Summary

Sheriff Vick Iscoe arrives at the Antidote’s room late at night with a demand that changes the terms of her work. Instead of the usual anonymous deposits, he forces her to take conscious memories, first extracting a confession from his deputy and then making his own deposit into her earhorn. Inside the Sheriff’s memory, Iscoe and the deputy handle the aftermath of Mink Petrosev’s death and calculate how to protect Iscoe’s reelection and reputation. The deposit exposes that Iscoe planted rabbit’s feet to shape the town’s theory of the murders and to keep Clemson Louis Dew fixed as the monster Uz can punish, even as Iscoe quietly destroys evidence that could implicate him.

In the days that follow, the Antidote feels the consequences of being made a witness. She is filled with visions of the women who...