Eventually she and Melissa go inside, where the vets look up grimly from behind their personal protective gear. At the center of the room is slumped the body of Mars Bars. Karen flits away her glance but the image stays with her long after—the strange weight of the body, all of it tilted downward, its placid white-eyed death mask sending a visceral shock through her, the unnatural hang of its open mouth with the red tongue already blackening, all of it obscene in its slouching, all protuberances and parts made unfamiliar by death. The rest of the room isn’t much better. Bits of gore and brain are still being scooped up by the vets. One is taking pictures like a crime scene investigator.

“Kierk?” Karen asks.

“Currently being cleaned up.”

“Why is it always Kierk?” she says.

“No, he was in the room when it happened, but it wasn’t his fault. Mars Bars was in Alex’s care. Kierk got called in after, came to help, and was here for the worst of it.”

“Mm,” Karen replies, watching something unidentifiable be put in a yellow BIOHAZARD bag.

“How are you going to tell the Institutional Review Board?” she finally asks.

Melissa sighs, her mouth pursed. “With everything that’s going on this is exactly what I didn’t need.”

“They’re going to know it was an accident,” Karen reassures her. But Karen knows that this could spill beyond Melissa’s domain . . . There were joint department-wide grants to think about, and possible public blowback could influence whether those grants were renewed. Particularly the Crick Scholarship, which was up for review by DARPA at the beginning of next year. One Crick Scholar was dead, another had let a valuable research animal kill itself, and Kierk was a loose cannon . . . The entire program was beginning to look like a disaster. All those conservative neuroscientists who didn’t believe consciousness existed, and who had been extremely critical of the program, would be able to say that the first government-funded research into consciousness unraveled in ignominy.

Something in her field of vision makes her turn and she confronts Max’s face in the portal of the door. After a moment of eye contact he disappears. A vanishing that causes a stab in her chest.

Excusing herself from Melissa, Karen finds herself in pursuit of Max, tracking him through the CNS. In an empty stairwell she leans over the railing and calls his name. At the echo of it he stops one flight below her. He ascends slowly, she descends slowly, and they meet in the middle on the platform.

“So now you decide you want to talk to me?” he says furtively, glancing around to make sure they are alone.

“After what I just saw . . . I don’t know. Things haven’t been so great with me.”