Doc Bartolomeu said. Now I was the one closest to him. Jean had stayed in the other room, monitoring the machines hooked up to Kit. Bruno and Zen were probably there still. I hadn’t paid attention. I’d followed the doctor back to his kitchen area, which I knew from before also served as a laboratory. He had opened a cabinet that looked impossibly deep, and from within it pulled a few vials, muttering to himself as he shook them. After a while, he lifted one of them, frowned at the contents, read the label on it, which was covered in strange symbols that weren’t even letters as far as I could tell. “Is it a poison or something?” I knew that sometimes, for therapeutic reasons, people administered things to patients that would kill them under other circumstances. That was close to the full extent of my medical knowledge. The doctor turned, still holding the vial in between his fingers, his expression for a moment completely blank, then focusing on me, as though he’d just noticed me.
