“The lock clicked and the key turned and Dr. Boros pushed forward into the room. It was only after his broad frame was through the doorway that Kara could see that behind door number three was not, as she had expected, a dusty concrete room lined with metal shelves and jars full of cow eyes, but in fact what looked like a cozy, high-end waiting room, complete with freshly upholstered couches, bookshelves bursting with classic and modern masterpieces, trashy magazines strewn about on high-gloss, wooden end tables—and a large, cylindrical tank of water in which floated, oddly enough, a disembodied human brain.”

"She thought of what he was—what he really was—tried to picture it in her mind, the whole heap of him, then started to pull, cell by cell, piece by piece, trying to determine the exact moment at which he became something else, something new and unknown. But eventually her mind was blank and she never found it. Maybe he’d been that way from the start."

"He took in her smile, the way the light from the window glowed in the dust around her head. He leaned on the soft sounds of her breathing. And when finally they kissed, he decided, Yes, I could do this for a while. I could do this just fine."