“So in order to integrate, you had to be drunk.”

“Not drunk,” Vann said. “Not at first. I had to have enough that I wouldn’t panic when someone got inside of me. I figured out that if I could make it past the first five minutes I could handle the rest of the session. I was never happy, but I could tolerate the intrusion. And then when it was done I would go and have another couple of drinks to take the edge off.”

“You didn’t consider just not being an Integrator,” I said.

“No,” Vann said. “You have to spend a minimum amount of time as a professional Integrator or else you have to pay them back for everything they paid out for your education and training. I couldn’t afford that. And I wanted to be an Integrator. I wanted to do the job. I just couldn’t do it strictly sober.”

“Got it,” I said.

“And at first that really didn’t matter,” Vann said. “I got very good at calibrating just how much alcohol I needed to get through a session. I was never drunk and my clients never noticed. I got good reviews and I was in demand and no one ever figured out what I was doing.”

“But it didn’t last,” I said.

“No,” Vann said. Another sip. “The panic never went away. It didn’t become more manageable over time. It got worse, and by the end it got a lot worse. So I upped my therapeutic dose, as I liked to call it.”

“They noticed.”

“They didn’t notice,” Vann said. “By that time I was very good at my gig. The physical aspect of being an Integrator I could mostly do on autopilot. What I couldn’t do as well was put on the brakes. Sometimes a client wants to do something you didn’t agree to in your contract. When that happens you need to pull them back. If they fight you on it, you pull the plug on the session and report them. If it’s bad enough, or if they pull that stunt on too many Integrators, then the client gets blacklisted and isn’t allowed to integrate anymore. It doesn’t happen often because there are so few Integrators that most Hadens don’t want to jeopardize their chances of using one.”

Vann drained her cup.

“You had it happen,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“I had a teenage client who wanted to know what it was like to die,” Vann said. “She didn’t want to commit suicide, mind you. She didn’t want to be dead. But she wanted to know what it was like to die. To have that second just before the end when you realized you couldn’t escape, and that this was it. She realized that unlike most people, she was in a position to realize her fantasy. All she needed was to push an Integrator at the last minute. Then she would have her moment, and since everyone knew Integrators could stop their clients from doing anything stupid, it would look like it was the Integrator who did it, and that the client was the victim. All she needed was the Integrator to be inattentive just long enough.”

“How did she know?”

“That I was the right Integrator for her plan?” I nodded. “She didn’t. She didn’t have a long-term contract, so she went into the NIH integration lottery and got who she got. It just happened to be me.

“But the rest of it. Well. She planned, Shane. She knew what she was going to do and how she was going to do it and had it down so well that when we integrated I couldn’t feel what she had planned for me. All I could tell was that she was excited about something. Well, most of my clients were excited about something when they were with me. That was the whole point of using an Integrator. To do something that excited you with an actual human’s body.”

“How was she going to kill you?” I asked.

“Her stated purpose for wanting an Integrator was that her parents had managed to get her a special event at the National Zoo,” Vann said. “She was going to be allowed to hold and play with a small tiger cub. It was a birthday present. But before she did that she wanted to walk around the Mall to look at some of the memorials. So we integrated, we walked around the Mall, and then we went into the Smithsonian Metro station to go to the zoo. We stood near the edge of the platform and watched the train roll in. At the last possible instant, she jumped.

“I felt her tensing, felt what she wanted to do, but my reaction time was too slow. I had four tequilas before we integrated. By the time I could do anything about it we were already in the air and almost off the platform. There was no way for me to do anything about it. I was about to die because a client killed me.

“Then I was jerked back and fell hard onto the platform as the train flew past. I looked up and there was this homeless guy looking down at me. He told me later he’d been watching me because of the way I was pacing and looking down the track for the train. He said he recognized what I was doing because at one point he thought about jumping in front of a train himself. He recognized it, Shane. But I didn’t.”

“What happened to the girl?”

“I pulled the fucking plug on her, that’s what,” Vann said. “Then I had her charged with attempted murder. She said it was me who tried to jump, but we got a court order for her personal effects and records, which included a journal where she described her planning. She was charged and we cut a deal where she got probation, therapy, and was forever blacklisted from integrating.”

“You were easy on her,” I said.

“Maybe,” Vann said. “But I just didn’t want to have to deal with her anymore. I didn’t want to have to deal with any of it. I was almost killed because someone used me to see what it was like to die. Everything my panic attacks were trying to tell me about integrating had just come true. So I quit.”

“Did the NIH try to get you to pay back your training and college?”

“No,” Vann said. “They were the ones who assigned the client to me. They didn’t know the reason I almost died was because my reaction time was dulled by alcohol, and I didn’t volunteer the fact. As far as anyone could tell, the problem was that the selection process didn’t screen for garden-variety psychopaths. Which was true enough. I promised not to sue, they let me go without a fight, and the selection process was changed to protect Integrators from dangerous Hadens, so I ended up doing some good. And then the FBI tracked me down and said they were looking to build up a Haden-focused division and thought I might be a good fit. And, well. I needed a job.”

“And here we are,” I said.

“And here we are,” Vann agreed. “Now you know why I stopped being an Integrator. And why I drink and smoke and fuck like I do: because I spent years working in a state of alcoholically managed panic, and then someone tried to kill me with my own body. I don’t drink as much as I used to. I smoke more. I fuck about the same. I think I’ve earned all of them.”

“I won’t argue with you about that.”

“Thank you,” Vann said. “And now, this fucking case. It’s every single thing that made my brain scream, come to life. When I almost died, it was on me. I wasn’t paying attention and someone took advantage of that inattention to make me do something I wouldn’t do. If I had died, at the end of the day it would have been for the choices I made. To drink and to stay in the integration corps.

“But this. This is someone taking away the Integrator’s choice. It’s locking them into their own body and making them do things they wouldn’t do. That they would never do. And then throwing them away.” She pointed to me. “Brenda Rees. She didn’t kill herself.”

“No,” I said. “I saw her face when her client disconnected. She tried to get away from the grenade. She had no control before that.”

“She was locked in,” Vann said. “Locked into her own body until there was nothing she could do about what was going to happen. We need to figure out how this is happening. Why it’s happening. We have to stop it.”

“We know who is behind it,” I said.