He sat. She settled back in her chair across the desk from him, the cabinet behind her holding thirty-one years of things the hospital network did not know about, and she talked.
She had been at St. Arden General for nineteen years. In that time, she had processed, she estimated, between forty and sixty bodies with the marks. The first one had been in her third year. She had photographed it, filed a report, flagged it for the department of health, and heard nothing back.
The second one, two years later, she had sent directly to a colleague at the university for analysis. The colleague had called her three days later, shaken, and asked her never to send anything like that again.
After the third one, she stopped filing reports.
"I developed a system," she said. "I document everything myself. I keep the files off the hospital network. I have thirty-one case files going back fifteen years."
"Thirty-one," Kael said.
"That I processed. There were others I know about from colleagues at other facilities." She folded her hands on the desk. "The marks are consistent. The branching pattern is always the same structure even if the density varies. The bodies always come from the same general areas of the city. The Harrow. Southgate. The old port district." She paused. "And the cause of death is never clear."
"What do you think it is?"
She looked at him steadily. "I think the human body was not designed to hold whatever those marks represent. And I think when it tries for too long, it fails." She tilted her head slightly. "You have one."
Kael did not insult her by denying it.
He pushed up his sleeve.
She looked at the mark for a long moment.
Professionally. The way she looked at everything, which was directly and without flinching.
"Yours is early," she said. "The branching is sparse. The ones on bodies like drawer twelve have had theirs for a long time." She met his eyes. "How long have you had it?"
"Two days."
Something shifted in her expression. Not fear. Closer to calculation.
"And you went in."
"Yes."
"And you came back."
"Yes."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Most of the bodies I see came back at least once. The marks accumulate with re-entry. The man in drawer twelve has been in and out dozens of times by the density of his markings." She paused. "He ran out of room."
Kael looked at his own arm. The sparse branching lines. The zero. The word RESONANCE in dark ink beneath his skin.
He thought: room. The marks take up space. There is a limit.
He thought: I need to know what the limit is.
"Do you have records of anyone who survived long-term?" he said.
"Two," she said. "People I know of who have carried the marks for years and are still walking around." She opened her desk drawer and took out a card. Plain white, handwritten, a name and a phone number. "One of them came to see me about a year ago. She wanted to know what I knew. We had a conversation. She left me this."
She held out the card.
Kael took it.
The name on the card was Mara Olsen.