I don’t correct him. Instead, I drop my purse. When I lean over to get it, I can read the label on the side of the binder Morgan covered up. It’s upside down, but the two words are clear, blue block letters on a white field.

The side of the binder reads PROJECT WERNICKE.

Chapter Forty-two

FORTY-TWO

Poe, whose job seems to entail everything from site security officer to babysitter to office escort, is waiting outside Morgan’s office to take me back down to the lab, and I follow him along the corridor of generals and admirals and doctors, along the blue carpet, to the elevator bank. Inside, he uses his key card again.

I didn’t need the card to access the lab floor, so it must be the only way to leave floor five. Of course it is, I think. They would want to know who’s leaving, and at what time.

Or they’d want to be able to block anyone from leaving.

On the way down, I think about the binder I saw in Morgan’s office. Altogether, my files plus Lorenzo’s and Lin’s would fill several binders. We had reference materials, statistics, experimental designs, grant applications, progress reports—everything, the entire academic kitchen plus sink. The Institutional Review Board documents—all the paperwork and disclosures and subject consent forms we collected to assure the university we wouldn’t be running another Tuskegee syphilis scandal on unsuspecting prisoners—would fill a file cabinet on their own.

There wouldn’t be a single “Project Wernicke” binder; there would be a hundred, neatly housing years of our research.

But Morgan had only one, and it wasn’t labeled with a number indicating its position in a sequence.

Also, the spine was broken. Morgan’s binder was, evidently, well used.

I think about this as the elevator begins its descent, while Poe stands silently behind me, slightly to my left. He seems not to be breathing; he’s that quiet.

First, there are three teams: White, Gold, and Red. That much I learned from spying in Patrick’s study last night. Poe’s slips about our team and the other MRI tubes make sense now—other teams mean other labs. Other labs mean other projects.

Second, our equipment wasn’t installed three days ago. No way. This machine—however large it is, and whatever it encompasses—has been months in the making.

Third, Morgan’s binder has a broken spine.

I catch my reflection in the polished steel elevator walls and realize I’ve been talking to myself. Poe is in the reflection too, dwarfing me. He has the slightest of smiles on his face, a sliver of a smile, and I think about what sharp teeth must be behind it. Sharp enough to tear me to shreds without making a sound.

“Here we are.”