A minute later, phone in hand, he waited for the call to connect. “Hi. Evan? Yes, it’s me. Sorry I couldn’t come in. I was still throwing up everywhere. No, really. You wouldn’t thank me. No, I wasn’t drinking. Rotavirus, I told Mhari—oh? She said what? The cow! Look, I’m a bit better now and I’m going to come in this evening, work the late shift to make up for lost hours. Thing is, I was hoping you could stay so I could talk you through my last commit. What, you didn’t understand—look, I’m not surprised, I was already feeling ill so I didn’t doc it very clearly. I’ll talk you through it, okay? This evening.”

Without ever saying so in so many words, Evan made it clear that he’d had other plans for the evening. No matter: Alex was at his most implausibly persuasive, and kept at it until he could feel Evan’s resistance crumbling. Bastard’s probably got a hot date, he thought resentfully. Evan had a way with the talent that Alex, despite diligent study, had never been able to emulate: something that enabled him to speak to pretty women without derping out like a refugee from the Island of Dr. Moreau. (Single-sex school followed by a de facto single-sex faculty and an obsessive-compulsive work ethic had left Alex with few opportunities to socialize with the opposite sex since the age of ten.) “See you there,” Alex insisted. “You are going to stay, aren’t you?” The same sense of assurance filled him: “You can go after we’ve gone over that visualization. Bye!”

• • •

SUNSET.

Alex left the hotel, not bothering to check out. A taxi to the office and a badge-swipe through the turnstile: he took the stairs to the office, intrigued to note that he didn’t feel particularly breathless after sixteen flights. Passing through the airlock and into the Scrum’s office, he had to narrow his eyes against the glare of the screens.

The office was empty but for Evan, who was waiting for him with a pained expression, as if desperate for the toilet. “Couldn’t you have left this until tomorrow morning?” he demanded. “I had to bail on Candace and she’s going to be—”

“Trust me.” Alex leaned over his teammate: “If my hypothesis is correct, it’s going to be totally life-changing . . .”

• • •

. . . AND THEN THERE WERE TWO.

3.

KGB.2.YA