious, she flailed upright. Raising the broom high above her head, she slammed, not the bristles, but the hard wood shaft down onto his side with all her strength. A whack even she could hear.