He drops his hand to the intercom button—and then slides it over and hits the lock button instead, sealing them in the lab.

“What about her?” the guard says, and Isaac knows from his tone that he means Director Ricketts.

“I’ll take the blame.”

He watches through the window as Jack and Nora pull their daughter into an embrace. She remains still, but they won’t stop moving, kissing her, touching her, tangling their arms around her, combing their fingers through her hair. It must be a curious thing, parenthood. You create something that is and is not you. Like growing a new limb, a second brain. Whatever joy or pain the child experiences belongs to you as well. He remembers his mother then—her constant meddling, her desperate need of him—and forgives her.

Nora—who had been wearing a mask even before she entered the facility—smothers her daughter in kisses. There is no fear of contagion because not being able to breathe the same air as her daughter would be worse than death. Isaac wonders if he will ever experience such a profound feeling of love. To be willing to risk death for one kiss.

It is then that Director Ricketts enters the room. Her smile is at its most dangerous when she approaches. “What in the F-word is going on here?” she says. She reaches into her jacket pocket, removes her keys, and tosses them up with a rattle. When they land in her palm, her grip tightens, and they spike from her knuckles.

“I know you’re—” he says, but he never gets to finish the sentence. Her fist swings upward, striking him.

Blood trickles from the corner of his eye. He wipes it away and studies the red tipping his fingers.

20

Mia doesn’t talk. Her eyes track them. Her movements are fumbling but responsive. But no matter how many questions they ask, she remains silent, as if her voice atrophied along with the rest of her. “Do you remember the wishing tree? Do you remember Tigey? Do you remember the night you disappeared? Do you remember us?”

Nothing. Maybe a slight tic of her mouth, a flare of her nose, a widening of her eyes. Jack’s reaching. For anything. He’s going to keep knocking until someone answers.

He can cry only so much. He can say her name only so many times. After the initial shock and wonder wears off, he truly takes in his surroundings and notes the equipment available to him. And he does the one thing he’s been unable to do these past five years. He gets to work.

He kneels beside the shed macrofungal husk. The exterior has the hard-shell plating of a polypore, like a conk or an alder bracket, while the interior is fibrous and damp, the yarn-like hyphae clumping together into a sloppy mycelium. He runs his hand along it, and his palm comes away with a damp sheen.