“Listen, it wasn’t just the email from his mother, or what he was reading about, that changed my mind. There’s something I need to tell you. Just, ah, bear with me okay? This is going to get . . . a little weird.” Kierk pulls up the side of his shirt with one hand and pulls down the belt of his pants with the other, revealing a deep purple bruise that contains whirls within whirls.

Approaching the door to Karen’s lab Max prepares himself, all the things she’d said to him on Saturday ringing through his head.—“I just really need to be alone right now, Max.”—“Just let me be alone for a couple days. That’s all I need, a couple days.”—“Max, I’m . . . I need to go.”