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All Margaret’s energy drained away. She felt hollow. The biosafety suit suddenly seemed so heavy. If she could just get out of it for a little bit, maybe rest her eyes.

She heard the click of someone coming onto her channel.

“Margo,” Clarence said. “Where are you?”

“Detainment.”

“What are you doing there?”

“I’m working, Clarence. What do you want?”

“The diver is going into the Los Angeles in forty-five minutes,” he said. “I thought you’d want to watch.”

She did want to see that. Maybe the diver would come across the subject of Candice Walker’s final drawings, the three men in the membrane. Forty-five minutes … enough time to decon, get out of the suit, grab twenty minutes of sleep.

She turned to leave, felt Cantrell’s eyes upon her. For just a moment, she froze — he looked like he wanted to kill her — and then the moment was gone.

Cantrell walked to his bed and sat.

Margaret picked up her tray and left Edmund’s cell.

FOLLOW-THROUGH

When he’d been ten years old, Orin Nagy’s father finally showed him how to properly swing a baseball bat. It was all in the hips, his father had said. Twisting them at the right moment brought your body around, maximized your swing velocity. Arm strength mattered, sure, but the real power came from the hips. The hips, and following through.

The same advice held true for swinging a pipe wrench.

Orin swung, Orin twisted, bringing twenty pounds of unforgiving metal to bear on the motherf.u.c.ker that wanted to make him take the cellulose test.

The man’s biosafety suit offered little protection. The heavy wrench caved in his right temple like a hammer slammed into a ripe melon.

And, just like the good boy he’d once been, Orin followed through.

The man dropped like a bag of wet s.h.i.+t.

Daddy would have been proud.

Orin heard men screaming angry things. He saw another one raising a pistol. Orin let the follow-through carry him all the way around in a fast 360-degree turn. As he came out of that turn, he swung again, more overhand axe-chop than smooth baseball swing. The results were much the same: the wet crunch of a crushed skull.

The gun went off. A pair of bodies slammed into Orin, dragged him to the ground.