Chapter 6: Medical Leave

I told Eleven to stay in the loft and not touch the stove.

She said, "Yes, Wynn," and watched me put on my coat with a look I couldn't read.

I took the bus.

It was the same bus.

The glass front of Kestrel Haptics still shone.

The lobby still had the white marble floor I had once walked across with a cardboard box.

I stopped on the exact spot and looked up at the mezzanine rail.

Nobody was standing there now.

At the front desk a young man in a lanyard said I needed an appointment.

"I'm here to ask about Margot Ketteridge," I said, loud enough for the lobby to hear.

Half a dozen heads turned.

I knew some of them.

A woman from QA looked at her shoes.

One of the two guards who'd walked me out stood by the turnstile, and his jaw went tight when he saw me.

"Wynn Haskett," said a warm voice from the stairs. "As I live and breathe."

Rufus Gantry came down in a grey suit with a cloth tape measure tucked in his breast pocket.

He was fifty-four, silver-haired and soft-spoken, and he looked at everyone as if he were sizing them for a coffin.

I had met him exactly twice.

Both times he'd smiled, and both times a week later I was out of a job.

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