-1 is six times larger than Elisa’s apartment, modest for an Occam lab. The walls are white and resplendent above clean concrete floors. Silver ranks of tables wait against the walls while caster-wheel chairs in packing plastic huddle like homeless people around a trash-can fire. Braided cables dangle from the ceiling and hospital lamps on jointed arms ogle down at nothing. Along the eastern side is a bank of beige machinery, the type Elisa has heard called a “computer.” Janitors are forbidden to touch these imposing agglomerations of switches and dials, though they are expected to use compressed-air sprayers to blast away dust the final Friday of every month.

What is unique about F-1, and what beckons Elisa past the balking Zelda, is the pool. The crackling they’d heard was water expelling from an industrial hose into what resembles a giant stainless-steel sink built into the floor and enclosed by a knee-high ledge upon which three laborers have planted their boots. They are blue-collar Baltimoreans plainly uncomfortable with the job’s confidentiality; they watch their foreman hold out a pen and clipboard to a man of receding brown hair and spectacles—an Occam scientist, for sure, but one she’s never seen. He’s late-forties but squats on the ledge like a hyperactive boy, ignoring the foreman so as to compare his notes to three gauges extending from the pool.

“Too hot!” he cries. “Much too hot! Do you want to boil it?”

The man has an accent. Elisa doesn’t recognize it, and this wakes her up: She recognizes none of these people. Six workers, five scientists; she’s never seen so many people at Occam this late. Zelda pulls on Elisa’s elbow, and Elisa lets herself be backpedaled before a voice both of them know in their marrow speaks up.

“Attention, everyone, please! The asset is off the loading dock. Repeat: The asset is off the loading dock and is on the approach. Respectfully, I need the construction crew to stop where you are and exit the lab via the door to your right—”

David Fleming’s white shirt and neutral slacks had camouflaged him against the computer. Elisa sees him now, his arm forked in a gesture toward the very door in front of which she and Zelda stand like scolded children. Every head in the room turns their way. All these men, staring at them, these infringing females. Elisa’s cheeks burn, and she feels every ugly inch of her trash-spattered Occam grays.

“I apologize, everyone, our lady visitors are not supposed to be here.” Fleming lowers his voice to that of a chiding husband. “Zelda. Elisa. How many times do you have to be told? When there are men working inside—”

Zelda shrinks like one accustomed to absorbing blows, and Elisa sidesteps in front of her, an instinctive shielding that puts her, to her shock, directly in the path of a man hurrying straight at her. Elisa snatches a breath, squares her shoulders. Corporal punishment was habitual during her youth, and though that was fifteen years ago, hands have been laid upon her before at Occam. Fleming manhandling her from an unsteady office chair from atop which she cleared cobwebs; a biologist slapping her hand from a paper cup that contained not old coffee but some kind of sample; a security guard giving her a hard spank on her way to the elevator.

“Don’t leave.” He is the man with the accent. The hem of his white lab coat is soaked gray from the pool and his half-laced wingtips make dog-tongue splashes. His dripping hand is held palm-up in appeal, and he turns to Fleming. “These girls are cleared, yes?”

“They’re janitorial. They’re cleared, yes, for janitorial services.”

“If they are cleared, should they not hear?”

“With all due respect, doctor. You’re new. Occam has protocols.”

“But will they not clean this laboratory from time to time?”

“Yes, but only at my direct request.”

Fleming’s eyes snap from the scientist to Elisa, and she witnesses his recognition that he’d prematurely added F-1 to the QCC. Elisa jerks her head down at her cart, all those safe, crusty bottles and jugs, but it’s too late to retract the stinger: Fleming’s dignity is stung, and extra work for her and Zelda will be the punishment. The accented scientist sees none of this; he’s still smiling, convinced of his benevolence. Like most of the well-intentioned privileged Elisa has met, he has no grasp of the priorities of the servile, how all they want is to get through a shift without trouble.

“Very good,” the scientist says. “Everyone should understand the importance of the asset so that there are no mistakes.”

Fleming mashes his lips and waits for the construction crew to exit. Elisa and Zelda shrink from the burly men’s appraising looks. The scientist, blind to Elisa’s discomfort, holds out his hand to shake. Elisa gapes in horror at the man’s neatly clipped nails, clean palm, and starched shirt cuff. What will Fleming make of this etiquette breach? Worse than to take the hand is to ignore it, so she offers hers as listlessly as possible. The man’s palm is damp, but his grip is genuine.

“Dr. Bob Hoffstetler.” He smiles. “How do you work in those shoes?”

Elisa shuffles backward several inches so that her cart separates her shoes from Fleming’s line of sight. Fleming can’t be allowed to notice her shoes for the second time. She couldn’t bear it if he robbed her of that revolt. Hoffstetler misses nothing; he observes her small retreat and angles his head curiously. He appears to be waiting on a reply, so Elisa pushes a smile onto her blushing face and taps her name tag. Hoffstetler’s eyebrows settle in sympathetic understanding.

“The most intelligent of creatures,” he offers softly, “often make the fewest sounds.”

He smiles again and steps to the right to make similar introductions to Zelda, and though Elisa is mortified by the attention and curls her shoulders inward to make herself smaller, she notes with a somber sting that, in all her years at Occam, Dr. Hoffstetler’s smile is the warmest she’s ever received.