Maturity

Dana Ruhl prices the lives of dying strangers. She reads their medical files and says how long they have, accurate to within four months. The fund she works for buys their life insurance policies, pays them seven times what their insurer would, and waits. It is honest work, and Dana has made an honest peace with it. Then a cohort begins dying ahead of her estimates — and what she finds is not a crime. No instruction. No order. Nobody's fingerprints. Only a placement algorithm and a network of cheaper facilities.