ately he can’t sleep. Until he can, and then it’s into the pitch. Three in the morning, he’s gasping and choking, and Lainie’s rubbing his back like he’s a boy, but he’s not a boy and those can’t be tears on his cheeks, and he repels her hands, and still she goes on shushing, asking if it’s his fingers and won’t he let the doctor examine them again, but it’s not his fingers, and she starts in about how it must be the war, then, she’s read about it in magazines, how war can haunt a man, but what would this woman know about war, how it eats you, but also how you eat it, and what would she know about memory, for it doesn’t seem possible that she, in her life of ironing boards and dirty dishes, has forged a single memory like those scorched onto Strickland’s brain.

In the dreams, he’s back on the Josefina, skating beneath cutlasses of fog, the blood of the crew drooling from the deck, the only sound the slavering suck of toothless mud. He steers the ship into a grotto as tightly curled as a conch, and a curtain of insects parts, and the being rises, except it’s not Deus Brânquia, it’s General Hoyt, naked and pink and shining like rubber, holding out the same Ka-Bar knife he’d held out to him in Korea and making the same grim bargain.

He can see Hoyt well enough. How he liked to stand with one hand dandling his medals and the other caressing his extended belly. His eyes half-closed but rarely blinking. A puckish grin wedging through his round cheeks. But he can’t hear him. His memories of Hoyt, all the orders, all the compliments, all the slippery inducements, have been scrubbed of voice. Not mute, not like Elisa, but rather obscured, the same way the redacted words of Hoyt’s Deus Brânquia brief had been obscured by black blocks. They sound like long, hard shrieking and look like redactions: **** *** **** ******.

Even here, in this lab, he can’t imagine how Fleming could have understood such senseless shrieking from Hoyt. Strickland feels a faintness he hasn’t felt since the high heat of Korea, the even higher heat of the Amazon. Maybe Hoyt heard about the reattached fingers. Maybe Hoyt thinks Strickland has lost his ability to control a situation. And if Strickland loses Hoyt’s confidence, what leverage will Strickland have to sever ties and be free? He blinks hard, looks about, thinks he sees green vines kinking through ventilation grates, green buds nosing from electrical outlets. Is it the painkillers? Or is it real? If he can’t put an end to this experiment, Deus Brânquia will win and the whole city might become another Amazon. Strickland, his family, all of Baltimore will be strangled inside of it.

He makes a fist, knowing what will happen. Pain slurps like a thick, hot syrup from his infected fingers into his arm, then heart. His vision swims, then focuses with a buchité-like clarity. Hoffstetler’s still got his palm upward, awaiting the keys. He’s still talking, too, about the benefits of the specialized light fixtures, the reels of field recordings. He’s promising to provide Fleming with graphs and data to send to General Hoyt, just as soon as they tuck this poor little creature back into its comfy tank. Strickland bears down. He’s got to get tough, and now.

He laughs. It’s harsh enough to interrupt Hoffstetler.

“Data,” Strickland says. “That’s when you type something on a page and all’s a sudden it’s true, right?”

Hoffstetler’s throat, that reedy, crushable thing, bobs in midspeech. His palm drops and Strickland is glad to see it. Indeed, it fills him with warmth, with hope. Are those Hoyt’s pleased redactions he hears? They seem to softly shriek from the vents of the computer: **** ***, *******. Hoffstetler must hear it, too. He hurries to the tank to indicate one of its bothersome gauges.

“Twenty-eight minutes. This chronometer tracks the time since the tank is last breached. The asset’s limit outside of water is tracked no further than thirty. We can discuss General Hoyt’s report later. The keys, Mr. Strickland. Do not make me beg.”

But begging is exactly what Strickland would like to hear. He hunkers down next to the asset, right where Hoffstetler had been. An enjoyable pose, even with Deus Brânquia convulsing so hard that scales speckle Strickland’s shirt. He feels like a cowboy examining livestock that has dropped to the dirt, frothing at the mouth and requiring a shotgun mercy. He traces a finger along the contour of Deus Brânquia’s expanding and collapsing chest.

“Now take this down for the general, Mr. Fleming. This here isn’t data. This is something you can touch with your own hands. All along the ribs here, you see that? That’s jointed cartilage. It’s like knuckles laced together. The going theory is it separates the two sets of lungs, primary and secondary.” He raises his voice. “Am I getting this right, Bob?”

“Twenty-nine minutes,” Hoffstetler says. “Please.”

“Now this cartilage is so thick we can’t get a clean X-ray. Lord knows we’ve tried. I’m sure Bob can tell you how many times. But here’s the bottom line General Hoyt needs to know. If we want to find out what makes this thing tick, there’s no discussing it. We need to crack it open.”

“For God’s sake.” Hoffstetler’s voice is how it should be. Distant, thin.

“The Soviets could be down in South America right now, fishing another one of these things out of the river.”

“Another one? There is not another one of these, not in the world! I promise you!”

“You weren’t on that boat with me, were you, Bob? Reading a couple books about a river isn’t the same as seeing with your own eyes the miles and miles of it. The millions of things in it. More than that computer of yours can count, I guarantee you.”

Happy redactions shriek from the computer: *** **** ***, *******! Strickland’s surprised no one else can hear it. Then again, he’s not. No one else has the military background. Strickland can’t understand the finer points of the shriek, but he can feel them in his gut, in his heart. He was, once upon a time, like a son to Hoyt, wasn’t he? Hoyt must be proud, seeing his boy grow into a man like this. Strickland has to fight not to feel proud, too. He swipes at his eyes, just to make sure they’re dry. Maybe he’ll accept Hoyt’s help here, just a little. But he won’t fall under Hoyt’s spell, not again.

“Thirty minutes,” Hoffstetler says. “I’m begging now. I’m begging.”

Strickland swivels on one of his heels. Hearing Hoffstetler beg isn’t enough. He wants to lock eyes with him, make him remember this moment. Hoffstetler, though, isn’t looking at him. He’s staring off across the lab, teeth bared and forehead twitching, almost as if signaling a fourth person in the room. Strickland recalls the egg. He doesn’t know why he recalls it. There had been an egg on the floor, hadn’t there? He begins to follow Hoffstetler’s gaze across the lab.

A gurgling hack blasts from the creature. Strickland looks down, the egg forgotten. Deus Brânquia is seizuring. Scales are being shed by the dozens. An off-white slime bubbles from its mouth. It tenses all at once, as if poked by the Howdy-do, or the machete, whatever the tool might be. Then it passes out. Its full weight slumps into the harness. Urines pools from under it, turning the white slime and red blood a murky orange. Strickland has to stand up to get out of the way. He hears Fleming’s pen and hopes he’s not recording this. It’s disgusting, disgusting, not fit for Hoyt’s consumption. Just as inappropriate, though, would be to let Deus Brânquia die before Hoyt had his say. Strickland digs the keys from his pocket and backhands them at Hoffstetler. Scientists: no coordination. Beneath the shrieking, Strickland hears the keys hit the floor.