Rebecca tapped on the door, shifting the Burger King bag under one arm. The door opened and she nearly shrieked…she was staring down the barrel of a pistol.

“Dr. Roe, it’s me! Rebecca, from the Boss’s office!” She cowered in front of the barrel. “He sent me over to get your lunch order! Please don’t shoot!”

Before she could back away, an arm shot out, grabbed her, and hauled her inside. The door slammed and she leaned against it, panting.

“You’re carrying a Burger King bag,” the bespectacled, dark-haired Dr. Roe said suspiciously. Poor Dr. Roe! She looked quite stressed, with bloodshot eyes and wearing yesterday’s clothes still. But the hands steadying the pistol (still in her face, Rebecca couldn’t help but notice with increasing alarm) weren’t shaky at all. “How can you be here to get my lunch order?”

“That’s my lunch. You know how it is around there…. I eat when I can. Um, Dr. Roe, could you please put the gun down? Actually, I was sort of wondering…where did you even get a gun?”

“Never mind,” Roe grunted.

“I didn’t know you had a…a pistol? Revolver? Whatever that thing is.”

“It’s a thirty-eight snub-nosed revolver, and I don’t have a pistol, I have three pistols.”

A deepening feeling of unease settled over Rebecca. “Um, okay. Well, I guess if it makes you feel safer…”

Dr. Roe threw back her head and laughed, laughed without enjoyment or humor. “Safer! Everyone on the team is dead. Except me.”

“Yes, but the Boss is taking every precaution—”

“The Boss! I told him to put everyone in P.C. after Dr. Tanglen was killed. He ignored me.”

“Oh, but it’s not what you’re thinking! He needed all of you—um, I mean, the rest of you—on the floor since Mirage was in the field. If something had happened to her or she needed help, the best team to help her—”

“Would be the team that made her.”

“Well, yes. He couldn’t—he couldn’t just leave Mirage out there on her own.”

“And never mind that it left us all open to be shot in the chest,” Dr. Roe said bitterly. “He risked us to keep an eye on her. The sorority slut.”

Rebecca stared. “How—how did you know they were—um—shot in the chest?”

Dr. Roe shrugged. “I’m team lead. I know everything.”

With growing fear Rebecca eyed the taller woman. Dr. Roe was formidable during the best of times, her with her no-nonsense haircut and Anne Klein wardrobe and brutal, bitter outlook on life. She usually wore dark suits beneath her white lab coat and did not suffer fools gladly. But now…now, with her back against the wall, she was…was…

What?

“So the Boss sent you to get my lunch, huh? Terrific. I could use some empty calories. Suppose the son of a bitch would mind if I starved to death in protective custody?”

“You’ve got him all wrong,” Rebecca protested, trying to back up but remembering, too late, that the door was closed behind her. “He works so hard…looks after all of us….”

“Drives us like cattle, you mean. Christ, and to think I was excited when he revived the Wagner project….”

“It made all your careers!”

“It made us all live at the lab. What home life? And for what? To cybernetically enhance that twit, that…that sorority chick, Caitlyn James. What a waste of six billion dollars.”

“But the advances you made—”

“Aren’t going to be common knowledge in my lifetime…any of our lifetimes. All that work…and for what?”

“Your work was good enough to win a Nobel Prize,” Rebecca said, shocked. “You’ve revolutionized technology with your nanobytes.”

“Yeah, too bad the O.S.F. won’t let me talk about my work just yet. And I know what ‘just yet’ means, you know. It means ‘it’s going to be classified forever, no hard feelings.’”

“For the good of the country,” Rebecca added.

“My ass,” Dr. Roe replied rudely. “For the good of the Boss.”

“I didn’t know…didn’t know this kind of thing was so important to you.”

“I’ll never be published,” Dr. Roe said gloomily. “I thought I could get around that eventually, but the Boss won’t let precious Caitlyn be endangered.”

“Because he cares—”

Dr. Roe shoved her pistol in the pocket of her lab coat and glared. “My God, you’re too loyal to be believed. I thought if anyone knew what a crumb the Boss was, you would.”

“He’s not a crumb. He’s a fine man, a patriot. You just don’t appreciate him. None of you appreciates him. The time the Wagner project takes away from him…why, he’s devoted his entire life to the O.S.F.!”

“And for what?” Dr. Roe asked rudely. “So the latest product of the Wagner team can not work for us?”

“He saved her life. If we hadn’t taken her on, Caitlyn would be dead. She’ll realize that. She’ll come around.”

“You’re nuts,” Dr. Roe said, fingering the butt of her .38. “The whole thing was a waste…and now people are dead.”

“That’s true enough,” Rebecca agreed with a nervous laugh.