The last of the Whole Foods Markets to go was in Georgetown. When C-Corp’s offer to buy was refused by the grocery chain’s CEO, Cyrus began picking them off one-by-one and with an unprecedented zeal. He bought out lots from beneath them. Had zones changed from business to residential. Where local legislators couldn’t be bought, he ran campaigns of intimidation. When intimidation didn’t do the trick, he sought help from his friends on the hill who fashioned for themselves a new version of the eminent domain law. One declaring that, any business or enterprise obstructing C-Corp’s domination of the products and services landscape would be forced to sell or close their doors. The move was coined ‘economic Viagra’ by C-Corp’s marketing staff, who were, by this time, also running most of the news. The eminent domain law’s overhaul was given a brief mention on a Friday night, between sexier, less threatening leads.

To those who understood C-Corp’s brand of politics, it was the death knell of democracy. An at-the-top-of-their-lungs admission that corporations were sometimes too big not to get bigger. Or at least just the one. Cyrus Crowe and his corporation were declared too precious to be held to the code of law, and no one, not one single soul, objected, seeing as that little green pill in Cyrus’s back pocket might someday need to be in theirs, as well.

A month later, the Georgetown Whole Foods Market closed its doors. It’s remained vacant on its patch of crumbling asphalt. A corpse left to rot as a reminder of what happens when someone says no to Cyrus Crowe. A perfect door to a perfect hiding place, co-opted four years back by Emeritus Locshaw for her anti-C-Corp group, the Illuminaughty.

Her black, spiked hair all that’s visible over the aisle dividers, Emeritus moves quickly through the store. On a fixed march, with only the pink shine of the adjacent alley’s emergency lights to guide her, she makes a straight line past long-emptied shelves. Stepping over hardened spills and skeletonized bugs, she turns down a hall promising Restrooms This Way and pushes through the door marked Women.

The room is pitch black. Emeritus pauses to find the small flashlight swinging off her chatelaine and uses it to source the handicapped stall. Inside it, she uses the flashlight’s barrel to tap out a pattern against a curved length of pipe that, at one time, connected toilet to wall.

When the tapping receives no response, Emeritus tries again. After a pause, then another fruitless round of tapping, she steps back and considers the S-shaped pipe. One shoulder against the wall, she places her hands on its serpentine loops and works one around the other in arm-trembling bursts. A sheen of sweat collecting on the latex-free parts of her upper body, she continues the rowing motion until sharp, grating sounds begin and a section of wall, roughly the height and width of a person, slides inward.

On the wall’s other side, Emeritus releases a wooden pull that trips a pneumatic trigger. With a wheeze, followed by the creaking release of worn springs, the wall returns to its original position and the masked woman finds herself alone in the center of a disappearing tunnel. Even with lights strung along the curved ceiling, and a slick moisture duplicating their shine, the tunnel is dim. It takes a moment for Emeritus’s eyes to make out the grated walkway beneath her feet and the damp, rocked floor beneath it. The only thing that punches through the fog is a thick braid of white, orange, and neon yellow cabling that’s been run along the tunnel’s brick walls. Leftovers from a time when such old-school methods of connectivity were still required.

Emeritus looks both ways down the passage and finds no one.

“Hello?” she calls out.

There is no response.

She walks towards the tunnel’s northern end and shouts louder, “Hello!”

The space fills with the echo of footsteps. Emeritus watches as the figure making them appears at the tunnel’s far end.

“Who’s supposed to be manning this entrance?” she calls out while walking towards them.

“Riley!” a man shouts back, continuing her way.

As he nears, Emeritus can see his Metallica shirt, stretched tight around his shoulders, and the hard V of his flexed jaw above it. The group’s unofficial problem-child, most members assess Monk by his gut-punch of a voice and his hair-trigger temper. For Emeritus, it’s Monk’s walk that leaves her wary: chest out, arms back, legs propelling himself away from some truth he drags along behind him like a dead body. If Monk wasn’t such a hard worker, she’d axe him. He’s both too much of an enigma to trust in full and dependable. And dependable is vital once you’ve gone underground.

“Where’s Riley?” Emeritus asks, falling into step with her compatriot who leads them back the way he came.

“Isaac found him passed out in the galley,” Monk answers in a graveled drawl. “He’s sick, Emeritus.”

“Have you called Preacher?”

Monk shakes his shaved head. “Riley says he won’t see Preach and that he’s not going to Blueview, either.”

“I’m not sure that’s his decision,” Emeritus grinds out.

“Whose decision is it then?” Monk asks, pulling a small plastic squeeze bottle from a pocket and squirting a small wheal of it into his palm. “Sure as hell ain’t yours.”

Emeritus grabs the bottle from Monk’s clenched elbow and holds its loosely-capped top beneath her nose.

“Jesus,” she says, yanking her face away. “What is this? Jet fuel?”

“Germ killer.” Monk snatches his bottle from her hand. “Keeps me from getting sick.”

The two continue beneath a low arch that marks a new section of tunnel. Halfway down, a series of canvas-fronted sleeping quarters are fitted into the passing wall.

“Have you or Gutierrez tried getting a blood sample from Riley?” Emeritus asks, her voice lowered as they walk past the canvas doors.

“Old fucker won’t hold still,” Monk growls. “Guttierez even punched him in the nose trying to get some that way.”

“And?”

“What do you want me to say?” Monk grunts. “It’s like he doesn’t have any to spare.”

Two people step out of a chamber ahead of them. They see Emeritus and Monk coming and press themselves against the curved wall until they pass.

Taking advantage of the slow down, Monk leans in. “Gutierrez thinks Riley’s a T,” he whispers. “I’m inclined to agree.”

“No,” Emeritus says. “You don’t go from zero markers to terminal in four weeks.”

Monk cocks his head, a look of bewilderment on his face. “You think Riley’s been giving Preach his own blood? You think, with all we got coming up, that he’d tell you he’s got cancer?”

Not answering, Emeritus pulls away. She crosses to the walkway’s far rail and, with Monk watching, retrieves a cellphone from one of the metal arms swinging off her chatelaine. She dials a number and the call is picked up immediately.

“I was just thinking of you,” a man’s deep voice answers.

“Where are you?” Emeritus asks. “Blueview?”

“Adams Morgan. Why?” The man amends his tone, becoming all business. “What’s going on?”

“How quickly can you get here?”

“I’ve got three on a drip and one in the wings, so, fifteen minutes maybe. And, listen, we have two Ts here I’d like to bring over if you have the room.”

Emeritus glances at Monk who’s watching her, arms crossed. “We’ve got two spots open,” she says. “I can spare you one.”

The man on the line’s other end sighs. “Who is it?”

“Riley.”

“Goddammit.”

“I know.”

“His blood work’s always been clean.”
“He’s probably giving you someone else’s.” Emeritus glances at Monk, who turns away. “I’m so sorry, Preacher.”

“Goddamn this whole thing,” the man breathes out. “People dying left and right, and for what? Fucking waste of life is what this is.”

There’s a crinkling sound of movement as Preacher shifts his phone, then a half-moment of silence before his voice is back in Emeritus’s ear. “I need to bring anything special?” he asks.

Emeritus looks down at the grated floor, her mouth working on the one word it takes her three attempts to say. “Yes.”

Preacher sighs, fatigued. “I’ll try to make it in ten.”

“Don’t bother knocking,” Emeritus says. “We have no sentry.”

Pocketing her phone, she walks with Monk down the tunnel and past all but the last canvas door.

Riley’s room, like all the others, is nine feet square and enjoys a flat, cement floor, no grate. It contains a narrow cot, a few books stacked vertically in one corner, and a side table made of two upended crates on which sits the room’s only light, a gas lamp. The man’s smaller things hang in feed bags nailed to the room’s wooden wall dividers. They look disturbingly like mouths in the process of consuming socks and photos, razors and shampoo, a hairbrush, a bottle of hooch, and a rolled up nudie magazine whose cover model’s pale pink nipples are the only things that show. Sitting against the room’s left wall is Riley’s one something-from-home: a ladder back chair that once belonged to his mother, its sacrosanct, hand-caned seat, empty.

Emeritus follows Monk to Riley’s bedside. As the man laying there looks up at her, she spies movement on his side table; the smoky entrails of a burning cigarette, resting in the upturned lid of a jar.

“Hey there, boss.” Riley lifts his head from the pillow and his body tries to follow.

The movement causes the man’s covers to slip, revealing wiry arms, a sunken belly, and ribs as sharp and thin as the tines of a pitchfork. He watches with pale, watery eyes as Emeritus picks up the half-smoked cigarette and slides a finger across the logo emblazoned on its side.

Eyes locked on the man’s, Emeritus puts the cigarette in her mouth.

“Don’t...” Riley starts.

Emeritus stops his protest with a dark look. She inhales deeply until all that’s left is the cigarette’s filter, then blows the smoke over Riley’s midriff.

Behind her, Monk runs a hand over his grizzled jaw. “Jesus Christ, Emeritus...” he begins.

“I want a pod search,” she cuts him off. “Now.”

Monk shakes his head. “Everyone’s tired.”

“I said now, goddammit!”

Emeritus kicks at a coffee can full of tissues used to collect Riley’s sputum. It skitters across the cement floor and comes to a rolling stop against the brick wall, none of its moldy contents spilled. When Monk doesn’t proceed with her order, Emeritus begins looking through the sick man’s feed sacks, hauling out rolled socks, stained t-shirts, and a pair of uncleaned trousers, each cuff, full of dirt.

Monk walks over and slaps the clothes from her hands. “Last month, alone, we hit two Burger Shaks, two C-Corp banks, and three Goddamned Crowe pharmacies,” he growls into her ear.

“You have something you want to say, say it,” Emeritus returns. “I’m not playing twenty fucking questions with you, Monk.”

The man moves closer, the acrid scent of his homemade sanitizer thick in her nostrils. “Everyone’s been busting their asses for months now, and, still, there’s not one Goddamned video up,” he says low. “I think the occasional cigarette isn’t going to kill anyone.”

“Really?” Emeritus motions towards the dying man, a small figure in a small bed.

“They need a break,” Monk says. “A break and a little hope.”

Emeritus turns so her back is to Riley. “I’m well aware that the word’s not getting out yet,” she whispers. “That’s why we picked up Mr. Quint.”

Monk laughs. “And a whole helluva lot of good that’s going to do, seeing as you kidnapped the poor son-of-a-bitch.”

“Believe me when I say that was a gift.”

“A gift.” Monk grunts. “We dragged that man out here before he had the chance to sign on of his own free will!”

“We gave him plausible deniability.”

Incredulous, Monk stares at Emeritus. “Sometimes, you sound just like them. You know that?”

Riley comes up from his bed, one finger pointed at Monk. “Don’t you speak to her that way!” he says in full voice, an effort immediately followed by a gurgling cough and the loss of his pillow which falls onto the floor. A half-empty pack of cigarettes is revealed in its former place. C-Corp Cigarettes, printed on its label.

“OK, Riley.” Monk walks over and retrieves the man’s lost pillow. “Lay back down.”

Before putting it back, he collects the smokes from Riley’s mattress and reads the name printed on its soft pack. “Jesus H.,” Monk says, lowering the thin man back onto his bed. “You could at least have gotten a different brand.”

“No longer such a thing,” Riley answers.

Emeritus takes the pack from Monk’s hand and lights one using the matches tucked into its liner. She sets the unlit end between the sick man’s lips and sits down next to him.

“Does this mean the search is off?” Monk asks from behind her.

Emeritus ignores the sarcasm and looks down into her friend’s prematurely wrinkled face. “What can I do for you, Riley?”

The man looks up at his leader, scrutinizing one black contact, then the other. “I would have liked to see your eyes again.”

Emeritus nods, but makes no move to remove her colored contacts.

Riley attempts a smile. “Then I’ll settle for having our newest member brought in.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Trust me.” The sick man takes Emeritus by the arm and pulls her closer. “It is.”

Exhaling deeply, she inclines her head towards Monk. “Go get Mr. Quint.”

“Are you kidding me?” Monk bellows. “No way.”

Emeritus turns and glares at her compatriot. “Now.”

Surprised by the gloss of unshed tears over her black eyes, Monk rolls back his outrage and disappears into the hall.

Emeritus turns back to Riley and studies his face, still handsome in its seventieth year of life.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks, pushing sweat-clotted hair away from around his pale blue eyes.

“I knew all bets were off when I started shitting blood,” Riley answers.

“We have treatments...”

The man shushes Emeritus and takes her two hands in his own. “I’m not going to Blueview.”
“You’re vital to this movement.”

“I’m an excellent sounding board.” Riley smiles. “Nothing more.”

Emeritus looks slightly away. “You’re vital to me.”

“I’m terminal, Emeritus. And a skill set four at best: vetting, cleaning, cooking, and patrol. Hell, I’m not even a candidate for media watch. Can’t stand the commercials.”

Emeritus pulls her hands free of Riley’s and gets up. “You could at least let Preacher give you a drip.”

“I’m not going to Blueview,” Riley says firmly. “I don’t want to lay in a hammock, tied to a bag of drugs that should be going into other people’s arms.”

Emeritus looks down at the man’s toes, slipped out from beneath his sheets. A couple of them have turned blue.

“Please?” she asks, looking back at Riley. “I need you.”

Riley pushes himself up onto both elbows, neck craning to find her runaway eyes. “And I need my husband,” he says. “I want to be with him again, Em. You, of all people, should understand that.”

A soft knock issues from somewhere out in the hall. The two turn and watch as a tall, dark-skinned man enters through the canvas door, his shoulders wide enough to temporarily block the hallway light. He crosses to Emeritus and drops a kiss on her cheek then approaches the dying man and drops another on his forehead.

“Mr. Preacher,” Riley says as the physician sets his bag on the near table and takes a seat on the cot.

Gently, Preacher collects one of his patient’s thin, yellowed hands in his own. Eyes on the green veins wrapped tight around Riley’s knuckles, he attempts to collapse the many things he needs to communicate into something brief. Unable to find anything better, he settles for just the one word. “Why?”

“Because I’ve done what I can do, and because I’m ready,” Riley answers.

Preacher squeezes the man’s skin-and-bone hand. “I’ve come prepared,” he says, voice thick. “But only if you’re sure.”

Riley’s gaze travels to the doctor’s bag and tears of relief flood his eyes. “I’ve managed to live most of my life on my own terms,” he says. “It’s the same way I want to go.”

Preacher nods and gets up, no longer friend but physician. As Riley watches, he pulls vial after vial, needle after needle, from his bag of mercy, and lays them out on the crate’s top.

“What’s going on?” Monk’s loud voice comes from the door.

Leaving the tall mathematician and his guard where they entered, Monk crosses the small space and stops next to Preacher. “What is this?” he demands, eyes rolling over the extracted objects.

“Hello, Monk,” Preacher responds, upturning a bottle of alcohol into a rectangular swatch of cotton.

Monk watches as Preacher drags the cotton across the vials‘ black plastic tops, then turns to Emeritus. “We haven’t even called for a pre-mortem yet!”

Emeritus looks down at Riley. “Do you want a pre-mortem?”

The dying man looses a hand from beneath his coverlet and puts it on Monk’s arm. “I do not.”

Monk steps out from under the man’s hand and heads towards Emeritus.

“There’s no faster way to fuck up morale than to start doling out DWDs without pre-mortems, goddammit!” he says hotly into her ear while pulling her to the room’s opposite side. “OK. There’s one way, maybe. If you’d bring that cunt-whore Travel Angel down here to do the honors.”

“That’s enough.” Emeritus pulls her arm free.

Monk grabs it back again. “The man’s sick!” He looks back at Riley whose eyes have closed to the exchange. “Too sick to know his own mind!”

Emeritus attempts to remove her arm from Monk’s grasp but he doesn’t let go. “Really?” she asks him.

Monk bobs his head, teeth set. “Whatever it takes.”

With an ease of effort that makes the movement appear as a swift bit of nothing, Emeritus’s hand blooms into a downturned flower. She catches Monk’s wrist between two fingers and a thumb and, making a circular motion, turns it into a lever with which she guides him across the room.

“Put a cork in it, Monk, or get out,” Emeritus says, releasing him near the room’s door.

Holding onto his wrist, Monk watches in silence as she turns towards their abductee. The tall man with dark brown eyes made large by thick spectacles and jaw-length, curly black hair. The man they stole from the Burger Shak.

“Mr. Quint,” Emeritus says, extending him a hand he’s slow to take.

The man nods, eyes traveling to the sick man in his bed.

“His name is Riley,” Emeritus provides. “He asked that you be brought here.”

“Why?” Quint asks.

Emeritus shrugs. “I don’t know, but it’s his wish that you’re here for this. OK?” She watches as the man’s eyes travel from the dying man on his cot, struggling to find any comfortable quarter, to the physician they call Preacher, busy loading a syringe. “OK?” she asks again.

Quint looks back at the masked woman, everything but her affection for this dying man hidden behind latex or makeup. “OK,” he replies.

Emeritus returns to the cot and takes one of Riley’s hands in her own. She opens her mouth to ask him once more, Is he sure? Is he ready? Before she can wrap her lips around the words, Preacher administers the first shot, no warning.

Riley smiles up at him as the fluid is delivered. “I like this one,” he says to Emeritus. “He’s sure of himself. Sure of what he needs to do. You should make him first in line if you ever choose to open that heart of yours again.”

Covertly wiping at a tear run down her cheek, Emeritus rolls off the bed. “You want a reading?” she asks.

Not waiting for an answer, Emeritus comes around the cot and pulls a series of laminated pages from Preacher’s bag. She holds them up to Riley, title-side forward, so he can see. “Pick your poison,” she says.

Riley taps against one and Emeritus drops to a kneeling position next to him, the chosen reading in her hand.

“Anything you want me to pass on before I begin?” she asks, moving to allow Preacher room for another injection.

“No,” Riley whispers, the smile on his lips collapsing. He waves Emeritus closer and whispers into her ear, “Sometimes it feels like we’ve accomplished nothing here.”

“We have,” Emeritus responds. “We’ve got them, Riley. They just don’t know it yet.”

“Good.” The man smiles and nods, eyelids drooping as another injection is levied. “Now read to me.”

Emeritus lifts up the laminated page and, immediately, it’s snatched away. Carried to the cot’s other side by Monk, who kneels down next to the dying man to read.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not wont,” he says in a low, rasping drawl. “He maketh me lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.”

Preacher appears between Monk and Riley and delivers another shot.

Monk clears his throat and continues, “He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” Preacher delivers Riley’s final shot as Monk sails straight through. “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou annointest my head with oil...”

Riley’s hand slides off his chest and Monk stops reading. Preacher sets long fingers around his patient’s wrist then leans down and sets his ear against Riley’s chest. He finishes the ritual with a small circular mirror, collected from his bag, then held beneath Riley’s nostrils. The mirror never clouds.

“Already?” Monk asks, eyes blinking as Preacher pulls the coverlet over Riley’s face.

Preacher nods.

Monk stands, the laminated page hanging loosely from a hand. “It’s always too fast,” he says, lips smacking as if they’re suddenly dry. “I never quite get to the end.”

The crowd that had collected just outside the door spills forward into the room. Emeritus and Monk move away to allow the other members grieving space as Preacher seeks haven in busywork. Separating needles from their vials. Putting away things that, in a better world, wouldn’t be so often required.

Using one of Riley’s old shirts, Emeritus dabs at the lines of tears not acidic enough to disrupt the painted-on portion of her mask. Face patted dry, she approaches the tall man watching from his post between door and guard.

“Thank you for joining us, Mr. Quint,” she says, closing the gap between them. “For whatever reason, Riley wanted you here.”

The tall man nods, his eyes on the mourners weeping quietly over Riley’s body. “That man,” he motions towards Monk who’s standing pink-eyed and tight-lipped in the room’s corner. “He used the term DWD. What does that mean?”

“Death with dignity.”

The man nods, thoughtful.

Emeritus steps nearer. “I want you to know that we have a plan,” she tells him. “A truly good plan. Come this time tomorrow, we should have some important evidence implicating C-Corp in...”

Mr. Quint holds up a hand and Emeritus stops talking. “I’m sure it is a good plan, Miss Locshaw,” he says. “But you could have simply asked for my help.”

Emeritus studies the tall man’s face and nods. “I agree. We could not have found a worse way to introduce ourselves. But it will keep you off C-Corp’s compliant list,” she says, stepping away. “I hope you’ll give us an audience with your group so we can explain what we have in mind. I hope you’ll help us. But, however this goes, I wish you the best of luck and apologize for the inconvenience.”

Emeritus nods at the man appointed as Mr. Quint’s guard and he steps forward.

“Give our friend here one of our contact numbers, just in case he and his group decide to join us,” she tells him. “Then put a pair of blinders on him and get him home safely.” Emeritus turns and heads for the door. “Thank you and good luck, Mr. Quint.”

“5:30 P.M., tomorrow night,” the man calls after her.

Emeritus turns and watches as he slides through the bottle-necked crowd towards her.

“Take me out of here without the blinders and we’ll be back tomorrow night,” the tall man repeats his offer.

The room gone silent around them, Emeritus looks from Preacher, to Monk, then back to their guest. “I don’t mean to impugn your group’s practices, but I’m reasonably sure that all of you are being watched,” she says.

“We have our own protocol for losing tails.” The man leans forward to add in a whisper, “You’re going to have to trust us as much as you’re asking us to trust you, Miss Locshaw.”

“OK.” Emeritus offers him a hand. “No escort home. No blinders.”

The two shake and the man heads for the door.

“Hold on,” Emeritus calls, catching him in the hallway. “You weren’t planning on helping us. Were you?”

Mr. Quint shakes his head. “No.”

“What changed your mind?”

The man looks through the open canvas door and points first at Riley’s body, visible between the shifting mourners, then at Preacher’s satchel and the spent vials next to it, not yet collected.

“That changed my mind,” he answers, making a circle of the three objects with his outstretched finger. “Dignity.”

As their guest and his guard head one way down the tunnel, Emeritus heads the other. Preacher follows.

“Hey,” he calls out.

When she doesn’t stop, he jogs to catch up.

“Emeritus!” Preacher takes hold of her hand and pulls her out of the main artery and into a poorly lit feeder tunnel.

“I’m busy, Darien...” Emeritus begins a protest.

“I need to talk to you about Haitch,” he interrupts. “I’m supposed to be one of your sounding boards, right? And I don’t know these people you’re bringing into our house.”

“They’re programmers,” Emeritus responds. “Including Quint, who’s also a renowned mathematician.”

“You mean they’re hackers.”

“Yes.” Emeritus sighs. “They’re hackers and damned good ones.”

“How many of them are there?”

“I don’t know.”

Preacher runs a hand through the loose curls of his hair. “You don’t know?”

“So they’re good at keeping secrets,” Emeritus says. “Is that a bad thing?”

“You’re bringing in a group of, what, two, three, four dozen people, maybe? And all you know about them is that one is a mathematician and however many others are hackers? Oh, but good ones, so I guess that’s alright.” Preacher takes a step closer. “Tell me you understand how insane this all sounds.”

Emeritus looks away. “Bringing in strangers is how most of us got here in the first place.”

“Explain this to me.” Preacher takes another step towards her, closing the gap between them. “Why now are you so willing to let in unknowns?”

“Because we need their expertise,” Emeritus responds. “It’s not the most desirable way to do this, but we’re out of both options and time.”

The clink of distant footsteps draws their attention to a man and woman come through the tunnel’s connecting hub. A young couple in love, they walk in slow, meandering steps, laughing and holding hands as they pass their leader and their physician who are holed up in the shadows not ten feet away.

Emeritus stares at Preacher as he waits for the couple to pass. “Tell me what you’re really worried about,” she whispers.

Preacher looks down at the grated floor. “My daughter works in that hellhole. She’s just one degree of separation from Cyrus fucking Crowe.”

Emeritus puts a hand on his arm. “I promise you, we’ll keep her safe.”

Preacher takes her hand and turns it over. “You don’t have children,” he says, pressing his lips against her palm. “You can’t imagine what it’s like having them out there, and in a world like this.”

Emeritus watches as Preacher moves his lips up towards her wrist and the quick pulse beating there. “What is it like?” she asks, running a hand through his hair.

“Wonderful and terrible at the same time,” he answers.

“Why is it terrible?” Eve asks.

“Because your happiness is now tied to someone else. If they’re unhappy, you’re unhappy. If they’re in danger...” Preacher lifts his face to Eve’s. “You’d do things you never thought yourself capable of to keep them safe.”

Preacher steps closer.

“I want to see you,” he says, fingers wrapping around the leather ties of her camisole. “The real you.”

Gently, Emeritus pulls away. “Not yet.”

“When?”

Emeritus turns and starts back towards the main hall. “If Haitch can open up a channel for us, you might be surprised.”