“Could be rainfall, like we’ve been having. Could be warm temps. Could be nutrients. Or some combination of factors. That’s what signals the fruiting stage, where the buttons pop.” He walks the length of the fungal pod and knocks on it with his knuckles. “But again, I can’t say the same rules apply here. There are new rules every day, feels like. I don’t even know what to call this.”

“It’s not fungus?”

“It is,” he says. “And it isn’t. There’s no scientific name for what we’re talking about. It’s like learning a new language.”

“But you’re going to do your best? Not for your tenure portfolio or whatever. But for us?”

“I’m going to do my best.” Jack begins his tour of the lab, yanking open drawers and cupboards, withdrawing tools, shaking solutions, hoisting a microscope onto the counter. The overhead speakers project the voice of Ricketts. The tinny quality takes away the music of her accent. “Might I ask what you think you’re doing, Mr. Abernathy?”

“Dr. Abernathy,” he says.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, you know.” The only thing you can do when faced with the unknown. “Science. Just a little science experiment.”

“We have people here, very capable people, some of the best in their field, who can take care of that for us,” Director Ricketts says. “If you could—”

“He’s not just her father.” He is surprised to hear Nora shout. “He’s a professor of biology. He specializes in fungus. Let him do his fucking job.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly, just for Nora. “Let him.”

He locates a tissue collector, a grafter that shaves and sucks biomaterial into a tube. “Can I have your hand?” he says to Mia and she stares at him a long moment.

Nora nods encouragingly and takes her hand and lifts it into the air. “It’s okay.”

Jack places the tip of her index finger on the nose of the grafter and thumbs the button. It snaps a bite out of her. Instead of blood, a gray-white fluid oozes out of the wound. He and Nora share a look that communicates what they are too terrified to say. Have they lost her after all? Is she still theirs?

Whether it’s day or night, he doesn’t know. How many hours pass, he isn’t sure. Every once in a while, he glances at the window to the control room. The faces on the other side of it are constantly shifting. Sometimes it is Isaac Peaches, sometimes Ricketts, sometimes both, and sometimes neither. A guard eyes them now. A square-faced man with a square-shaped body. Maybe the night watchman.

“You know how I said I wasn’t sure what we were dealing with? I could only make secondary comparisons?”

“Yes,” Nora says, coming to join him at the microscope.

“Maybe I’m a little closer now.”

“Tell me.”