“It’s your job to be skeptical. Extraordinary claims require—”

“There being no simpler explanation for the data,” Carmen finishes.

“Hmm . . . But he was saying they were giving them lobotomies. Why would they do it in this room . . .” Kierk drifts off, eyeing the claw-arm of the TMS.

“No . . .”

“Yes!”

“You’re saying that someone turned the TMS all the way up and was burning out lesions.”

“Yes!”

“As what, the patient, ah, abductee, watched stimuli?”

“Imagine how much you could learn about consciousness by triggering real lesions in real time. In humans.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to be approved by the Institutional Review Board.”

“Obviously. But it’s a motive.”

“Anything else? Or are you going to draw a straight line between your two data points?”

“As a matter of fact there is. Follow me.”

She leads him down a few floors to where the giant tube of the MRI machine rests. Carmen flips the lights in the control room on to a bright hospital-like hum, illuminating the computer terminals. Nearly jumping into the swivel chair, she pulls up a program.

“Look. Here’s the activation times of the recent scans. Look!” She points to two tiny numbers that Kierk squints at.

“Last night?”

“Last night at 3:02 a.m.”

“So?”

“So who the hell is using the MRI machine in the middle of the night? Unless they were getting anatomical images . . . to use for targeted transcranial magnetic stimulation. With the stimulation turned up so high it burns out lesions. Which you can then check to see exactly where they are using the MRI.”

Kierk stares at the little numbers.

“And three makes a trend line,” Carmen says smugly.

“That’s quite an elaborate secret experiment.”

“Don’t Scully me!”

“Alright fine,” Kierk says. “Do you want to know when it’s used?”

“Like when the program is activated? How?”

Kierk pulls up the command terminal and a text doc, fingers flying.

“I’m hiding something, a small function in the code for the fMRI machine. Code that sends you an email whenever the fMRI gets run.”

They are silent as Kierk types, Carmen examining him under the pretense of studying the code. He is focused on the screen and doesn’t look at her. A realization is building in her, that sickly sense of something being deeply wrong.

On clicking to a finish he says, “Okay that’s that. You’ll get your email. I gotta go get some work done.”

“Fine. Do whatever. I’ll see you later.”

Carmen watches him retreat. Her hands go up to rub the goose bumps on her shoulders. It’s freezing in here.

Kierk is leaving the CNS after a day spent studiously avoiding Carmen and just focusing on his research. He’s so close . . . But there’s so much going on and she’s the center of all of it. It feels like some otherworldly conspiracy keeps thrusting them together. He’s going to have to try harder, make a cleaner break, if he can.