Jackie, whose eyes are dry, and look like they have been this whole time, picks up the booklet from the bench next to her, and, without so much as a glance at it, flings it at Morgan. It hits him square in the forehead with a satisfying thwack.

He doesn’t stoop to pick it up, but kicks it across the small room. “You’ll learn,” he says, and motions to the corporal to open the inner door.

Lorenzo takes my hand, helping me up from where I’m kneeling next to Jackie.

“Stay cool, Jacko,” I say. “Promise?”

She nods.

“I’ll do everything I can.”

Everything I should have done, I think, as I follow Morgan out of the room and back into the hive of the lab.

Chapter Sixty-seven

SIXTY-SEVEN

There’s a television in the lab, a flat-screen the size of a football field. A reasonable size, I suppose, given that the kinds of men who buy these things spend most of their weekends watching other men toss a piece of pig around a hundred-yard-long swath of Astroturf.

When Reverend Carl appears on it, dressed in his usual funereal style, it’s impossible not to look at him. Also, someone has turned the volume up to a low roar.

“Friends,” he says, opening his arms in that trademark way he has, as if he’s Rio’s very own Christ the Redeemer. “Friends, I have some unfortunate news.”

“I’ll bet you do,” I whisper to Lorenzo beside me. He’s been busy at the stoichiometry again, a language as foreign to me as the words coming from the television.

“Settle down, please, settle down.” Reverend Carl’s hands press the air around him down, and the murmur in the audience dulls. It’s difficult to tell where he is, but the crowd is too large for the White House press room. And he’s on a stage. The Kennedy Center, maybe. Or the Arena Stage in southwest DC. More than a year has passed since I’ve seen anything that passes for live entertainment. Plays—the few that are performed—are either family-friendly drivel, censored down to unrecognizability, or off-limits to most of us.

He continues on, reading out the Pure’s manifesto, line by line, affirmation by affirmation, belief by belief. His current theme is suffering. It’s one of his favorites.

“Friends, my dear friends, suffering is an inevitable reality in our earthly world. We are called to suffer for doing what is good, at times, and no one suffers more than I at this moment.” A lengthy pause now, for effect. Reverend Carl likes to draw things out, suffering or not. “We have here a lost sheep.” The camera pulls in close to his face, smiling and tear streaked, then pulls back to show him extend his right arm and wave toward the wing of the stage. “That’s it. Come on, now.”