In less than a month, the man everyone at the Institute had been instructed to call T became something close to a haunt, although the transformation from peculiar new employee to permanent piece of institutional folklore happened gradually enough that nobody could later agree upon when it had begun. At first he had merely been Professor Drake's enormous personal security man, the broad figure in black military fatigues who followed Hale through checkpoints, records rooms and construction levels without saying much of anything while the security chief explained patrol schedules, access restrictions, emergency routes and the important difference between a door being locked because it ought to be and a door being locked because somebody had forgotten what was supposed to be on the other side.
The guards watched him because Hale watched everyone new, and because no professional security man enjoyed discovering that somebody whose name he did not know possessed clearance equal to doors he himself had spent months learning to protect. Clerks watched him because clerks were naturally suspicious of any man who generated paperwork while somehow remaining absent from most of it, while the construction crews watched simply because six and a half feet of masked soldier moving silently through an unfinished underground laboratory was difficult to ignore even when one had been specifically instructed to do so.
By the end of the first week, however, the curiosity had begun changing into familiarity, and by the second people had started recognising him before he actually appeared. T's boots carried differently through the secured levels than almost anyone else's, partly because Joseph's reconstructed body gave each step more weight than his size alone suggested and partly because the architecture beneath the Institute had been designed from concrete, tile and steel rather than anything capable of kindly swallowing noise. A footfall that might have disappeared inside one of the older carpeted administrative buildings travelled instead along the new corridors, struck reinforced walls and came back softened but unmistakable.
There was nothing hurried about the sound, and nothing uncertain either. T did not drag one heel behind him, rush because he thought somebody important was waiting or slow deliberately in order to make himself seem intimidating; one heavy step simply followed another at an almost perfectly even interval, and the consistency became distinctive enough that scientists working in newly occupied rooms occasionally paused halfway through conversation when the echo approached from somewhere beyond the door.
Clerks carrying folders through the guarded levels learned to glance toward an intersection before the dark figure actually crossed it, while younger security men unconsciously straightened when those footsteps entered their section even if Hale himself was nowhere nearby. Nobody had ordered them to do so, and Hale would probably have objected to the implication that his people required theatrical encouragement to maintain posture, but the reaction persisted all the same because T's presence seemed to make whatever corridor he entered feel fractionally more official.
The Institute itself was changing almost as quickly as Joseph's reputation within it. Rooms that had still been bare concrete shells when he first began shadowing Hale were being completed and occupied almost weekly, laboratory benches arriving behind security inspections while microscopes, centrifuges, incubators, sealed cabinets and crates of specialist equipment disappeared into spaces that had smelled only of masonry dust a fortnight earlier. New scientific personnel came with them from universities, military laboratories, veterinary centres and hospitals, carrying trunks, notebooks, letters of appointment and varying levels of information concerning what they had actually agreed to join.
Several arrived already nervous because their preliminary paperwork contained more warnings about secrecy than descriptions of research, and those people often encountered T before they had learned enough about the Institute to place him sensibly within its hierarchy. That gave imagination a considerable advantage over fact, and rumours flourished wherever official explanation stopped.
One new bacteriologist became convinced T belonged directly to the War Office because, in his opinion, nobody employed by a private research institution could possibly possess enough authority to cross Hale's guarded checkpoints without presenting a pass. Another scientist insisted he was some variety of military observer assigned exclusively to Nathan Drake, while a younger laboratory assistant announced with absolute confidence that T had suffered severe gas exposure in France and physically could not remove the mask without dying.
The last explanation survived longer than most because it fitted almost everything people could see. The Ledermaske enclosed Joseph's face completely beneath the steel helmet, its dark circular lenses offering nothing to anyone who stared into them except reflected corridor lamps and the observer's own distorted silhouette, while the gloves he commonly wore denied even his hands as an easy source of clues. His black fatigues bore no ordinary regimental identification, and there was nothing upon the rifle, helmet or webbing from which a particularly determined clerk could reconstruct a unit and begin asking questions elsewhere.
Nobody knew his age, and nobody knew where he had been born. Nobody even knew whether T was a surname, an initial, a designation issued by Nathan or some private joke whose humour became increasingly irritating the longer everyone else was excluded from it, and the fact that Nathan never clarified while Hale never asked again after the first morning made speculation feel almost officially encouraged.
T himself contributed nothing useful.
He was not mute, as a handful of guards discovered during the first weeks, but he spoke only when a gesture could not answer adequately and rarely used two words where one would do. His voice surprised people when they first heard it because nothing exotic existed beneath the mask; Joseph sounded unmistakably English, his natural accent merely deepened and flattened slightly by the leather and filter between his mouth and the listener.
"Clear," he might say after checking a sealed room, the single word emerging low through the mask while he closed the door behind himself and continued down the corridor. Hale might later indicate a locking mechanism and ask whether anything had been disturbed, only for T to inspect it for several seconds before replying, "No," with enough certainty that the question ended there rather than becoming a conversation.
Most communication happened through movement anyway. A small nod could acknowledge an instruction, a turn of the helmet indicated where his attention had moved, and one gloved palm lifted at the correct moment stopped an inattentive scientist from crossing a security line before the man noticed the painted marker underfoot. T held doors for stretcher teams without being asked, directed lost staff back toward authorised passages with a finger and occasionally positioned himself in a corridor in such a way that people simply understood they were not meant to continue through it.
The construction crews learned first that unnecessary questions were rarely rewarded. Work on the underground facility remained constant enough that the lower levels had their own atmosphere, the air carrying stone dust, heated metal, timber and the faint oily smell of machinery while drilling echoed from unfinished depths and temporary cables ran overhead between lamps bright enough to flatten every shadow. Hale deliberately sent T through those areas because learning to secure a finished building was less useful than understanding what lay behind the walls before the walls closed.
Once Hale trusted him to inspect several sections alone, the crews began moving from his path almost automatically. It was not because T threatened anyone, since Joseph had never once needed to, and if anything the lack of threat made the response stranger because there was nothing for the workers to complain about afterward.
He would simply appear at the far end of one of the ten-metre construction corridors with the rifle safely controlled against his body and move through amid carts, coils of cable, stacked steel and men carrying tools. The black lenses would pass slowly over temporary doors, ventilation openings, unfinished service shafts and gaps that would eventually disappear beneath concrete, and workers learned very quickly that T stopping to look at something produced more anxiety than another man shouting.
A foreman once spent nearly half an hour inspecting a service hatch because T paused beside it for several seconds during a morning round. Nothing was wrong with the hatch, and Joseph had merely been studying where its access line joined a corridor that would later be divided by another barrier, but by lunchtime every bolt had been checked twice and the crew responsible for fitting it had begun blaming one another for a defect nobody could identify.
Hale heard the story before Joseph did and found the entire situation irritatingly useful.
"You realise they're afraid of you," Hale remarked one afternoon as the two of them crossed one of the nearly finished lower corridors, carrying his clipboard beneath one arm while electricians worked from ladders farther ahead. The walls still smelled faintly of fresh concrete, and every few minutes the floor trembled underfoot when machinery began drilling in the central excavation. "I sent Morgan down here this morning to ask whether the new barrier had been tested, and the foreman produced three pages of measurements because you stared at the thing yesterday."
T turned his head slightly toward Hale while continuing to walk, the dark lenses revealing nothing about whether Joseph considered this a problem.
Hale waited until the silence itself became irritating. "That was me complaining," he continued, glancing toward the masked man as they approached another junction. "Normal human beings generally provide some form of response when another person complains at them."
Joseph gave one small shrug without breaking stride, and the movement was understated enough that Hale stared at him for several seconds before realising he had received exactly the answer T intended to give.
"You're doing this deliberately now," Hale muttered as they turned into the next passage, and the faint movement of Joseph's shoulders suggested amusement more clearly than anything visible through the mask.
"You're a bastard," Hale added, no longer bothering to disguise the grudging familiarity that had developed over several weeks.
T nodded once in complete agreement, and the immediate response stopped Hale long enough that Joseph took another two steps before hearing the security chief laugh behind him.
The guards took longer to become comfortable because T occupied an awkward position within the Institute's hierarchy even after everyone understood the rules surrounding him. He was not one of Hale's men, yet he possessed access equivalent to Hale's in matters of movement, and while Hale could issue him commands relating to ordinary security those commands remained secondary to anything Nathan had directly asked him to do.
For men trained to challenge anything that failed to fit procedure, being told that a masked armed figure could appear inside a restricted level without offering explanation was initially infuriating. T made the arrangement tolerable by never exploiting it.
He did not wander through secure laboratories simply because he could, interrupt guard rotations to remind everyone that he answered to Nathan or demand doors be opened merely for the satisfaction of watching men obey. If he entered a controlled section, there was a reason, and Hale discovered quickly that Joseph respected security procedure even when Nathan's authority technically allowed him to bypass portions of it.
He waited until controlled doors locked fully behind him instead of assuming the next guard would check. He noticed corners left unobserved by bad desk placement, collected unattended confidential papers rather than stepping over them and returned improperly stored keys to the nearest responsible officer without turning the mistake into a performance.
The incident that changed how the younger guards treated him involved something much smaller. One newly assigned man left his post when an orderly attempting to push a wounded patient through a nearby doorway discovered that the wheelchair had jammed against the threshold, and after several frustrated attempts the guard stepped away from his station long enough to help lift the chair clear.
T arrived during the absence.
Joseph looked first toward the empty post, then toward the guard several yards away helping the orderly manoeuvre the wounded man safely around the next corner, and instead of reporting the breach he took the vacant position himself. He remained there until the young guard came hurrying back, saw the towering masked figure beside his desk and stopped so abruptly that the orderly following behind nearly walked into him.
"Sir, I can explain," the guard said, breathless enough that the words almost caught in his throat while his eyes darted from T to the post he should never have left unattended.
Joseph looked past him toward the patient now disappearing safely down the corridor, then returned the black lenses to the younger man. "Next time, call someone before you leave," he said, the voice behind the mask low and matter-of-fact rather than accusing.
The guard nodded immediately and began apologising anyway, but T stepped aside without waiting for the rest and continued the inspection he had been conducting before finding the empty post. No report ever reached Hale from Joseph, although the story reached him through three other guards before the afternoon ended and acquired enough embellishment that one version claimed T had stood completely motionless for twenty minutes.
After that, the younger security men became less frightened of T and considerably more frightened of disappointing him, which Hale privately considered the better arrangement.
The scientific staff reacted differently because scientists were not security men and therefore possessed no professional reason to appreciate the utility of something that made them uncomfortable. The oldest parts of the Institute still contained enough polished wood, windows, bookshelves and familiar academic clutter to resemble an unusually well-funded university department, but the newer guarded levels beneath them possessed none of that softness. Heavy doors separated finished laboratories, broad corridors remained wide enough for equipment traffic and armed men stood at intersections where an ordinary research institution might have placed a noticeboard.
T seemed to belong to that architecture too naturally.
Seeing him outside a laboratory made some scientists feel as though whatever they were studying had become more dangerous merely by earning the attention of a masked rifleman, and Joseph occasionally discovered conversations changing the instant he entered sight despite having no interest whatsoever in what had been discussed.
He sometimes stood inside observation rooms while Nathan, Mercer, Willit or other senior researchers reviewed work, but he rarely contributed unless Nathan asked something directly. More commonly he remained near a doorway or wall with the rifle controlled against his body, the steel helmet only emphasising the height that made everyone else in the room seem fractionally smaller.
People lowered their voices around him even when discussing nothing confidential. Gossip stopped, jokes died and one chemist who had spent ten minutes loudly complaining about the latest government requisition entered a corridor, spotted T standing perhaps thirty feet away and immediately began speaking about supply ratios as though he had been engaged in responsible administrative discussion for the entire morning.
Joseph had not moved and had not even been looking at him.
Nathan heard the story later and laughed long enough that Mercer finally asked whether he intended to breathe again.
The recovery ward disliked T most, although that was not entirely Joseph's fault. The ward had become one of the stranger places within the expanding Institute before he ever began appearing there, with several veterans from the original treatment group remaining under observation while Mercer and the medical teams documented improvements contemporary medicine could reasonably be allowed to claim. New men arrived periodically after military hospitals concluded conventional surgery had nothing further to offer, bringing with them the quiet finality of wounds that had already survived every operation available.
Some were missing legs, while others possessed empty sleeves pinned neatly against uniforms their bodies no longer filled correctly. Burns tightened faces and necks into shapes surgeons had restored only enough to eat or speak, and several men carried injuries less immediately visible but no less permanent, their bodies failing them in ways strangers could not identify from across a room.
T would sometimes appear in the doorway during his inspections.
He rarely entered at once, and that was what made him unsettling.
The ward might be carrying on with the ordinary noise wounded soldiers created whenever they had been trapped together long enough to become bored rather than polite. One man would be arguing with an orderly over tobacco, another trying to shuffle cards one-handed while a nurse changed a dressing, and two veterans on opposite beds might be insulting each other's intelligence loudly enough to draw complaints from the corridor.
Then someone would notice the shape in the doorway.
Conversation did not always stop at once, but it weakened.
T stood there in black fatigues with the rifle close against his body, Ledermaske reflecting the ward lights while his helmet turned slowly from one side of the room to the other. The effect was not improved by the fact that several of the men had seen German gas masks across cratered ground, and others associated any covered face with alarms that sent whole trenches fumbling desperately for respirators before gas settled into them.
One veteran who had lost both legs announced the first time he saw T that the man looked like "the bloody Angel of Death come to see who was late for collection," and the description spread through the ward quickly enough that even several nurses adopted it privately.
Joseph never objected.
At first he would stand for perhaps half a minute, sometimes longer, before moving on. The behaviour should have made the patients dislike him more deeply, yet after several weeks the men began noticing something that changed the quality of the discomfort.
T never stared at their wounds.
Not the way visitors did.
His helmet did not pause at the point where a blanket collapsed over missing thighs or where an empty sleeve had been folded against a shoulder. He looked at doors, windows, medical trolleys, staff movement and anyone entering the ward while he stood there, and whenever his attention settled upon a patient it rose naturally to the man's face rather than the injury that had turned him into a curiosity for everyone else.
A veteran with only three fingers on one hand noticed first. "Funny bastard," he said after T disappeared down the corridor one afternoon, struggling to shuffle a pack of cards while the man in the next bed continued staring toward the empty doorway. "Never looks at the stump."
His companion frowned and glanced toward the blanket covering the missing leg. "What are you talking about?"
"Everybody looks at the stump," the veteran replied, nodding downward as he finally managed to square the cards. "Doctors, visitors, nurses when they're new. Even you lot did when I came in. Him? Never once."
The observation travelled slowly through the ward, passed between card games and dressing changes until enough men began paying attention to confirm it for themselves. Their discomfort did not disappear, because a six-foot-six masked rifleman standing silently in a hospital doorway remained difficult to make entirely comfortable, but something inside it shifted.
Some men started nodding when T appeared.
Joseph nodded back.
One afternoon the veteran who had christened him the Angel of Death raised two fingers from his bed when T stopped in the doorway and called, "Not today, mate. Try another bed. I'm busy."
Joseph remained still while several men watched with sudden interest. After a moment he tilted his head, pointed toward the veteran with one gloved hand and then toward the corridor outside, indicating with exaggerated seriousness that he would apparently return later.
The ward broke into laughter before T had even turned away.
Nobody there knew he had once occupied the final bed in the same room. Nobody knew that the first time Joseph Brown entered the underground facility he possessed one arm, no legs and eyesight so poor the doorway T now filled would have appeared only as a pale rectangle against darkness, and nobody understood why the masked man sometimes stopped there longer than security required.
Nathan knew.
Hale gradually suspected the ward meant something personal to Joseph, although he respected Nathan's original boundary well enough never to ask.
Joseph himself could not always have explained why his inspection routes found their way there.
Sometimes his feet simply carried him toward the ward, and once he reached the doorway he stood long enough to see men lying where he remembered lying. There was no pleasure in it and certainly no superiority, because if anything the visits made the leather around his face feel tighter.
He remembered how blankets looked when they fell flat over absent legs. He remembered phantom fingers clenching hands that did not exist and the humiliation of another man turning his body in bed because he lacked enough limbs to do it himself, while above all he remembered people entering a ward, seeing mutilation and looking away because human damage made them uncomfortable.
So T stood in the doorway and looked directly at the men.
Not what was missing from them.
The men themselves.
Then Joseph continued working.
By the third week, Hale had stopped explaining most routine systems and begun testing what T noticed without prompting. Joseph learned quickly because much of security followed principles France had already burned into him long before Nathan gave him another body: know where the exits are, know who belongs in a place before searching for those who do not, understand what ordinary looks like before deciding something is wrong and never assume the route you entered by will remain the route available when you need to leave.
The Institute complicated those instincts with scientific hazards, layered clearances and secrets whose release could cause considerably more trouble than an ordinary intruder, but the underlying habits remained familiar enough that Hale increasingly found himself presenting problems rather than lessons.
He might walk T through an entire secured floor and only after they returned to the security station ask what had been wrong. Joseph would stand beside the desk while Hale opened the inspection book, and through the dark mask he would answer with the same economy that had begun irritating everyone around him.
"South stair was unlocked," T said after one such inspection, resting the rifle against the sling while Hale wrote the first note.
"Anything else?" Hale asked, glancing up only briefly.
"Guard outside laboratory four couldn't see the eastern junction," Joseph replied, and Hale wrote another line before waiting.
"The cleaner in the lower corridor had the wrong badge," T added after a moment, causing Hale's pencil to stop.
"You checked?" Hale asked, looking up more sharply while Joseph gave a short nod.
"And?" Hale continued when the masked figure made no attempt to elaborate.
"Temporary replacement. Badge was issued upstairs," Joseph replied, and Hale stared at him for several seconds.
"You could have mentioned that before I spent twenty minutes discussing door hinges," Hale said eventually, irritation fighting amusement while Joseph's shoulders shifted almost imperceptibly.
Hale sighed and returned to the inspection book. "I'm going to stop expecting sympathy from you," he muttered, and T's silence confirmed that this was probably wise.
The month intended to teach Joseph how the Institute operated ended up teaching the Institute Joseph in return. People knew which footsteps belonged to him and what the dark outline of the steel helmet looked like when it appeared at the end of a corridor, while staff gradually learned that casual questions produced little but questions that genuinely mattered almost always received useful answers.
They learned Nathan could summon him without explanation and that Hale trusted him enough to stop glancing backward when T followed. More importantly, people learned that if Joseph stopped walking and looked at something for more than a few seconds, it was usually worth another person looking as well, and the result was that a man who almost never issued orders somehow caused poorly secured doors, unattended documents and sloppy work habits to correct themselves merely by entering the relevant corridor.
At night the effect became stronger because the Institute emptied gradually rather than all at once. Clerks left first, gathering coats and umbrellas while daylight still survived outside, followed by laboratory staff whose work could reasonably remain until morning. Construction crews emerged from the underground levels later with dust clinging to their clothing and fatigue reducing conversation to murmurs, while guards changed shifts and whole corridors gradually lost the human noise that made them ordinary.
T stayed until most of that was finished.
Nobody had formally ordered him to perform a final circuit, and Hale discovered during the second week that Joseph had simply begun doing it because he preferred knowing what the building looked like before leaving. Hale considered objecting for perhaps a day, then decided an additional inspection performed voluntarily by the most observant man under his roof was not the problem he intended to solve first.
Joseph walked the Institute when it was nearly empty and listened to what remained once conversation stopped competing with the building itself. Ventilation moved behind walls, pipes ticked and settled, distant machinery shut down beneath the floors and occasionally the clack of a typewriter came from some researcher determined to finish another page before going home.
His footsteps carried farther after dark.
A guard stationed alone might hear them approaching from one direction, exchange a brief nod when T passed and then listen until the measured echoes disappeared toward another level. Joseph checked controlled doors, windows, illuminated laboratories, access panels and emergency routes, and sometimes the recovery ward fell naturally into the route even when nothing on Hale's written inspection required it.
There was something almost ritualistic about the habit, although Joseph would have rejected the word because ritual implied sentiment he had not consciously assigned to it. He simply liked leaving the Institute knowing where everything stood.
Once the final circuit ended, T disappeared.
That became another minor mystery among the staff because surprisingly few people ever saw him depart. One guard insisted T always used the western service entrance, another swore he had seen the masked man crossing the motor court after dark, while an overnight clerk claimed T once walked toward an underground lift and simply never returned before morning.
The truth was considerably less interesting.
Joseph understood the security routines well enough to leave work without turning his private identity into anyone else's concern. Sometimes he changed out of the black fatigues in a secured room and departed beneath an ordinary coat through one of the quieter staff exits, while other evenings he used a route Hale knew existed but most employees had no reason to notice.
T disappeared because Joseph Taylor was going home.
Nobody needed to observe where one identity ended and the other began.
The following morning he returned as reliably as the next guard shift, frequently several minutes before eight and never after it. The black fatigues were clean, the helmet settled correctly upon his head and the Ledermaske concealed everything about Joseph Taylor that the Institute had no legitimate reason to know.
Nobody could tell whether he had spent the previous evening reading beside a fire, eating alone, sitting in the garden under dark clouds or opening the wardrobe long enough to look at the champagne bottle still hidden behind folded blankets. Those things belonged outside the Institute, and Joseph guarded the division between work and home with the same seriousness Nathan had deliberately encouraged when giving him the house.
Inside, T became something people gradually stopped trying to solve. Scientists knew his footsteps before the silhouette reached their doors, workers made room when he crossed construction zones, guards nodded when he passed and the wounded men in the recovery ward occasionally insulted him merely to discover whether the dark lenses moved differently when Joseph was amused.
The Institute had acquired new laboratories, reinforced doors, guarded levels and an underground complex descending far enough that even some people working above it could not have described the lowest finished point. Somewhere during that expansion, it had also acquired a ghost, and only Nathan Drake and Joseph himself fully understood that the ghost went home each evening, took off his mask, unlocked a front door nobody else possessed the right to open and became a man again.
Two months after formally joining the Institute as Nathan Drake's personal security, Joseph Taylor had become accustomed enough to unexplained summons that he barely reacted when one reached him shortly after ten in the morning. One of Hale's guards found T completing an inspection of the eastern laboratory corridor and delivered the message with the peculiar carefulness most staff had developed when speaking directly to the masked man: Professor Drake required him in the principal conference room, immediately if convenient.
Joseph gave the guard one short nod, finished checking the door nearest him and turned back through the secured level without asking what Nathan wanted.
The Institute was busy enough that morning for his progress to be noticed without anyone consciously stopping to watch. Several newly completed laboratories had brought another influx of scientists into the guarded sections, and clerks moved between administrative rooms carrying files while machinery continued working deeper beneath the finished floors, occasionally sending a dull tremor through the soles of Joseph's boots.
By then he barely noticed people making space before he reached them. The black fatigues had become work clothes, the rifle carried across his body had become weight no more remarkable than a coat and the M1917 Ledermaske belonged to T as naturally as the front-door key stored elsewhere belonged to Joseph Taylor.
Keeping those identities separate had stopped feeling artificial.
It felt useful.
Joseph reached the principal conference room and found two guards standing outside who did not belong to Hale. Their uniforms, posture and equipment were familiar enough to identify them as men accustomed to protecting senior government officials, and the look one gave T's mask and rifle made clear that Nathan's peculiar security arrangements had not been explained in advance.
The man's shoulders shifted when Joseph approached, one hand moving subtly toward a position from which it could reach his weapon if necessary. An Institute guard beside the door noticed and intervened before either man created an awkward scene.
"He's cleared," the Institute man said quietly, and the visitor looked toward him with visible dissatisfaction before stepping aside.
Joseph opened the door and entered.
The meeting had already been underway for some time, and the difference between the corridor and the room was immediate. Outside there had been footsteps, telephones and the faint industrial pulse of construction, while inside the conference room everything seemed contained beneath the weight of polished wood, tall windows and men accustomed to having their words written down elsewhere.
Nathan sat at the long table beneath the windows with an untidy spread of reports arranged before him in piles that looked chaotic until one watched his hands move among them. Several files had been opened and their pages separated according to whatever private system Nathan had decided upon, pencils and handwritten annotations occupied the remaining space near his right hand and a cup of tea sat forgotten long enough for the surface to have gone completely still.
Across from him sat enough of Britain's wartime machinery to make the room feel smaller than its dimensions should have allowed. Viscount Milner occupied one of the central chairs with the heavy composure of a man who had spent too much of the war listening to discussions that eventually became orders affecting thousands, while beside him sat Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby and Secretary of State for War, his papers arranged considerably more neatly than Nathan's and his expression suggesting the morning had already demanded more patience than he intended to provide.
General Sir William Robertson sat farther along with the unmistakable physical presence of a career soldier among politicians and physicians, his attention alternating between Nathan and the reports. Lieutenant-General Sir Alfred Keogh represented the Army Medical Service, while Dr. Walter Morley Fletcher of the Medical Research Committee and Sir Arthur Newsholme from the Local Government Board completed the medical side of the delegation, each accompanied by enough files and professional scepticism to prevent the gathering from becoming merely political.
Security men stood behind the visitors, and Joseph felt their attention the instant the door closed behind him.
Nathan did not immediately look up. "T," he said while continuing to read a page between two fingers, his tone making the summons sound almost casual. "Come in and close the door, please."
Joseph obeyed and crossed the room.
Several of the visiting guards followed every step more openly than they probably intended because the dark lenses prevented Joseph from meeting their eyes in any ordinary way. One man behind Derby shifted subtly enough to place his hand nearer his holster before apparently remembering that nobody else in the room treated the six-foot-six armed figure as an emergency.
Joseph stopped slightly behind Nathan's right shoulder where he could see the door, most of the windows and every person at the table without needing to turn excessively.
Nathan glanced back at last. "Morning," he said, as though Joseph had walked into breakfast rather than a government review.
T gave one brief nod, and Milner's attention remained upon the masked man for another second before returning to Nathan.
"That is the man you mentioned?" Milner asked, his wording careful enough to indicate Nathan had provided considerably less information than the questioner would have preferred.
"My personal security," Nathan replied while selecting another sheet from the mess before him. "Among other things."
Robertson studied Joseph's rifle and then the mask. "Does he ever remove that?" he asked, gesturing slightly toward the Ledermaske.
"Yes," Nathan replied while turning a page, and when Robertson waited for the explanation that ought logically to follow, Nathan merely continued reading.
Derby watched him for several seconds before exhaling through his nose. "You are not going to elaborate."
"No," Nathan replied, lifting another document while Joseph recognised the particular silence that followed whenever Nathan answered a question with complete truth and almost no useful satisfaction.
Fletcher was the first to drag the meeting back toward whatever had occupied them before T entered. "Professor Drake," he said, tapping one finger against the papers nearest him, "before your guard arrived you were explaining why several weeks of government effort have produced what appears to be a catalogue of folklore."
"That is not entirely fair," Nathan replied, picking up one file and moving it toward the larger pile on his right. "Some of it is extremely poor folklore."
Newsholme's mouth tightened faintly, uncertain whether the remark deserved encouragement, while Nathan opened the next report.
During the preceding months, Nathan had made an unusual request through the same channels already supplying the Institute with captured German biological research, veterinary intelligence, pathology reports and restricted military material. He wanted incidents that did not fit.
The request had deliberately been broad enough to frustrate the people receiving it. Nathan did not ask solely for enemy activity or diseases with unexplained pathology; he wanted military records, medical testimony, consular correspondence, police communications, colonial reports and stories collected from naval crews or isolated postings where something had happened that the person writing it could not comfortably classify.
He had even asked that material dismissed as impossible, ridiculous or superstitious be included instead of filtered out before reaching him.
The government indulged him partly because Nathan had already given them enough useful work to earn several eccentricities and partly because Milner understood that intelligence occasionally became valuable only after someone stopped allowing embarrassment to determine what reached the desk.
The result had been several boxes containing strange reports from Romania, Africa, America, Russia and island groups scattered through the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Nathan spent days dividing the useful from the absurd, although the useful pile remained considerably smaller.
He picked up one of the reports now and looked toward Derby. "This claims that three soldiers in Romania observed a figure nearly nine feet tall standing beside a woodland road shortly before dawn," Nathan said, glancing down the page as though rereading something he already found faintly offensive. "Black, featureless and apparently capable of disappearing whenever directly illuminated."
Robertson's expression suggested his patience for the supernatural had already expired before breakfast.
Nathan turned the page rather than immediately discarding it. "The witnesses had been awake for thirty-seven hours, were operating on reduced rations and one admits that the three of them had shared brandy roughly an hour before the alleged apparition," he added, before placing the report decisively on the larger pile. "I am comfortable calling that nonsense unless someone can provide a witness who has slept."
Milner's mouth moved faintly, but Nathan had already reached for another folder before anyone interrupted.
"This one interests me slightly more," he said, and the change in tone was subtle enough that Robertson's eyes returned from the discarded Romanian file. "There are several reports concerning a village in a mountainous region farther east, although the problem is that almost no two accounts agree upon what actually happened."
Derby looked toward him. "What sort of reports?"
"That depends entirely upon which report you read," Nathan replied while spreading several sheets across the table. "One traveller claims the village was abandoned. A later account insists it was still occupied but that several families had vanished. Another describes livestock dying without obvious disease, while a physician passing through the region several months later mentions no livestock deaths at all but records unusual injuries among two villagers."
Keogh reached toward one of the pages as Nathan continued, his professional curiosity overcoming some of the irritation surrounding the broader exercise.
"One witness claims there were lights moving above the mountain at night," Nathan said. "Another says there were no lights, but people heard sounds beneath the ground. A third apparently insists the entire story originated because a shepherd disappeared during bad weather and local superstition did the rest."
Robertson gave him a sceptical look. "And that interests you."
"The contradiction interests me," Nathan replied, resting one hand across the reports. "A story that becomes more consistent every time it is repeated may merely be folklore learning how to behave. This becomes less consistent the closer one gets to alleged eyewitnesses, which could mean nothing at all, or it could mean several unrelated events have been folded together by people trying to construct a single explanation."
Newsholme glanced over the translated portion nearest him. "Do you know whether the village even exists?"
"That is one of the difficulties," Nathan replied, and a faint irritation entered his expression now because this problem apparently offended him more than fairies. "Two spellings appear in consular records, a third in military correspondence and none of the maps provided agree on the exact location. Before I commit anyone from the Institute to chasing mountain stories, I would quite like confirmation that there is actually a village to investigate."
Milner looked toward him over folded hands. "So what exactly are you requesting?"
"Nothing substantial," Nathan said. "If an existing military, diplomatic or medical contact happens to pass through the region, I would appreciate a confirmation that the place exists and that someone there remembers anything unusual happening. Beyond that, I would prefer not to spend government money proving that shepherds get lost in mountains."
That drew the faintest approval from Robertson, who seemed considerably happier with the idea of not sending soldiers into mountains after rumours.
Nathan gathered the contradictory village reports into the smaller pile rather than the discarded one. "I do not believe it," he added while placing them down. "I simply cannot dismiss it honestly yet."
He picked up another file.
"Two reports from rural Russia describe small winged human figures observed near woodland settlements," Nathan continued, the humour returning slightly. "The first witness was seven years old. The second is a woman repeating something her deceased grandmother supposedly observed approximately thirty years earlier."
Derby stared at him.
"Fairies."
"Apparently international ones," Nathan replied, and Fletcher's composure finally cracked enough for the corner of his mouth to move before he looked down at his notes.
Nathan reached for another report. "An American account describes livestock mutilated without tracks surrounding the carcasses. Interesting until one reaches the veterinary examination, which concludes the animals died naturally, were scavenged afterward and the apparent absence of tracks followed snowfall during the night."
That report joined the discarded shadow figure.
"The material from the island groups is considerably more imaginative," Nathan continued while flipping through several pages. "Men disappearing from beaches, lights under the water, voices heard from caves and one account describing a woman with the lower half of a fish and a temperament apparently incompatible with Christianity."
Robertson leaned back slowly. "And His Majesty's Government has been paying men to send you this."
"In fairness, General, governments have been paying men to write things nobody reads for centuries," Nathan replied while reorganising the papers before him. "At least somebody is finally getting some entertainment from them."
A restrained cough came from one of the medical men that sounded suspiciously like laughter concealed beneath dignity. Milner remained considerably less amused.
"How much of this do you actually believe?" he asked.
"Very little," Nathan replied immediately, and the humour left him as he drew the smaller stack closer. "That is precisely why I asked for everything rather than only what someone else had already decided was credible. If a clerk in Cairo, Bucharest, Vladivostok or Washington decides what reaches me based upon whether he personally believes it, I am no longer examining unusual incidents. I am examining that clerk's imagination."
Keogh looked toward the smaller pile, his attention settling briefly upon the contradictory mountain-village material. "And those are the reports you cannot dismiss."
"Yet," Nathan replied while resting one hand over them. "The word matters."
The atmosphere around the table shifted as Nathan opened another file, and Joseph watched the visitors rather than the paper. Amusement disappeared almost immediately when Nathan's manner changed from the tolerance of nonsense to the concentration he used whenever biology entered the discussion.
"A British patrol operating with allied forces encountered a soldier who had apparently become separated from an enemy unit after several days of fighting," Nathan said. "The first assumption was intoxication. He was sweating heavily, his pupils were enlarged, speech was incoherent and witnesses report almost no visible reaction to pain."
Robertson's expression sharpened.
"The patrol attempted restraint," Nathan continued. "The man struck one soldier hard enough to fracture the radius in his forearm, rendered another unconscious and continued moving after sustaining a rifle wound through the upper shoulder."
"Drugged," Derby said, and Nathan inclined his head slightly.
"Possibly, which is why this remains in the serious pile rather than becoming a story about demons," Nathan replied before passing the report across to Keogh. "The medical officer who examined the body after death recorded extreme cardiovascular strain, elevated temperature, pronounced muscular contraction and what he called extraordinary resistance to physical restraint. The man eventually died after a second gunshot."
Keogh read the relevant lines and frowned. "What drug?"
"Unknown."
"Cocaine?"
"Possible."
"Opium derivative?"
"Less consistent with the aggression and stimulation."
Fletcher reached across, and Keogh passed him the report while Nathan opened a second file.
"There are two vaguely comparable incidents elsewhere," Nathan continued. "One from the United States and another from a Russian military hospital. Neither is documented well enough to establish a connection and I am not claiming one exists merely because three men behaved violently."
Newsholme studied him. "What do you think happened?"
Nathan leaned back slightly. "There are several possibilities," he said. "The least interesting is stimulant intoxication combined with unreliable witnesses. The more interesting possibility is an experimental compound intended to suppress exhaustion and pain during combat. The most interesting possibility is some physiological state we have not properly characterised."
Milner's gaze narrowed. "And you believe Germany may be responsible."
"I believe Germany is at war," Nathan replied. "That makes Germany responsible for enough unpleasant things without assigning imaginary ones merely because it is convenient."
Robertson gave a quiet grunt of approval while Nathan gathered several other pages.
"Romania has supplied two additional reports I would like independently verified if existing contacts can do so without diversion," Nathan continued. "Africa has produced several incidents worth retaining, although translation and distance have damaged the original evidence enough that I would not spend a shilling pursuing them yet. Russia is increasingly useless as a reliable source because the political situation has made correspondence inconsistent, and several reports from island groups in the Pacific and Indian Ocean require someone capable of distinguishing local tradition from events that occurred within the last year."
He glanced toward the mountain-village files again.
"The same applies there," Nathan added. "I am interested enough to keep the reports, not interested enough to send men into mountains until somebody can tell me which parts of the story are even contemporaneous."
Derby regarded him dryly. "It comforts me enormously that you are drawing a line somewhere."
"I am not asking the Army to dispatch battalions after shadows," Nathan replied, and Robertson's mouth shifted slightly.
"That is reassuring," Derby said.
Nathan ignored the tone and placed both hands loosely upon the files. "Nor do I expect the Foreign Office, War Office or anyone represented here to investigate every story forwarded to me. Some would require weeks merely to establish that the witness existed. If your existing channels can verify something before I commit Institute time to it, however, I would appreciate it."
Milner watched him.
"A second military account," Nathan continued. "A hospital record. A body. A specimen. Two witnesses who were sober. Confirmation that a village exists where three reports claim it does. Any of those things would improve the evidence considerably."
Milner exchanged a glance with Derby, and Joseph noticed enough in the look to understand that the portion of the meeting in which Nathan had been permitted his eccentricities was drawing to an end.
"That is all very well," Milner said as he brought his hands together upon the table, his voice losing whatever residual patience the fairy reports had left him. "But we have indulged this line of enquiry quite extensively already."
Nathan's expression remained neutral.
"You asked for unusual intelligence from military, colonial and diplomatic channels," Milner continued. "You received it. You requested captured medical material outside normal distribution, and you received that as well. You now want further verification of events you yourself admit are mostly nonsense."
"I do."
Derby looked toward the larger discarded pile. "Professor, somewhere in Whitehall there is a civil servant who has spent several afternoons forwarding reports about fairies, mountain lights and nine-foot shadows to one of the best-funded private research institutions in Britain."
Nathan appeared to consider the injustice of this. "I hope he has enjoyed the change of pace," he said eventually, and Robertson's mouth twitched before he suppressed it.
Milner did not.
"Before we devote additional effort," he said, "we require more assurance that what is happening here continues to justify the latitude you have been given."
Joseph noticed the visiting security men again while the political conversation hardened. One had been studying him intermittently since he entered, but whenever Joseph moved his helmet even slightly in the man's direction the guard found something else to inspect, while another behind Robertson seemed less frightened than irritated by the existence of an armed stranger whose identity had been deliberately withheld.
Nathan paid none of those reactions any visible attention.
He closed the folklore files and moved them aside. "Very well," he said, turning toward the officials with his hands empty now. "What assurance would you like?"
Derby looked toward Keogh.
The Director-General of the Army Medical Service opened the folder before him. "Mustard gas," he said, and whatever humour had survived the earlier discussion disappeared completely from the room. "Our experience since the German use of it has demonstrated the limitations of existing protective equipment rather unpleasantly."
Nathan's fingers stopped upon the edge of the paper he had been moving.
"Respirators protect the lungs when worn correctly," Keogh continued. "Eye protection varies with pattern and fit, while exposed skin remains vulnerable and contaminated clothing continues causing injury after men leave the gas area. Worse, symptoms may be delayed long enough that troops underestimate exposure."
Fletcher leaned forward slightly. "At the previous review you told us you believed improvements in barrier protection were possible."
"I did," Nathan replied.
"And?"
Nathan looked over his shoulder toward Joseph.
Every visitor followed the movement.
T remained exactly where he had stood throughout the discussion, black fatigues fitting cleanly beneath webbing, steel helmet above the Ledermaske and dark lenses reflecting the men across the table in warped miniature.
Nathan gestured toward him with one hand. "That should suffice."
Derby looked from Nathan to T. "You are telling us the answer is standing behind you."
"One version of it," Nathan replied.
Keogh studied the mask more carefully. "That pattern is German."
"The original shape is," Nathan said. "The material treatment and filtration are not."
Joseph remained still while the room's attention shifted from him as a security problem to the equipment covering his face. Nathan stood and turned partly toward him, apparently unconcerned that one of the visiting guards disliked seeing the masked figure handled with such familiarity.
"The seal around the face and neck has been improved, the filtration medium is altered and vulnerable seams are chemically treated rather than relying entirely upon the leather," Nathan explained. "Used alongside properly treated outer clothing, gloves and coverings, the system substantially reduces the effective exposure window."
Newsholme frowned. "Mustard is not merely a respiratory poison."
"I am aware," Nathan replied while turning toward him.
"It burns anywhere it reaches."
"Yes."
"Then the mask cannot be sufficient alone."
"Which is why I said the system matters rather than the mask," Nathan replied without irritation. "T happens to be wearing the most visible portion of it."
He tapped one finger lightly against the side of Joseph's steel helmet. T did not react, although one of Derby's guards shifted as if the easy contact somehow made Nathan more alarming than the masked man.
"The helmet itself is ordinary steel," Nathan continued. "The face protection beneath it is modified, and the clothing can be manufactured with treated external layers intended to reduce penetration and make decontamination considerably more practical than washing every uniform and hoping nobody missed a cuff."
Keogh leaned forward. "How long does it protect?"
"Against useful field concentrations?"
"Yes."
"Long enough to get a man out of the contaminated area before severe exposure," Nathan replied.
Keogh's expression remained unsatisfied. "That is not a number."
"It will become one when Mercer finishes the present material series," Nathan said, and the edge in his voice sharpened just enough to silence the room. "I am not giving you a reassuring number today and revising it after somebody's skin comes away because I wanted the meeting to proceed smoothly."
Robertson looked toward T again. "Has he tested it?"
Nathan's expression changed hardly at all. "In controlled conditions."
Joseph felt the attention return.
Keogh's eyes narrowed. "With mustard agent?"
"Yes."
"And the result?"
Nathan gestured toward T without even turning.
"He is standing."
Keogh understood immediately that whatever further details existed were not being given merely because he had asked in a crowded room. He sat back slightly, dissatisfied but no longer questioning whether the system had been tested at all.
"How soon before proper field trials?" Derby asked.
"Several weeks for the full protective arrangement if the manufacturing series remains consistent," Nathan replied as he returned to his seat. "Respiratory improvements can move earlier, but the complete clothing needs to survive movement, heat, mud, prolonged wear and soldiers using it incorrectly before I permit general issue."
Robertson nodded grimly. "They will use it incorrectly."
"They always do," Nathan replied. "A military design has to survive the soldier as well as the enemy."
That earned him the faintest agreement from the general.
Keogh closed the mustard file and opened another. "Your letter also mentioned further progress regarding German biological operations."
Nathan's expression changed again, and Joseph recognised the transition immediately. The humour, political irritation and tolerance for absurdity fell away whenever Nathan approached biology, leaving behind the colder concentration of the scientist who had built much of his life around understanding organisms other people could barely classify.
"Yes," Nathan said as he selected another folder from the papers near his hand. "Something considerably more useful than Romanian shadows."
He opened the report and turned several pages so the tables and diagrams faced the delegation. "We have completed another review of captured material relating to German attempts to interfere with livestock and military animals. The strongest evidence concerns anthrax and glanders."
Keogh nodded slowly while Robertson's attention sharpened.
Nobody needed the military consequences explained at length. Britain's war effort depended upon horses and mules for movement, cattle for food and remount depots for the endless replacement of animals consumed by artillery, exhaustion and disease. A biological attack upon those populations could damage transport and supply without Germany firing another shell.
Nathan placed one finger beside the first organism listed. "Bacillus anthracis," he said. "The principle there is straightforward even if strain differences and delivery attempts vary."
His finger moved lower.
"The glanders organism remains Bacillus mallei in present classification," Nathan added. The name Burkholderia mallei belonged to a future none of the men in the room had any reason to imagine, and Nathan used the terminology appropriate to the science around him.
Derby looked toward the page. "You are satisfied these records describe deliberate infection."
"Yes."
"British cattle?"
"Cattle, horses and potentially any stock sufficiently important to transport or food supply to justify the effort," Nathan replied. "The surviving records are not complete enough for me to tell you that every operation succeeded. They are more than complete enough to establish intent."
Robertson's jaw hardened.
Nathan continued before outrage could replace useful discussion. "The advantage of possessing both captured material and controlled cultures is that we are no longer forced to infer prophylaxis from published strains alone."
Fletcher leaned forward.
Nathan looked toward him. "I have developed an inoculation protocol."
The silence following that sentence felt completely different from the pauses surrounding fairies and mountain lights. Keogh's entire posture changed while Newsholme reached automatically toward the nearest page.
"For anthrax?" Keogh asked.
"For anthrax and glanders," Nathan replied. "Not one preparation. Separate preparations and separate schedules because I am not claiming biology becomes convenient merely because the War Office prefers one crate."
Newsholme glanced through the report. "Animal administration?"
"Initially."
"Not men?"
"Not until I have evidence Germany intends these methods primarily against personnel," Nathan replied. "The immediate priority is cattle, horses and remount stock. There is no reason to expose men to experimental prophylaxis for a problem presently directed mainly toward animals."
Keogh extended his hand and Nathan passed the report across.
"How extensively tested?" the Director-General asked while reading.
"Enough to justify controlled expansion."
"That is another carefully evasive answer."
"It is a carefully accurate answer," Nathan replied, watching him rather than the paper. "Treated groups have shown substantially improved survival and reduced systemic disease following controlled exposure. I want another verification series before I give you final figures because one result becoming politically useful does not make it scientifically finished."
Fletcher leaned toward Keogh to examine the tables. "Killed material?" he asked.
"In part," Nathan replied. "With an additional preparation intended to improve response and reduce the variability present in the earlier series."
Fletcher looked up immediately. "What preparation?"
Nathan smiled faintly.
"That portion remains mine until I have proved it works."
Derby exhaled through his nose. "We are funding this facility."
"And I am preventing you from wasting that funding manufacturing unfinished material," Nathan replied with perfect calm. "We can both claim virtue."
Milner finally moved, drawing the report Keogh had finished with toward himself. "When?" he asked.
Nathan looked toward him and answered without consulting the file. "If the next series behaves as expected, preparations can begin leaving the Institute within the next fortnight."
Robertson leaned forward. "Two weeks?"
"Yes."
"For general use?"
"For controlled distribution," Nathan corrected. "Remount depots, selected cattle stocks and locations where intelligence suggests deliberate contamination is plausible. I do not want half the country inoculating every animal it owns before we understand how well the preparations survive transport and storage."
Newsholme nodded, apparently pleased to hear restraint arrive without argument. "Cold storage requirements?"
"Helpful, but not always essential depending upon the preparation," Nathan replied. "I am designing around military reality rather than assuming every farm and remount station possesses a laboratory refrigerator."
Keogh continued reading. "Treatment after infection?"
"Improved," Nathan replied. "Not miraculous."
Nobody at the table smiled.
Nathan rested both hands loosely upon the wood. "Anthrax becomes extremely dangerous once systemic disease is established. Glanders presents different problems, including diagnosis late enough that the useful treatment window may already have narrowed. Prevention is the more important result because preventing infection requires considerably less heroism than trying to rescue an animal already dying."
Derby looked toward Milner while the older man continued studying the numbers.
The room became quiet enough that Joseph could feel the faint vibration of construction through the floor and hear one of the visiting security men shift his weight behind the chairs. Nathan allowed the silence to continue because he had learned long ago that officials became suspicious when scientists seemed desperate to persuade them, whereas placing evidence on the table and waiting forced doubters to discover its inconvenience for themselves.
Fletcher spoke first. "If these results reproduce, the Medical Research Committee will want the complete methodology."
"You can have it after the verification series," Nathan replied.
"Not before?"
"No."
Fletcher almost smiled. "I expected that."
Nathan inclined his head.
Keogh looked toward T again, and this time his scrutiny carried curiosity rather than unease. "How much else is happening in this Institute that you have not reported to us?"
Nathan followed the physician's gaze toward Joseph.
"Quite a lot," he replied.
Derby briefly closed his eyes. "Professor Drake."
"You asked."
"I did not expect you to admit it."
Nathan leaned back slightly. "My arrangement with the government was never that every unfinished idea in this building becomes a Cabinet paper," he said. "You receive work when it is sufficiently developed to matter, and you receive immediate notice whenever anything under your authority is endangered."
Milner closed the biological report. "That arrangement depends heavily upon trust."
"Yes."
"And you seem determined to make trust difficult."
Nathan considered the accusation without offence. "No, Lord Milner. I make comfort difficult. People frequently confuse the two."
Milner regarded him for several seconds while Joseph remained motionless behind Nathan.
One of Derby's security men glanced toward T again, and this time Joseph deliberately turned the mask until the black lenses pointed directly at him. The man held the gaze for perhaps a second before finding the opposite wall more interesting.
Nathan caught the exchange faintly in the window reflection and mercifully said nothing.
Milner placed the report flat upon the table. "You want us to continue forwarding the anomalous material."
"I want you to continue forwarding things that cannot be comfortably explained," Nathan corrected. "I can discard fairy stories myself."
"And verification where possible."
"Yes."
"Without significant diversion of manpower."
"Precisely."
Milner looked toward Robertson.
The general showed almost no enthusiasm for assigning military personnel to investigate tall shadows or contradictory village legends, but the report concerning the unusually aggressive soldier had clearly entered a different category in his mind.
"If another incident like this man occurs," Robertson said, placing one finger against the relevant file, "the unit is to preserve the body where practical rather than destroy it unnecessarily."
Nathan nodded. "Preferably refrigerate whatever specimens can be collected."
Robertson gave him a look. "On a battlefield."
"Preferably," Nathan repeated. "I am aware that trenches are poorly equipped pathology departments."
"And if the man is alive?" Robertson asked.
Nathan's gaze sharpened immediately. "Do not experiment upon him in the field," he said. "Restrain if possible, sedate if medically necessary and move him somewhere a physician can examine him properly."
Keogh nodded. "That can be arranged."
"Blood before sedation if circumstances allow," Nathan added, looking toward him. "Urine as well, and anything collected needs the exact time recorded rather than somebody writing morning and expecting me to guess."
Robertson looked briefly toward Milner.
Nathan opened one hand toward the report. "That is the difference between an investigation and a story. A strange man doing impossible things becomes useful when someone brings me blood."
Derby shook his head faintly. "You have an unsettling ability to make absurdity sound administrative."
"It usually becomes administrative once one locates the correct form," Nathan replied, and this time even Milner nearly smiled.
The meeting began loosening only after another twenty minutes of questions concerning production numbers, veterinary personnel, transport conditions and the practical chain by which inoculations would leave the Institute. Keogh and Fletcher remained the most difficult questioners, occasionally disagreeing with one another before turning the disagreement toward Nathan, while Newsholme focused upon civilian agricultural risk and the danger of moving biological material through regions not equipped to manage accidental exposure.
Nathan answered without rushing, and Joseph watched everything from behind him.
Two months earlier he might have found the gathering impossible to reconcile: Cabinet ministers, generals and senior medical men sitting beneath the same roof where soldiers with missing limbs underwent treatments no public hospital could explain, arguing about veterinary inoculation schedules while a stack of reports involving shadow figures, strange mountain villages and fairies sat beside a cup of cold tea.
Now it simply felt like the Institute.
Milner eventually began gathering his papers. "We will continue the reporting arrangement provisionally," he said, giving Nathan the kind of concession deliberately phrased so it would not sound like approval. "Verification will be requested only where existing channels can provide it without substantial diversion."
"That is all I asked," Nathan replied.
Derby rose beside him and collected his own folders. "I want the mustard protection data as soon as Mercer finishes the next series."
"You will have it."
"Not three weeks afterward because you decided another test looked interesting."
Nathan looked mildly offended. "I have never delayed a report merely because something was interesting."
Derby stared at him.
Nathan's mouth moved faintly. "Not often."
Keogh gathered the anthrax and glanders material separately from the other papers. "I expect notification before any preparation leaves for the remount depots."
"You will receive it."
"And no broader veterinary distribution without coordination through the Army Medical Service."
Nathan nodded. "Agreed."
Fletcher closed his notebook before glancing once more toward T. "Does your security man understand any of what we have been discussing?" he asked, perhaps finally allowing curiosity to defeat restraint.
Joseph's head turned toward him.
Nathan looked back as well. "Unfortunately, yes."
Fletcher frowned slightly. "Unfortunately?"
"It means I cannot complain about any of you in front of him afterward without risking criticism," Nathan replied, and enough amusement entered his voice to make the physician look again toward the silent figure.
"T," Fletcher said experimentally, as if perhaps the designation functioned differently when addressed directly.
Joseph gave him a short nod and nothing else.
Fletcher waited in precisely the same way Hale once had during their first meeting, then seemed to recognise he was repeating a mistake already made by other men. Nathan smiled before Fletcher could ask whether that was all he intended to receive.
"I did warn you," Nathan said, and Fletcher shook his head as he stood.
The officials departed gradually, their security following them toward the corridor while Hale's guards prepared to escort the party through the controlled levels and back toward their motorcars. Joseph remained behind Nathan until the final visitor disappeared and the door shut, leaving the conference room abruptly larger and considerably quieter.
Nathan looked down at the disorder left across the table.
The nonsense pile remained much larger than the useful one.
He picked up the Romanian shadow report again and reread the central paragraph with visible scepticism. "Nine feet tall, entirely black and apparently disappears when someone shines a lamp upon it," he murmured, then looked over his shoulder toward Joseph. "What do you think?"
The dark lenses stared back.
Joseph waited long enough that Nathan almost expected silence.
"Brandy," T said finally, the single word muffled by leather.
Nathan smiled. "My conclusion exactly."
He started returning the report to the discarded pile, then paused and glanced toward the small bundle concerning the mountain village. "These are more irritating," he said, drawing them closer rather than discarding them. "Not because any one of the claims is especially persuasive, but because they contradict one another so thoroughly that I cannot even determine what story I am supposed to disbelieve."
Joseph stepped a little closer to the table, his attention settling upon the hand-drawn map attached to one report.
Nathan spread the pages out again. "An abandoned village that another witness visited while occupied," he said. "Missing families according to one traveller, no missing people according to a later physician, dead livestock in one account and completely ordinary herds in another. Lights in the sky, sounds beneath the mountains, injuries nobody agrees upon and three names for what may or may not be the same settlement."
T studied the pages through the dark lenses.
"Could just be stories," Joseph said after several seconds, and Nathan nodded.
"Almost certainly," he replied. "But if someone confirms the village exists and half the witnesses were real, then it becomes bad evidence rather than no evidence, and bad evidence can occasionally be repaired."
Joseph looked toward him.
Nathan gathered the files together and returned them to the smaller pile. "I would rather spend five minutes asking a consular officer to confirm a location than six months wondering whether I ignored something interesting because a translator could not decide how to spell the name."
Joseph's head tilted fractionally.
Nathan smiled faintly. "Yes, I know. I am becoming sentimental about paperwork."
T's shoulders shifted in silent amusement.
Joseph's attention then moved toward the report concerning the violent soldier, and Nathan noticed the change almost immediately. "That one bothers you," he said, drawing the file closer while the humour left his face.
Joseph's gloved hand rested against the rifle sling. "Man takes a rifle round and keeps coming," he said, his voice low through the mask. "I've seen men do strange things when they're frightened. Seen morphine make men stupid. Seen men keep fighting after wounds they should've felt."
Nathan listened without interruption while Joseph looked toward the medical report.
"Breaking a man's arm with one hit is different," T added, and Nathan's expression became more thoughtful.
"Yes," Nathan replied while placing the Romanian shadow report permanently back onto the useless pile. "It is."
Joseph remained looking at the aggressive-soldier file.
After several seconds his fingers moved once against the rifle sling. "Think it's like me?" he asked, and the question altered the room more completely than anything discussed during the government meeting.
Nathan looked at him properly.
Joseph did not move.
Nathan had deliberately constructed Taylor's new body so that nothing about him approached Nathan's own biology beyond increased strength, durability, recovery and the dormant Red-Light scaffold hidden through his reconstructed tissues. Joseph could not assimilate, transform or spread what Nathan had placed within him, but he understood enough to know that ordinary was no longer a description his body entirely deserved.
"No," Nathan said after a moment, and unlike many of the answers he had given government officials that morning there was no deliberate ambiguity in the word. "I don't."
Joseph waited.
"If this report is accurate, the effects were temporary and physiologically destructive," Nathan continued, opening the file and tapping the medical examination with one finger. "Whatever was happening to this man was killing him even before the gunshot finished the process. His heart was failing, his temperature was dangerously elevated and whatever allowed him to ignore pain was not repairing the damage."
Joseph listened without moving.
"Your condition is stable," Nathan said. "Your heart is not consuming itself in order to make you stronger. Your muscles are not tearing because your body has been forced into some temporary state it cannot sustain, and you are not going to collapse because whatever chemical produced the effect leaves your blood."
Joseph's head inclined slightly as he considered the distinction.
Nathan tapped the report once more. "But I would very much like to know what was in his blood."
T gave one short nod.
Nathan leaned back in his chair and allowed his gaze to travel from the enormous pile of absurd reports to the much smaller collection he had chosen not to laugh at. A nine-foot figure frightened sleep-deprived soldiers on a Romanian road, a mountain village existed in half a dozen contradictory versions, strange lights appeared beneath oceans, men vanished on islands and somewhere an unidentified soldier had broken another man's arm with a blow while behaving as though a bullet wound scarcely mattered.
Most of it would almost certainly become nothing.
Nathan genuinely hoped it did.
He had lived long enough with impossible biology inside his own skin to know that hope was not evidence, however, and long enough as a scientist to understand that ridicule was no substitute for investigation.
Across the table, the files remained silent.
Behind the dark lenses of his mask, Joseph watched them too.
For the moment there were only stories, reports and poorly translated statements scattered across Nathan Drake's conference table, but the Institute itself had begun because Nathan once encountered something everyone else would have called impossible until it was already too late to argue with what stood before them.
That history was precisely why he intended to keep reading.