ayshifters filter into the locker room. Zelda makes eye contact with those she trained over the years. Funny how they got promoted and she didn’t. They pretend to look at watches, busy themselves with purses. Well, Zelda doesn’t forget a face. Some of these fancy-pants dayshifters had been the graveyard shift’s worst rumormongers. Sandra once claimed to have seen, in B-5, flight plans used in gassing the populace with sedatives. Albert declared that the cabinets of A-12 hid human brains simmering in green goo—probably, he theorized, the brains of presidents. Rosemary swore she’d read a discarded file on a young man, code-named “Finch,” who didn’t age.

That’s what rumor mills do: They grind. So Zelda puts little stock in the gossip swirling around F-1. Is there something strange in that tank? You bet there is—it bit off two of Mr. Strickland’s fingers. But strange is Occam’s racket. Anyone who’s been here a spell knows not to get into a lather about it. That ought to include Elisa. Lately her friend’s behavior has Zelda at sixes and sevens. Oh, she saw how Elisa behaved when they pushed the laundry carts past F-1. That squeaky wheel might as well have been the girl’s whine. Zelda figures it will pass; everyone takes her turn getting gung-ho about government conspiracy. Try as she might, though, she can’t shrug it off. Elisa’s the one person at Occam who sees Zelda for who she is: a good person and a darn hard worker. If Elisa gets herself fired, Zelda doesn’t know if she can take it. Selfish, maybe, but also true. Her knuckles ache, not from gripping mops but because fingers are how Elisa talks, and the idea of losing that daily conversation, that daily affirmation that she, Zelda Fuller, matters—it hurts.

One true thing about F-1: It had top dogs pulling harder at service personnel than anything before. Elisa keeps lingering around that lab, she’ll be playing with real fire. Zelda finishes dressing, sits on the bench, and sighs, enjoying the sharp smell of Lucky Strike. She unfolds a QCC from her pocket, gives it another look. Fleming keeps transposing details, trying to trip them up; if she were Elisa, she might suspect Fleming did this to keep them too busy to concoct theories. Zelda rubs her tired eyes and keeps checking, every row, every column, as the dressed dayshifters bang lockers. The QCC is full of empty, unfillable boxes, the same as her life. Things she’ll never have, places she’ll never go.

The locker room is crowding with women. Zelda looks around, past legs being hoisted, clothes hangers being untangled, bra straps being adjusted. The QCC isn’t the only reason she has lingered here. She’s been waiting for Elisa, so they can wait for the bus together—waiting to wait, the story of her life. Admitting it makes her feel pathetic. The last person Elisa’s thinking about these days is Zelda. The QCC fades before her vision until the night’s biggest unchecked box is revealed to be Elisa. Where is she? She hasn’t changed out of her uniform. Which means she’s still inside Occam. Zelda stands, the QCC gliding to the floor.

Oh, Lord. The girl was up to something.