Far away, on the island of Manhattan, tracks are being obscured. Contracts are being cross-shredded and records are being misplaced. Case files are being sewn tight, like a perineum after a difficult birth to a child of old grudges and new malice. Workers with gloves are re-arranging furniture and checking behind mirrors. A small, obscure corner of the city is being turned around and no one will ever notice.

Here in my room, my breathing gets thinner by the hour. I've left a last letter for whoever finds me, mostly as my roundabout way of apologizing for the inconvenience. In the meantime, I've taken to lying on my back and listening. The tide's come in, and I can hear the shushing of the waves from outside my window. It's a soothing sound, one that hints of letting go, and being enveloped, and being washed away.

I had held out hope that the illness was a temporary coincidence, but of course it isn't. Even with my periods of lucidity, the fever is getting worse. I've stayed in my room at the inn for much of the past week. Jemima asked me if I want her to call a doctor but I just smile and say I'll be okay; there's nothing a doctor could do for me now.

It's only a matter of time before the envelope is delivered. In some ways it's such a small thing, but my employers will consider it a betrayal anyway. Although it's foolish of me, I've stopped caring; loyalty has been an alien idea for some time now.

When it's bad, when the fever fills me and my breathing becomes shallow, I lay in bed with my head craned back and I imagine things. Cameras behind mirrors, microphones in desk drawers. People standing over me in dark robes in the night. I can't know what I'm actually seeing. I'm an unreliable source now, to myself as well as to anybody else.

But when the fever subsides, I sit up in bed sipping tea, and I watch the waves roll in over the shore outside my window. It's strange. Every hour, the infection spreads deeper into my bloodstream. But there are times when I feel more serene than I ever thought possible.

Yesterday I had my MSNBC debut, don't know if you saw it, but I was interviewed for just about two minutes on mobile, and video convergence, and of course how that translates into which companies have sensible multiples. Even in two minutes they managed to bring up the iPod video. Everybody brings it up, but my position has been for some time that Apple is not a serious player in the long-term. You can email me if you feel like getting into a healthy disagreement. But no, I can't get you on cable, that pundit spot is mine! Mine I tell you.

Has anybody else noticed how the weather recently is just wreaking (sp?) havok with party planning? It's hot, it's cold, it's dry, it's wet ... I've been to more than one event in the past week where you can tell somebody had to scramble last minute to get the food inside, or take away the tent, or God knows what. And don't even get me started on the clothing situation. Sometimes I think I wouldn't mind living in the Arabian desert, as long as I knew it was going to be the same temperature all day long.

I've seen T. twice since landing back here, but for some reason I was unable to broach the subject. Something's changing, and maybe at this point I have only myself to blame but honestly I can't remember. I've lost track of all the ways in which we do things. My legs feel heavy like rags. My eyes darken like the shadow of a cave.

After the first two times, she slipped away. I wandered outside, unsure of what I was looking for. I was trying not to think of home, of discoveries and plans being made in my absence. I sat down, back against a tree looking out across a broad lake, trying not to vomit, trying to remember if this is what it tastes like to be afraid. It had been some time.

I was trying to think of all the ways things could end up right. Not of Andrew Phi slipping a colorless, odorless powder into A.'s fruit punch. Or Alice Phillips squeezing until she feels the snap of bones in T.'s throat. Alan Peck puncturing the tubes in B.'s apparatus. Alex Parque sharpening her knives on the stone teeth of a handmade doll.

When I woke up, J. was walking down a stone path. I don't know if he recognized me or not, my face was starting to slip a bit by then. I asked him if he knew where T. was, and he said no, and seemed to be telling the truth. He asked if this was the lake, and I said "There's nothing here." My delirium was making me impatient.

I pushed the envelope into his hands and told him to give it to T. He stared at for a while, trying to figure out why it was so bulky, but I just reminded him that it was for T. Then I made my way back to the room. Rest is the only thing I can do for now.

Biker Joe disappeared from the hospital yesterday. As far as I know it had nothing to do with us. The redhead from my college days is gone too, from what I've heard from the grapevine, M. tells me we weren't involved in that. But of course there's no reason for M. to ever tell me more than I need to know. And besides it was years since he and I had even spoken, so what do I care?

Morgan was impressed the other day with T., and I've been trying to get him to ease up but he never eases up on anything. He gets what he wants, and I should be lucky to be working alongside him. T. has a natural curiosity and is the sort of personality who's naturally beyond suspicion so of course Morgan is intrigued, but the whole thing leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I've been thinking about anxious pigs stuck in small pens, jumping with fright every time the barn door slams.

There's a plane that leaves tonight, it'll take me to Picar. I'm honestly not sure if I can get away with going, but I think I have to anyway.