It wasn’t until Pichette himself had developed the thick and raspy cough that the team realized the Tower’s influence. The core researchers had been gathered around the conference table, rooting about in splayed paper stacks of environmental and seismic data, when Pichette made the connection – he and Amara, indeed all of the workers with the rheumatic cough, had spent more time than the others in the Tower’s shade, collecting data on that pebble of an island jutting out of the arctic sea. 5 or 6 hours seemed to be the tipping point, after which the cough developed.

“There’s nothing there.” Edwin Salazar, the resident biologist, tossed the manila folder of printouts he had been thumbing through back onto the center of the table. He pushed back against the table with both hands, using the pressure to pop his spine against the top of his chair’s backrest. “Even the birds are uncomfortable with that thing.”

Amara, speaking without so much as a glance away from the legal pad she was flipping through, had only a word. “Sterile?”

“Almost. I had to run a PCR to get anything useful, and even then whatever’s there is the same as what we have here.” Salazar took a long drink from his mug, swirling the lukewarm coffee in his mouth before swallowing. “Tabula rasa.”