"My room number is M97," Mark answered, more out of fair exchange of information than any belief Sasuke would find his way there at some point. "I'll meet you in the last area of the patient's block, near the hallway that leads to the Sun Room."

Mark's food had a way of being eaten despite himself, particularly when distracted, and so he didn't take much notice of the vanishing act his muffins had performed. "The only reason we have to believe that they are even opposed to each other is that Doyle and Landel argue over the intercoms at night. True, Doyle gives presents... but I find the circumstances strange. If they aren't partners now, they certainly were at some point in the past. Why that's changed, if it's changed at all, is a salient question." It would be useful if bargaining, like playing the Houses of Jackson's Whole against each other, but no patient here had anything to bargain with which Landel or Doyle would want. So far as they knew.

Yet they had to want something. "Why they built this facility in the first place... again can only be guessed at. The animals at night may simply be acting on instinct, feeding. The nurses... some other kind of instinct, but no less insensible."