He was stuck in the stairwell for five minutes.

He'd gone to his office first, done another MDMA for the creative sparkle and insight it brought, and a methamphetamine to sharpen the edge of his perceptions. Then he went to the locker room and changed into a scrub suit. The clean cotton felt cool and crisp against his skin, touching but not clinging to his chest, the insides of his arms, his thighs, like freshly starched sheets, the pleasure of its touch magnified by the ecstasy…

He left then, alternately hurrying and restraining himself. He couldn't wait. He crept up the stairs, not quite chortling, but feeling himself bursting with the joy of it. He was careful. If he was seen, it wouldn't be a disaster. But if he was not, it would be better.

At the top of the stairs, he opened the door just a crack, enough so that he could see the nurses' station fifty feet down the hall. He held onto the door handle: if anyone came through unexpectedly, he could react as though he were about to pull the door open…

The nurse spent five minutes on the telephone, standing up, laughing, while he watched her through the crack and cursed her: the drugs were working in his blood, were demanding that he go to Sybil. He held back but wasn't sure how long he could last…

There. The nurse, still smiling to herself, hung up the phone, sat down and pivoted in her chair, facing away from Bekker. He opened the door and quickly stepped through, across the hall, to where her line of vision was cut off. He moved away silently, the surgical moccasins muffling his footsteps, down the hall to Sybil's room.

Her television peered down from the ceiling; it was tuned to the word processor. He frowned. She wasn't supposed to be able to use it. He stepped next to the bed and bent over in the dim light. The processor console sat on a table to the left side of her bed. He reached out, rolled her head: she was wearing the switch. Looking up at the screen, he used the keyboard's arrow keys to move a cursor to the Select option, then pressed Enter. A series of options came up, including a dozen files. Nine of the files were named. Three were not: they had only numbers.

He was moving the cursor to select the first of the files when he realized that she was awake. Her eyes were dark and terrified.

"It's time," he whispered. The drugs roared and he moved closer to her bedside, peering down into her eyes. She closed them.

"Open your eyes," he said. She would not.

"Open your eyes…" Her eyes remained closed.

"Open your… Sybil, I really need to know what you see, there at the end; I need to see your reactions. I need your eyes open, Sybil…" He rattled a key on the keyboard. "I'm looking at your files, Sybil…"

Her eyes opened, quickly, almost involuntarily. "Ah," he said, "so there is a reason I should look…"

Her eyes were flashing frantically from Bekker to the screen. He moved the cursor to the first numbered file and pushed Enter. There were two letters on the screen: MB.

"Ah. That wouldn't stand for 'Michael Bekker,' would it?" he asked. He erased the letters, moved to the next file. KLD. He erased them. "A little message here? Do you really think they would've understood? Of course, with a few more days, you might have been able to squeeze out some more…"

Bekker went to the final file. ME. "Got the 'me' done, anyway," he said. He backspaced over the letters, and they were gone.

"Well," he said, turning back to her. "Can I convince you to keep your eyes open?"

She closed them.

"Time," he said. "And this time, we're going all the way. Really, truly, Sybil. All the way…"

He stepped to the doorway and glanced down the hall. Nobody. Sybil's eyes followed him across the room and back, dark, wet. Bekker, his eyebrows arched, placed his palm over Sybil's mouth and gently pinched her nose with the thumb and index finger of the same hand. She closed her eyes. With the index and middle fingers of the other hand, he lifted her eyelids. She stared blankly, unmoving, for fifteen seconds. Then her eyes skewed wildly, from side to side, looking for help. Her chest began to tremble and then her eyes stopped their wild careen, fixed beyond him, and began to shine.

"What is it?" Bekker whispered. "Do you see? Are you seeing? What? What?"

She couldn't tell; and at the end, her eyes, the shine still on them, rolled up, the pupils gone…

"Hello?"

Panicked, he let go of her nose, backed away from the bed, the hair rising on the back of his neck. He was trembling violently, unable to control himself. She was so close. So close.

"Hello-o-o?"

He staggered to the door, barely able to breathe, peeked out. He could see a corner of the nurses' station, but nobody there. Then a woman's voice, two rooms down the hall toward the nurses' station. The nurse: "Did you call me, Mrs. Lamey?"

Bekker chanced it, crossed the hall in three long strides and went out through the internal door. He let the door close of its own weight, let it slide shut with a barely audible hiss, then started down the stairs two at a time. Just as the door shut, he heard the nurse's voice again.

"Hello?"

She must have seen or heard something, or sensed it. Bekker fled down the stairs, the moccasins muffling his footfalls. He opened the door on his floor, stepped through and from far above heard another, more distant "Hello?"

Ten seconds later he was in his office, the door locked, the lights out. Breathing hard, heart beating wildly. Safe. A Xanax would help. He popped one, two, sat down in the dark. He would wait awhile, get his clothes. The MDMA bit him again, and he went away…

Lucas went to pick Cassie up at the theater, and waited while she scrubbed her face, watching again for Druze. And again, Druze was somewhere else.

"How's the play going?" Lucas asked.

"Pretty good. We're actually making some money, which is the important thing. It's kind of funny, has its message. That's a good combination in Minneapolis."

"Sugar pill," Lucas said.

"Something like that."

They ate a midnight snack at a French cafe in downtown Minneapolis, then went for a walk, looking in the windows of art galleries and trendoid restaurants. Two of them featured raised floors, and the younger burghers of Minneapolis peered down at them through the windows, their fat legs tucked under tablecloths almost at eye level.

"I kept looking at Carlo, I couldn't help it," Cassie said. "I'm afraid he's going to catch me and think I'm coming on to him or something."

"Be careful around him," Lucas said. "If he comes to your apartment, tell him you're in the shower, still wet, or something. Or that you've got me in there… Keep him out. Keep the door shut. Don't be alone with him."

She shivered. "No way. Though… there's a funny thing about this. Before I saw those pictures, I might have said, 'Yeah, Carlo could kill somebody.' Now, it's hard to believe that somebody you know could be doing this. Especially the business about the eyes. Carlo doesn't seem out of control; I mean, he could be crazy, but you feel like it would be a real cold crazy. Not a hot crazy. I could see Carlo strangling somebody and never showing any expression: I just can't see him in some kind of frenzy…"

"Could he fake it? Could he be cold enough to do the eyes without feeling it?"

She thought for a moment, then said, "I don't know. Maybe." She shivered again. "But I'd hate to think anybody could be that cold. And why would he, anyway?"

"I don't know," Lucas said. "We don't know what's going on, yet."

At Lucas' house, in the bedroom, Cassie lay on top of him, a compact mass of muscle. She reached down and grabbed an inch of skin at his waist. "No love handles. Pretty impressive for a guy as ancient as yourself."

Lucas grunted. "I'm in awful shape. I sat on my ass all winter."