Petroski, slightly recovered from the shock—although I wonder if he’ll ever truly recover—helps Lin and Isabel roll Morgan and swaddle him in cloth while Jackie starts working on wiping down the room. It’s a scene from a slasher movie, blood on the floor and ugly Rorschach-like splatter on the wall behind where Morgan stood, holding Lorenzo at needle point. Lorenzo sees the look on my face and explains.

“Forty-five caliber, Gianna. You blew a hole in him the size of Virginia.”

“I killed him, didn’t I?” It’s not really a question, more of a processing aid. I killed him. I killed a human being.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “And we need to go. All of us.”

Lorenzo and Petroski drag the lifeless body of Morgan LeBron onto the gurney and wheel him out. I watch as the doors of Room 1 slide open, then closed. A minute later they’re back in the main lab, minus one rolling stretcher. The six of us work in silence with bleach and rags, erasing the gore on the walls and floor of the room, tossing one blood-and-bleach-soaked rag after another into a thick plastic bag Lin procured from a storage cabinet. From time to time, she and Isabel sign to each other. I can’t understand it, but what they say looks comforting, hopeful.

When nothing remains save the stinging odor of chlorine, we file out and scrub what’s left of Morgan from our skin. Lin disappears and comes back with six clean lab coats, which she hands out. It doesn’t take more than a glance down at my own clothes to realize why I need to cover up. Everyone else looks much the same.

I turn to Petroski. “Can you get us out of here and past security?”

None of the six pairs of ears has heard the intruder, the giant of a man who now stands between us and the exit.

Oh shit, I think. Maybe I say it out loud, maybe I don’t, but I hear it, clear as a klaxon.

The man who has silently come into the lab is the last person I want to see, and the one I’ve kept seeing all this week, always when I don’t expect to, as if his sole task is to watch us.

Poe.

Now I realize maybe that was his task all along.

“Leave everything and come with me,” he says.

Petroski’s hand goes to the .45 on his hip, and I follow Lorenzo’s eyes as he tracks the motion.

“Don’t be stupid, Dr. Rossi,” Poe says.

I open my mouth to speak. Nothing comes out.