he matron’s voice rings through her skull. Stupid little girl. Elisa slows her gait to wait out two gabbing dayshifters ambling toward the end of the hall. You never follow directions, no wonder all the girls hate you. There: She’s alone. She scoots to the F-1 door and slots the key card. One day I’ll catch you lying or stealing and throw you out in the cold. The lock engages, and she throws open the door, an outrageous act at this hour. You’ll have no choice except selling your body, you shameful girl. Elisa slides inside, shuts the door, presses her back against it, and listens for footsteps, her fearful mind conflating nightmare images of the Matron hurling little Mum down the steps only for David Fleming to catch her.

Occam is swelling with morning staff. It’s a treacherous time for Elisa to make this visit, but she can’t help it, she needs to see him, make sure he’s all right. But it’s difficult to see anything at all; F-1 is fully alight, as bright as it was the night the creature’s tank was wheeled inside. Elisa squints and staggers, but also smiles, despite everything. Just a quick visit to let him know she hasn’t forgotten him, to sign to him that she misses him, to radiate with warmth at his sign of E-L-I-S-A, to lift his spirits with an egg. She takes the egg from her pocket and dashes forward, her legs beginning to remember how to dance.

She hears him before she sees him. Like a whale moan, the high-frequency sound bypasses her ears to pull tight like wire around her chest. Elisa stops, completely: her body, her breathing, her heart. The egg slips from her hand, makes a soft landing on her foot, and wobbles through water puddles left behind by a struggle. The creature is neither in pool nor tank, but on his knees in the middle of the lab, his metal bindings chained to a concrete post. A medical lamp on an adjustable arm pounds him with wattage, and she can smell his salty dryness, like a fish left on a pier to fester. His twinkling scales have gone dull and gray. The grace of his water postures has been clobbered by the harsh bends of a forced kneel. His chest rattles like that of a phlegmy old man and his gills labor as if pushing against weights, each opening betraying raw redness.

The creature turns his head, saliva draining from his gasping mouth, and looks at her. His eyes, like his scales, are coated with a dull patina, and though this makes reading the color of his eyes difficult, there is no mistaking the gesture he makes with his hands, cinched though they are by chains. Two index fingers, pointing urgently toward the door. It’s a sign Elisa knows well: “Go.”

The sign also, by design or chance, draws her eyes to a stool next to the concrete post. She doesn’t know how she missed it before, such a bright color in all this laboratory drabness. Upright on the seat rests an open bag of green hard candy.