“And you,” Vann said.

“I got hit,” I said. “But that was because I was protecting you.”

“And that would go against her story anyway,” Vann said. “So you and I know she was gunning for me but her story will muddy up the waters. When the morning shows go live tomorrow, they’re going to tie this into the Loudoun Pharma attack.”

“That sounds about right to me,” I said.

Vann didn’t say anything to this, but touched the monitor to bring up the latest news. The top story aside from Rees’s attack was the shooting at my parents’ house. Vann pulled up the story and watched it.

“A burglar,” Vann said, after the report ended.

“That’s what I told my parents to say.”

“Think it will float?”

“There’s no reason for it not to,” I said.

“How are your parents?” Vann asked.

“Now that they’ve got their people and responses in place they’ll be fine,” I said. “Dad’s in shock a little. Killing a man ends any thought of him running for Senate.”

“A man defending his home doesn’t play so poorly in most parts of Virginia,” Vann said.

“No, but it’s balanced out by the image of a really big angry black man with a shotgun,” I said. “Even Mom’s ancestors being gun runners for the Confederacy isn’t going to make up for that. So I’m pretty sure a party rep is going to come around tomorrow and tell him they would be delighted for him to endorse the candidacy of someone else.”

“Sorry.”

“It’ll be fine,” I said. “Eventually. Dad’s probably got a week of think pieces and commentary about him and the shooting to get through before he can do anything else. A normal person would be able to get through it in private. Dad has to worry about what it means for his legacy.”

“And the ‘burglar,’” Vann said.

“A Navajo named Bruce Skow,” I said.

“And he’s like Johnny Sani.”

“As far as we can tell so far, probably,” I said. “We’ll need to get into his head to confirm.”

“Another remote-controlled Integrator,” Vann said.

“Looks like,” I said.

Vann sighed and then pointed at the liquor store bag I still held in my hand, containing a bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon and a package of Solo cups. “Pour me some of that,” she said. “Make it a tall one.”

“How tall?” I asked.

“Don’t get me drunk,” Vann said. “But just short of that would be fine.”

I nodded. “Why don’t you head up to my room,” I said. “I’ll bring it up to you in a minute.” I pointed in the right direction and then went into the kitchen, which was a characteristically bare Haden kitchen, save for the pallets of nutritional liquid.

Tayla, whose room was on the first floor, saw me go in and followed. “You’re getting her a drink,” she said.

“The alternative to getting her one here was getting her one at a bar,” I said. “At least here I can cut her off if she gets sloppy.”

“What she really needs at this point is some sleep, not bourbon,” she said, pointing to the bottle.

“I’m not going to disagree with you on that,” I said, opening the bottle. “But she’s not going to do that at the moment. In which case I might as well make her comfortable because we need to do some work.”

“And how are you doing?” Tayla asked.

“Well, you know,” I said, opening the Solo cup package. “Today I fought with a ninja threep, saw two women view the last video from a dead relative, had a woman explode twenty feet from me, and watched my dad kill an intruder with a shotgun.” I took a cup and poured the bourbon into it. “If I had any sense I’d take this bottle and attach it to my intake tube.”

“I’ve seen people do that, actually,” Tayla said.

“Yeah?” I asked. “How does it work for them?”

“About as well as you’d expect,” Tayla said. “Haden bodies are sedentary and in general have low alcohol tolerances to start. Our digestive systems are used to taking in nutritional liquids, not actual food and drink. And then there’s the fact that the disease changes our brain structure, which for a lot of Hadens increases the propensity for addiction.”

“So they’re all fucked up, is what you’re saying.”

“What I’m saying is there’s nothing as fucked up as a Haden alcoholic.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I said.

“You need sleep too,” Tayla said. “Professional opinion.”

“I’m not going to disagree with you on that, either,” I said. “But for all the reasons I’ve just outlined, I’m a little wired right now.”

“Is it always like this?” Tayla asked.

“My job?”

“Yes.”

“This is my first week on the job,” I said. “So, so far? Yes.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Like I wish I had decided to be the typical rich kid and been a sponge on my parents,” I said.

“You don’t really mean that,” Tayla said.

“No,” I said. “But at the moment I really want to feel like I did.”

Tayla came over and rested a hand on my arm. “I’m the house doctor,” she said. “If you need help you know where I am.”

“I do,” I said.

“Promise me you’ll try to get some sleep tonight.”

“I’ll try.”

“Okay.” She turned to go.

“Tayla,” I said. “Thanks for tonight. It means a lot to me that you helped my partner.”

“That’s my job,” Tayla said. “I mean, you saw me help a man who two minutes earlier was planning to bash my head in with a bat. I wouldn’t do any less for someone you care about.”

Chapter Twenty

“YOU TOOK YOUR time,” Vann said, as I walked into the room.

“Tayla wanted to talk,” I said, walking the bourbon over to her. “She’s worried about the both of us.”

“Seems fair,” Vann said, taking the cup. “Both of us survived an assassination attempt tonight. I’m worried about the both of us too.” She took a sip from the cup. “Now,” she said. “I’m going to tell you a story.”

“I thought we were saving story time until after the march,” I said.

“We were,” Vann said. “But then your friend Tony showed up with his discovery, and then someone tried to put a bullet into my head. So I’ve decided that sooner is better than later for story time.”

“All right,” I said.

“This is going to wander a bit,” Vann warned.

“I’m all right with that,” I said.

“I’m forty,” Vann said. “I was sixteen when I got sick. This was during the first wave of infections, when they were still figuring out what the hell to do about it. I lived in Silver Spring and there was a party I wanted to go to with friends in Rockville, but Rockville was quarantined because there was a Haden’s outbreak. I didn’t care, because I was sixteen and stupid.”

“Like any sixteen-year-old,” I said.

“Exactly. So me and my friends got into a car, found a way in that didn’t have a roadblock on it, and went to the party. No one at the party looked sick to me when we got there, so I figured it wouldn’t be a problem. I finally got back home around three and my dad was waiting for me. He thought I was drunk and asked me to breathe so he could smell my breath. I coughed on him like an asshole and then I went to bed.”

Vann paused to take another sip out of her cup. I waited for what I knew was coming next.

“Three days later I felt like my entire body had swelled. I had a temperature, I was raspy, my head hurt. Dad was feeling the same way. My mother and my sister felt fine, so my dad told them to go over to her sister’s so she wouldn’t get sick.”

“Not a good idea,” I said. They had probably been infected but weren’t showing symptoms yet. That’s how Haden’s spread as far as it did.

“No,” Vann agreed. “But this was early days so they were still trying to figure these things out. They left and Dad and I watched TV and drank coffee and waited to feel better. After a couple of days we both thought the worst was over.”

“And then the meningitis hit,” I said.

“And then the meningitis hit. I thought my head was going to explode. My father called 911 and told them what was going on. They came to our house in hazmat suits, grabbed us, and sent us over to Walter Reed, which is where second-stage Haden’s victims were sent. I was there for two weeks. I almost died right at the beginning. They pumped some experimental serum in me that gave me a seizure. I tensed up so hard I ended up breaking my jaw.”