The kettle ticked as it cooled.
"So here's my problem, kid." Braxton looked up. "You are sitting in my kitchen radiating enough heat to sweat a glass of bourbon through a wall, and you're telling me your body is adding structures that don't exist in the medical literature. And the people whose job it is to notice that have already flagged you twice. Monthly evaluations. That's what they gave you after the last workup, right? Monthly."
"Right."
"Then you have three weeks and change before you sit in a chair in front of a technician who is going to plug you into a machine that measures exactly the thing you just described to me."
Three weeks. And six days before the Key recharged, and Friday before whoever ran that basement figured out I had their address, and thirty years before something buried under reality finished chewing through its chain, though I did not know that part yet and would have laughed if anybody had told me.
"I'll handle the evaluation."
"With what."
