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don’t mean remove it, I mean, can you take it into yourself? Graft it to who you are?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen you are not a thief. And I am beginning to think you are the opposite of a thief.”
    â€œWhat’s the opposite of a thief?” Jesus. This guy. He could give Jerry a run for his money, answering questions with questions.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œIt is one who gives.”
    â€œSo, I’m a gift giver? Like Santa Claus?”
    He smiles again, slowly. His lips tug downward, but his eyes crinkle. It’s a sad smile.
    I hate sad smiles. Quincrux never sad-smiled.
    â€œNo. It means you are a gift .” He closes his eyes suddenly and half sings, half chants, “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.”
    The elevator shudders to a stop, and the doors open.
    Fuck me.

    It’s a lab, cluttered with the detritus of research and analysis, filled with large, white electrical machines of unknown use, at least to my eye (and I have the memories of quite a few medical practitioners rattling around in the noggin). There’s an electron microscope. A bank of industrial refrigerators and freezers. There’s a centrifuge. I have to assume the thing stenciled with the words DELIVER TO GENOMICS is some sort of DNA sequencer. There’s something that looks like a clear vat of oil with wires and tubes swimming in its viscous depths. And racks upon endless racks of servers.
    Priest limps through the laboratory, looking about with a dissatisfied air.
    Boom. Boom. A flask rattles on a nearby worktable.
    He gestures at the room. “I show you this because it is my greatest failure.”
    Jack looks puzzled. “How so?”
    â€œHiram. He was my student—indeed, my protégé—and I must atone for what he did. I bear the weight of his sins.”
    â€œHe was a prick, that’s for sure,” I say. Then I think a little more. “A monster, really—a murderer, an abuser, a manipulator. But I don’t understand how that was your fault.”
    He limps over to a stool and sits down. He looks tired. At this point, his psyche has settled in Quincrux’s flesh like a tapeworm in a dog’s heart. Now he’s heir to all the excess and damage that Quincrux’s meatsuit possesses. The shattered leg. The addiction to tobacco. Whatever other strange and demented predilections the man might have had. I’ve worn enough flesh to know, it’s hard coming to grips with the physical wear and tear of another body. To take up residence has to be tiring.
    â€œPride. When I first came to know Hiram and understood his talents and desires, I thought I could control him, change him for good. And I did, I think, for many years. But when I—” A strange, dark expression settles over his features. For a moment the years fall away and he seems boyish, lost. Lonely. “When I was scattered among them, the people I rode, Hiram reverted to his old ways. His true nature.”
    â€œStill not seeing how that can be your fault,” Jack says.
    â€œWe’re all tied together, Mr. Graves, in ways that sometimes are hard to understand because humanity is in love with the idea of individuality.”
    â€œWe’re all snowflakes,” I say, thinking back to Miss Roberts’s kindergarten class.
    Priest looks at me, cocking his head. “I haven’t heard that before, but many years have passed since I have been aware of much more than the entity and keeping my consciousness whole.” He nods, a brittle, slow movement. “The American mindset is that every man is a king, every person special, despite the weight of evidence against this perception. Most lives are dull, full of drudgery. The boredom of existence is made palatable only through the anodynes of media, entertainment, the surcease of pain found in alcohol and drugs. The platitudes of religion. The pleasures of the flesh. Is this not true?”
    I