e have ourselves a pickle, girls. A real pickle.”

The scene of the crime still vibrates from the ordeal. Without being asked, Elisa dips her mop into soapy water, wrings it in the vise, and swabs it at the tusk of blood. Fleming, meanwhile, issues the orders to Zelda. He always does. Zelda, at least, can verbally indicate comprehension.

“I need both of you inside F-1 right now,” Fleming continues. “Emergency work. No questions, please. Just do the job. Do it well, but do it quickly. We don’t have a lot of time.”

“What do you want us to do?” Zelda asks.

“Zelda, this will go faster if you just listen. There’s … biologic matter. On the floor. Maybe the tables. Check around. I don’t need to explain this to you. You know how to do your job. Just make it all go away.”

Elisa glances at the door. There’s blood on the knob.

“But … will we be…”

“Zelda, what did I say? I wouldn’t send you in there if you weren’t perfectly safe. Just stay away from the tank. That’s the big metal object you saw Mr. Strickland bring in. Do not go near the tank. There should be no reason at all for either of you to approach the tank. Is that understood? Zelda? Elisa?”

“Yes, sir,” Zelda says, and Elisa nods.

Fleming starts to say more, then checks his watch. His terse parting words divulge a troubling loss of orating acumen.

“Fifteen minutes. Immaculate. Your complete discretion.”

The lab is spare and orderly no longer. The concrete floor has sprouted a range of metal masts and stockades, each built with iron loops onto which an object, or a living thing, could be leashed. Carts of what look like medical devices extend from the beige computer bank like technological tumors. A table stands in the room’s center, wheels pointed in four different directions. Surgical implements are scattered like punched-out teeth. Drawers are open, sinks are full, cigarettes still seep smoke. One smolders on the floor. The floor, as always, is where the hard work is.

Blood is all over. Gazing over it, Elisa thinks of magazine photos taken from airplanes of flooded lowlands. There’s a hubcap-sized lake of blood congealing beneath the glaring lights. Smaller ponds, lochs, and lagoons trace Mr. Strickland’s race to the door. Zelda pushes her cart through a lakelet and grimaces at the blood trailing behind the plastic wheels. Elisa has no choice but to mirror the movement, too astonished to hatch a cannier plan.

Fifteen minutes. Elisa pours water over the floor. It slithers, strikes blobs of blood, births pink pinwheels. This is how she was taught to do it at Home, in every arena of life. Thin out the mystery of life, the fascination, the lust, the horror, until you no longer question it. She lobs her mop head at the center of the gunk and drags it this way, and that, until the yarn-strands bloat and darken. This is normal. The sound, too, is normal—the wet swap, moist slurp—and she fixates on it. That soot scorch on the concrete could be from an Empty’s fired gun; mop right over it. That’s a cattle prod, one million pounds of menace, impossible to lift; mop around it.

Elisa tells herself not to look at the tank. Don’t look at the tank, Elisa. Elisa looks at the tank. Even thirty feet away, next to the large pool, it’s too big for the lab, a dinosaur crouching in wait. It has been bolted to four plinths, a wooden stairway providing access to a top hatch. Fleming was right about one thing: There’s no blood anywhere near it. No reason to approach it. Elisa tells herself to look away. Look away, Elisa. Elisa cannot look away.

The moppers meet at the bloody area’s vertex. Zelda checks her watch, swipes sweat from her nose, and steadies her bucket for a final pour, nodding for Elisa to gather the contraptions off the floor before the water floods them aside. Elisa kneels and collects them. A pair of forceps. A scalpel with a broken blade. A syringe with a bent needle. Dr. Hoffstetler’s tools, for sure, though she can’t make herself believe the man would hurt anyone or anything. He’d looked devastated charging from the lab. She stands and sets the items in a parallel arrangement on a table like a hotel maid. She hears water lap from Zelda’s bucket and from peripheral vision sees its elongating tendrils. Zelda clucks.

“Will you look at that? Janitors have to sneak off to the loading dock to smoke. Meantime they’re smoking cigars in here like this is some—”

Zelda is not a person typically given to gasps. Elisa spins around to see Zelda’s mop timber forward. Her hands are cupped before her, holding two small objects the mop water washed back from under the table, objects she’d believed were cigars. Her hands shake and part, and the objects drop. One of them falls soundlessly. The other clinks, and from it pops a silver wedding band.