The nursery where the council-kept babies slept was quiet. It usually was. Occasionally one of them made a sound-a small wet noise, quickly swallowed-but mostly they just lay there in their clear plastic bassinets, each tagged with a number and a date, each one a secret the facility would never let leave. The air in the room was wrong-too cold, too still, carrying the faint metallic tang of recycled ventilation and something else, something the nurses had learned not to name. The overheads hummed at a frequency that made teeth ache, and the walls sweated condensation in the corners, dark patches that spread and retreated like breathing things.
Sterling had assigned Helga to Damon exclusively, around the clock. None of the other nurses objected.
What none of them said aloud was that they
