Jack checks on the guard sleeping in the control room—sees the slow rise and fall of his breathing, his head lolling to the side—and notes the pistol holstered at his hip. Then he goes to the air lock. It is a steel pocket door with a recessed handle. He tries it, but it doesn’t move. A control pad is situated chest-high on the wall. He presses that as well—a few combinations of buttons—and each time it lights up red.

“Don’t keep pushing that thing,” Nora says.

“Why?”

“Because an alarm will go off.”

He pushes one final combo, because that’s the kind of person he is, and then sizes up the number of cameras in the lab. Four that he can see, one stationed in every corner.

“What are you thinking?” Nora says. She has finished with Mia’s toenails and fingernails and now she stands behind her daughter, trying to untangle the clumps from her hair. Grooming her.

For the ten years he and Nora were married, Jack never visited a barber. Once a month, Nora would tell him she was sick of looking at his untidy mop of hair, and she’d take him out on the porch, seat him in a chair, spritz his head with a water bottle, and scissor away his curls. She didn’t talk much when she cut it, but then again, she never talked much. This was her way of talking without talking, expressing her love.

“Nobody knows we’re here,” he says, and their eyes lock with understanding. They’re in a government facility secreted away on an island off the coast, and their daughter appears to be some sort of synthesis of kingdoms, the next rung on the evolutionary ladder. Not the kind of thing you want on the evening news if you’re on the geopolitical front lines looking to harness a biological weapon.

“They’re not going to let us out of here,” Nora says.

“Even if they do, they won’t let her come with us.”

“What’s next?”

His hand sweeps the room. “This was never meant as a holding cell. I’m guessing they separate us in the morning. Isolate and observe. Controlled exams follow. And then—”

“No. I mean, what’s our next move?”

In the past he always thought long term: This many years of research equals a dissertation. This many years of service equals tenure. This many years of investment equals retirement. But that’s all irrelevant now. There is only this moment and the next. They need to get out of here, and to hell with everything else.

“Do you remember the family tower?”