Robert Miller crouched behind the old pump house and watched the Chemex Works through a gap in its weathered stone. His boys were coughing again last night. He had driven out at dawn with one goal: see what they were dumping, and prove it. The chain link gate blocked the main road in. A heavy chain hung across the latch. Two men in coveralls stood near a truck, smoking. Robert pressed flat against the cement wall and waited. The pump house smelled of rust and damp moss. When the men climbed into the truck and rolled out the gate, Robert moved. He slipped along the fence line until he found a gap where the links peeled back from the post. He squeezed through and crossed to the back of the building. Behind a stack of empty drums, he found it. A corroded pipe jutted from the ground. Green liquid oozed from its joints and pooled in the moss. The runoff trailed downhill toward the river. Robert followed it with his eyes until he saw the dark, rippled surface below, stained where the seep met the water. He pulled out his phone and took photos. The pipe. The pool. The river. He bagged a sample of the green sludge in a jar from his coat. His hands shook, but his movements stayed careful. Then he heard a voice behind him. Calm. Clipped. "That's not the right question to be asking out here." Robert turned. A man in a white coat stood at the corner of the building, glasses catching the light. Dr. Jonathan Hathaway looked at the jar in Robert's hand, then at Robert's face. "You should come with me," he said. "Before someone less reasonable finds you first."