“So, during this transfer,” he asked of no one in particular, “am I supposed to think about anything specific? Is there something I need to focus on?”

“Not really, Mr. Adams.” It was Dr. Pike who spoke, and Jeremiah noted again the tinge of a British accent, something softened and obscured by years of living in the United States. “But you may want to think about a pleasant memory—something you can easily recall—to help with the initial disorientation you may experience under the Meld.”

The prospect of taking the drug again made Jeremiah’s stomach churn. He’d taken it once already with the project’s psychiatrist without any lasting effects, but it had been a strange experience, and he couldn’t shake the idea that it was risky. His fears were ironic, to say the least. As one of ViMed’s marketing managers, he was literally paid to dispel those very notions, persuading the public and the bureaucratic watchdogs that Meld had been thoroughly tested and was perfectly safe. But when illegal street use had erupted in a rash of baffling suicides, his job had grown progressively more difficult. And the most recent suicide wasn’t “just” another junkie. It was a forty-two-year-old housewife from New Jersey who had stabbed herself in the throat with a corkscrew while in the throes of an intimate moment with her husband. The media had gone crazy, and Jeremiah had become acquainted with migraines under the burden of finding a positive spin. She was a regular person, some poor slob who thought a little jolt of Meld might put some magic back in the bedroom. If it could happen to her, he thought, it could just as easily happen to anyone. It could happen to him.

It was one thing to sway public opinion. It was proving harder to suppress his own doubt, though—especially since he now knew the whole truth about Meld—that it had been specifically created for this project, especially made for him, in a way. And he’d have to take it multiple times over the next twelve months. Beside the doctors who were using it in practice, no one had ever done that before, as far as he knew. The implications of being the guinea pig sat on his shoulders like lead.

“Is it okay to take it again so soon?” he asked. “I mean, it hasn’t even been a month since the last time. Are you sure this is safe?”

“Perfectly safe,” Dr. Pike told him. “Under proper medical supervision the chance of any serious side effects is virtually nonexistent.”

The words offered little comfort. Jeremiah had written that company tagline himself. He’d believed it at the time. He had been just as impressed as everyone else at the prospect of a drug that could literally allow a direct link to the human mind. But now, as he waited to be injected again, he couldn’t help but see the whole thing from a different perspective. What if there really was something to it? What if Meld really was doing something to make people want to kill themselves? He didn’t harbor any such desires—not that he knew of at least—but that did little to calm his nerves as he stared at the syringe.