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Noah and Tess send me sympathetic looks

Oker sets a bunch of neatly labeled boxes and jars in front of ether," he says, and I start h ether

Then, toto me "You said you saw approximately two thousand patients while you worked in the medical center in Camas," he says "Over the course of four months"

"Yes," I say "There were many more patients that I didn’t treat, of course, in other parts of the center and other buildings in Camas"

"Out of all the ones you did see, how many looked better when they were still than my patients here?" he asks

"None," I say

"That’s a fast answer," he says "Take your time to think it over"

I think back on all of my patients I can’t remember everyone’s face, but I can call up the last hundred And Lei, of course

"None," I say again

Oker folds his arms and sits back, satisfied He watches ht," he says "Now you can ask a question"

I didn’t expect this opportunity, but I’e of it "What’s the difference between the bags youuses?" I ask

Oker pushes a container toward me "Have you ever heard of Alzheimer’s disease?"

That’s a question, not an answer But I go along with it "No," I say

"Of course not," Oker says "Because I cured it before you were born"

"You cured it," I say "Just you No one else?"

Oker taps a couple of the pictures on the wall behind him "Not by myself I was part of a research teaed up the brain with extra proteins Others before us had worked on the project, but we figured out a way to control the level of expression of those proteins We shut them down" He leans a little closer to look at the compound I’ve made "So, to answer your first question, the difference is that I knohat I’ I kno to help keep so because they act in ways that are similar to the disease we cured And I kno to keep the patients’ platelets fro in the spleen so patients don’t rupture and bleed internally The other difference is that I don’t include as many narcotics in ony, more like discoet the?" I ask "What if they can feel all the pain of the boils?"

Oker snorts "If they feel soht," he says "If you were in a place with no pain, ould you want to come back?"

He slides a tray of powder in my direction "Measure this out and distill it in the solution"

I look down at the instructions and rams of the powder into the liquid

"Sometimes I can’t believe this," Okerto hilances in ue again"

"Wait," I say "You worked on the first cure?"

He nods "The Society knew about the e’d done in protein expression They pulled ue Before the Society sent it out to the Eneue ca lied," I say "The Society did have a cure"

"Of course they did," Oker says "Not enough for a pande more But the Society came up with the cure first I bet your Pilot didn’t mention that"

"He didn’t," I say

"I paid a considerable amount for my escape here," Oker says "The current Pilot is the one who broughtelse in the cupboard "That was before he was the Rising’s Pilot," he says, his voiceasked him to lead, I told him not to believe them They’re no rebellion They’re Society, with a different name, and they just want you and your followers, I said But he was so sure it would work" Oker comes back to the table "Maybe he wasn’t that sure," he says "He kept note of where I was here in Endstone"

So Oker was part of the vanishings that Lei toldtrack of you like that?"

"No," Oker says "I wanted to be out of the Society, and I was I don’tuseful now and then Here" He hands h this list for rumbles "Can’t they narrow it down anyenviron list We’ll find soht not be in ti you into Camas or Central?" I ask "That would be a better place to work on the cure They could bring you supplies and plants from the mountain In the Provinces, you’d have access to all the data, the equipreed to ith hiht here"

I nod

"Once you get out," Oker says, "you don’t go back"

His hands look so old, like paper covering bone, but the veins stand out, fat with life and blood "I can tell you have another question," he says, his voice annoyed and interested at the same time "Ask it"

"The Pilot told us that someone contaminated the water supplies," I say "Do you think they also created the mutation? They both happened so fast It seems like the mutation could have been manipulated, just like the outbreak was"

"That’s a good question," Oker says, "but I’d bet that the es take place regularly in nature, but unless there is an advantage conferred by a mutation, it is simply lost because other nonmutated versions predominate" He points to another jar, and I take it down for him and unstop the lid "But if some kind of selective pressure is present and confers an advantage to athe nonist back in Caht," Oker says "At least to "

"He also told me that it was likely the cure itself that applied the selective pressure and caused the mutation"

"It’s likely," Oker says, "but even so, I don’t think anyone planned that part It was, as ho live outside of the Society sometimes say, bad luck One of the mutations was iht on"