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There was a sudden pounding on the door.

"Come in, please," said Seth.

It was Dr. Flannery Gilman and she had a sheaf of papers in her hands.

"I've been calling you and calling you," she said to Fareed, without greeting anyone, or even so much as a nod to Lestat.

Of all the doctors Fareed had brought into the Blood, this one he loved the most. And it was she who had helped him in the making of Viktor, the nearest thing that Fareed would ever have to a son. It was she who had enticed Lestat into the few brief moments of erotic passion that an infusion of hormones had allowed him and she who had carried Viktor, given birth to Viktor, nursed and cared for Viktor until finally the time had come when Viktor would be all right on his own.

Now both were blood drinkers, Flannery and Viktor, and the only pair of blood drinkers in the whole world who were mother and son, other than Gabrielle and Lestat.

"You have to look at this, all of it, now," said Flannery. "You can bring it up on the screen if you want, but I've gone over this here and circled everything that's relevant. She lied to you. She deceived you."

"What do you mean? Who?" Lestat turned as if somebody had pulled him out of a dream.

"Fareed said go over every single requisition, order, list of purchases, everything for as far back as the records went. And I did it. I pulled everything she's ever ordered for any experiment, any project, any trial!"

Fareed went through the papers, eyes moving with preternatural speed over the printout, over Flannery's many felt-tip-pen circles, over her underlining, turning the pages rapidly, and then he carried the whole stack around the side of the table so that he could spread the pages out.

"What is it?" asked Seth.

"I see exactly what you're saying!" Fareed said. He looked up to his beloved mentor and then to Lestat. "All the way back to her first weeks at Collingsworth. But how did she get away with it? Oh, I'm beginning to see. Under the names of the assistants."

"And look at the notations for duplicate amounts," said Flannery. "Reorders, claims of stolen packages, or packages damaged or never received. I wager every single order was always received. Look at this, these orders for human growth hormone. What could she conceivably have been working on to use that amount of human growth hormone? Or this one, look at this one. This was all for the synthetic skin project. Why, that's enough to make skin for half of Europe."

"She was building a Replimoid body!" said Lestat. "And she lied about it."

"Go back over the film of her talking about it," said Flannery. "I've watched this same footage over and over again." She didn't wait for Fareed to respond. She sat down at the keyboard and brought up the film of Kapetria telling her story, zipping through it until Kapetria's voice poured out of the speakers of the computer.

Fareed came round to watch the film as Seth and Lestat gathered to his right and left:

There was Kapetria at the table as she had been last night.

"But for all the hours I've worked alone and with Welf in the sanctum of laboratories under Gregory's roof, I have never discovered the actual formula for luracastria, or come close to reproducing a thermoplastic or polymer like it. I have not, contrary to your suspicions, ever grown a Replimoid whole and complete and animated, though I have certainly struggled towards this goal for many years."

Flannery hit the button to go back.

"Now watch it again. See what she does? See how she touches her hair when she said the words. That's a tell, a giveaway, that she's lying. If you watch the whole tape again, you'll see exactly what I mean. There are three points where her voice changes in pitch and she makes that same gesture, smoothing back her hair."

"I have never discovered the actual formula for luracastria, or come close to reproducing a thermoplastic or polymer like it. I have not, contrary to your suspicions, ever grown a Replimoid whole and complete and animated, though I have certainly struggled towards this goal for many years."

"I see it," said Seth.

"Struggled with it?" asked Flannery. "She's been workin

g on it night and day, and she's close to completing a Replimoid! She's used enough chemicals to grow a family of Replimoids. She's established a reserve of such chemicals...."

Lestat turned and walked away. He started pacing again, making that same circle, or was it an oval now?

"Lestat, do you realize what Flannery is saying?" Fareed said. "How long before they're scheduled to leave?" He knew the answer. He didn't have to look at his watch. He knew full well that it was almost time for Lestat to retire to his crypt, and that meant that Fareed had little more than an hour himself.

"What can we do about it?" Lestat asked in a low voice. His head was bowed and he kept walking at exactly the same speed. His hands were clasped behind his back.

"She's making a body for Amel," said Flannery. "Lestat, you know that's what she's been doing." Flannery looked helplessly to Fareed. "Whatever her goal was before now, whether it was simply to make others, she's got that body almost ready. I know it. Give me another two hours with these printouts and I could chart her progress just through the orders."

"No need," said Lestat. "He gave her what she needed to know last night. I saw him do it. I saw it in the blood when I was holding her in my arms. I saw it all." Back and forth he walked.

"And you're going to let her leave here?" asked Flannery.