he bottle cap blunders from sweaty fingers, bickers off floor tiles, squirrels behind the toilet. Hoffstetler wants to fall to his knees, scrabble after it like a junkie. One of the janitors will find it, one of the scientists will lift fingerprints from it, and Strickland, cattle prod crackling, will collar Hoffstetler before he can schedule to meet the Bison’s Chrysler. But there’s no time. Monday’s graveyard-to-dayshift change, Occam’s most turbulent thirty minutes, is near. He’s got to steady his hands, his breathing, his mind, and do this. Not for himself. He’ll do it for the children whose lives were ruined by the classified medical studies that he allowed to happen. The Devonian, in its own way, is one more child being abused. Hoffstetler can avert its misery, and in that end, find a snip of redemption.

He pries the stopper and rubber tip from the syringe, tosses both in the toilet, and flushes it; the roar matches the pulse in his ears. Toilet-water flecks his face and hangs on his skin like warts as he pushes the needle into the bottle and draws the plunger. The silver solution eddies gorgeously into the barrel. He knows the law of nature: A substance that beautiful can only be deadly. He places the syringe into the pocket of his lab coat, wipes his face with his sleeve, and exits the toilet stall, trying not to look at the changeling face in the mirror. The poised, aloof college professor has been replaced by a red-faced, curled-lip murderer.