"The body is a complex chemical laboratory that sometimes gets out of balance. There's always hope. I think—"
"Know what I fucking think?" Bartlett cuts him off. "I think I'm in line for the Syndrome if you don't get this right."
What Ally wants to do, more than anything else, is to make sense of what her options are. The most obvious one— in fact, maybe the only one—is to flow along with that infinite river she feels around her, just to lie where she is, in this sedative‑induced reverie, and let her body be taken over by Karl Van de Vliet. Perhaps he has marvelous things in store for her. Except she has no idea what's real and what is imaginary.
"The simulations are giving me some idea of what went wrong with the Beta before." The voice is Van de Vliet's. "I have one more test to run, but if I handled this the way the simulation now suggests, I think I could actually generate the telomerase antibodies we need and get the Beta to finally work, avoiding the Syndrome. But to prove it would require a full‑scale experiment. I'm reluctant to do that without Alexa's permission."
"Christ, Karl, are you getting cold feet? This is a hell of a time for that."
"Call it a pang of rationality."
"But everything is at stake."
"I don't know what's eventually going to happen with the Syndrome, but it's criminal to jeopardize any more lives." Van de Vliet sighs. "Look, you had the procedure of your own free will, and you knew the risks. Alexa Hampton didn't volunteer for the Beta. She's not a lab rat. At the very least, we ought to get her to sign a release. The liability is. . . In any case, I'm not doing anything till I run this last test. Then maybe I'll have some idea exactly how much risk is involved."
"And then, by God we're going to do it. Tonight. This is it."
She feels a cold metal object insinuate itself against her chest. Time rushes around her, sending her forward on a journey that seems increasingly inevitable. Where it's taking her, she has no idea, but she senses she no longer has an option of whether she wants to go or not.