The mystery of Lauren's identity carved through Brett's consciousness as he and Calista rushed up the stairs, down the hallway, and into her apartment. 

He'd scarcely dropped his duffel bag on the floor by time he turned to Calista and blurted out, "What do you mean, I don't know who she is?" He'd known the darkest parts of her, and aren't those the realest parts, the ones that people hold deep and don't flash at the masses every day? He certainly didn't announce his depression to every roomful of people he entered, and he'd argue that it had become a pretty damn big part of his life, though he knew it wasn't the essence of him. But he didn't know much about souls anyway--he hadn't been raised religiously, and when he thought about it seriously, it seemed like a lot of propaganda. But what else could Calista have picked up from Lauren's blood?

"A lot," she said when he asked her. "Think about it. If I can get snippets of your life by touching your sleeve, how much can I get by touching something that was inside of you?"

He couldn't argue with that logic.

Calista made him sit on the couch, and she sat on the coffee table across from him again, rubbing her palms on the thighs of her jeans nervously. "Lauren wasn't really sick," she said.

Brett laughed. It was so absurd. He'd met Lauren in a psychiatric ward. You had to be pretty sick to end up there. "What are you talking about? She slit her wrist. She showed me."

"Did you actually see the scar? Or were there only bandages?"

He tried to remember.

And couldn't.

"So what? She was faking it?"

"She worked for the hospital."

Calista was quiet to let the words sink in. 

"I don't understand. She was just like any one of us. She slept in one of the tiny ass rooms, she ate meals with all the rest of us. She even took meds at bedtime."

Calista shook her head. "A placebo. Vitamins, maybe. I don't know. But she was on the payroll."

Brett's head swam. Everything she told him, how she'd opened up, was he supposed to just forget that? It was all BULLSHIT? No. He didn't buy it.

"Look, you didn't know her. She was for fucking real."

Calista squeezed her eyes shut, as though it was paining her to disillusion him more than it was for him to find out the truth. A deep breath, and then she said, "She was a plant. They were doing that study on microdosing, right? It wasn't going well. They paid her to recruit. People would come in, she would assess them, and then she'd report back the attractive candidates."

"Attractive? What were they looking for?"

"I don't know," Calista said exasperatedly. "My vision only goes so far. I just know she was looking for something, and she found it in you."

It was Brett's turn to close his eyes. He massaged his temples with his forefingers. Everything about Lauren had seemed so genuine. And if she'd lied about something so big, could he trust anything about her? And if he couldn't, did that mean he could absolve himself from feeling guilt about her death? It was tempting, he had to admit. It was a weight he almost couldn't bear, and to cut himself free would give him his life back. He could leave, move somewhere far away from all this, and start over. Fresh. That's what he wanted. Something fresh.

"What am I supposed to do?" he finally asked Calista, knowing it was ridiculous to put her in the middle of it, but having no one else to turn to.

"I don't know." Calista sighed. "But there's one thing that's not going away, and that's the fact that a girl is dead, and we have some information that the police don't. There's no way they'll believe us if we go in and tell them how we found out, but maybe if we did some digging..."

"Wait. If she was working for the hospital, maybe someone there had something to do with it." He shook his curls out of his eyes. "You said the man you saw leaving was tall and dark-haired." Brett thought of everyone he could remember from the hospital. And then he remembered. The one guy who was decent to him, even went out of his way to make Brett comfortable.

"Larry."

"Who's Larry?"

"An orderly at the hospital."

"Why him?" Calista asked.

"Why not?" Brett threw up his hands. "I don't know. There are probably dozens of tall, dark-haired guys at the hospital. But he's the one I remember."

"Well, maybe we can track him down. Find him after one of his shifts?"

"If he's the killer, do we really want to confront him in a dark parking lot?"

"Touche," Calista said. "Maybe we could follow him."

Brett nodded. The thought of returning to the hospital made him feel sick to his stomach, but he did feel some sort of responsibility to follow this lead. Even if Lauren wasn't completely honest with him--well, it kind of sounded like she was completely misleading--was that enough to just let her death go unpunished? Still, if he didn't do anything, the cops were already on the job. It was their responsibility to find the bad guy. He didn't owe anything to anyone, especially this girl who apparently "recruited" him to take some drug that practically traumatized him, bringing back his worst nightmares.

But the thing was, Brett did have a conscience. 

And that made up his mind.