Santa Clara's Kaiser facility is like every other hospital, an antiseptic tower run on rote, bureaucracy, and painkillers. I can actually feel the grind as we pull in past the two giant ovoid towers, the constant drumbeat of moribund questions and stiff upper lips. My stomach kicks up the volume on its moans.

We park in a lot sized to service Disneyland, close to the sliding doors thanks to Dr. Barg's handicapped placard. Paul's out of the car as soon as it's in park; he smoothes the lines of his coat, checks his face in the side mirror, and nods to me, hollow-eyed, as he marches off toward the main building.

"Are we—" Dr. Barg begins, before we're struck full-force by the start of Paul's broadcast.

The world heaves around us, some primal shift that leaves us all with our hair on end. Every aura in the parking lot jerks into the white, and I can feel realization flare up in the nearby cars.

The three of us have a shared moment of nausea as we feel Paul's mind unfold; I look at Dr. Barg and for half a second I see a brown-skinned old man who I'm convinced is my father.

I grit my teeth, shake my head, and Paul's lie peels off the world. Dr. Barg has his eyes and mind closed; Arabella's smiling, hands clasped so tight they're turning purple.

"Are we clear on our cover stories?" Dr. Barg asks, grunting as he rises from the car.

"I was thinking I'd extemporize." I'd hoped I'd smile when I said that.

"Translation: Yes." There's pain in Arabella's voice.

"Good." Dr. Barg nods, more for himself than us. "Good. Randall."

My nerves stand at attention. I'm kind of grateful I'm the one bringing the teddy bear. "Doc?"

"While he's busy—check in on that Denver angle man yourself, would you? I want corroboration on whatever Paul digs up."

I nod to him. "You got it boss-man."

"You really think he'd lie to us?" Arabella asks, watching Paul's fresh-bruise aura pour toward the hospital.

"Lie?" Dr. Barg shakes his head. "Doubtful."

"Omit truths to annoy us and/or cover his own ass?" I add. "Definitely."

Arabella's aura tints gray. "You make adulthood so appealing."

Dr. Barg gives that his trademark sniff. "Alright, folks." He looks at the hospital with a smirk far past its freshness date. "Follow that parasite."

Paul keeps his pace perfectly, a wall of delusion about thirty steps ahead of us. He's a riptide in the psychic landscape, every mind rearranged by his passing; I see the change in peoples' eyes as we pass by, the shift as they regard us as family; we're the only ones who don't buy it. There's a raw spot under my arm where the wart is going to sprout.¹

We walk into the textbook beige-carpeted lobby, and up to the textbook Formica slab of an info desk. The clerk is a broad-shouldered black man with a maverick cop mustache who is doing his best to pretend he's somewhere else. He looks at us, with the wildly different genetics and the "gifts" that look like they came off a living room floor, and he gets ready to start his Angry Security questions, visions of kicking us out dancing through his head. Then Paul passes him, and something behind his eyes tears. He asks about our names and our business like they're as important as his tab at Starbuck's, collects an I.D. card he barely looks at, and gives us directions before going back to his urgent dust-watching.

The ICU is on the first floor, conveniently located near the gift shop. Kaiser has our best interests at heart. Dr. Barg has a mumbled, wheezy conversation with the medical techs via the phone outside the unit, which somehow manages to gain us access. I squeeze the teddy bear with very real trepidation.

The room is bigger than I'd like, but smaller than it needs: two rows of four beds each, most of them occupied, the walls painted institutional vanilla. There are the usual beeps, the constant hiss-click of respirators; below the surface are exhausted minds and the sugared vertigo of opiates. My teeth grind as I expend all my effort on filtering.

"That her?" Arabella asks, pointing at a slight form wrapped in bandages.

Dr. Barg shakes his head, points at Paul's back, still drifting on through the ICU. Paul passes the bandaged girl, passes an old man held together by scabs; then he stops, looks down at a patient, and lowers himself into a chair.

And there she is, miniscule, fragile, wrapped in bandages, pumped full of drugs, and left in a bed far too big for her. They've got an oxygen mask strapped to what passes for her face, an IV taped nice and firm into one hand. Half her face is swollen, and Gorbachev blotches of black coat her face and chest; but whatever treatment they've managed to give her has gotten the damage under control. She doesn't move except to breathe; whatever consciousness Carmel's packing is being hammered into submission by her IV.

"There aren't enough swear words," I grind. "There just...this is where language fails."

Arabella breathes fast like a sprinter; she breathes, and she makes herself look. Dr. Barg lays a hand on her shoulder.

"It'll be alright."

"She's young," Arabella says, because she thinks she's supposed to.

Dr. Barg shakes his head. "They all are."

There's a pointed look at Arabella, and I can tell we're thinking almost the same thing. He looks at me, and I let the thought go quiet, leaving me vulnerable for the question I was hoping he'd forget.

"Are you ready?"

I look at Arabella. She shrugs, and in that shrug I see the tension locked up between her shoulder blades. It hits me like a sack of ball bearings, but she doesn't want to share, so I try to pretend she didn't.

"Yeah," I say. "We're ready."

I take Arabella's hand—flashes of a lighter in a baby's hand, a woman's voice cooing over Baby's burnt thumb. All I hear are the respirators, my own insistence Paul's broadcast isn't true. But Arabella's eyes are meeting mine, and her breathing is faster than mine is; I slow myself down, force myself to smile. Somehow, I manage to think it'll be alright. She smiles, squeezes my hand; and together, on the count of three, we put our hands on Carmel Morrison's stomach.

Pain, and screaming, the sound of a blade locking in place again and again and the cool floor instead of the burning

(Look up)

Snap back; we're walking up some stairs, we're talking to someone we fear, someone right behind us who won't talk in more than three syllables, and our heart is thumping as an arm reaches out to get the door

(Look back)

There's a cute boy we went down on during a movie (hold the connection) there's the smell of popcorn there's our bedroom and we can't remember it and we know our favorite book is in there

(Look up)

He's hairy, he's big, he's wrapping something around our wrists that sticks and pulls we want to scream we squirm we beg and then there's tape on our mouth and someone whispers in our ear and he's not touching us, not touching us just the tape

(Touch him)

We're at a birthday party and the woman with no face is making us wear the special white robe and when she puts it on us she insists on lifting