“Child?” Felicity calls.

At once the black liquid loses its shimmer and swirling shadows fill each screen. I picture the girl in the tank. Is she here now, in my head?

Benjamin’s eyes widen, sweat beads on his brow, and Davis ducks, turning towards the sliding door. The two of them push the bed out into the corridor and Felicity follows. I watch the slider close behind them in the glass but I’m not afraid of being left in the room by myself. It’s quiet. No noise in the bandwidth. When the questions come it will be hard but I will be helpful and do the right thing.

SYMBIOSIS

“Very good.” Knox’s voice. “Evangeline, tell me, where is your brother?”

“I … don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“No … I don’t. I don’t know.”

“Did you help him escape the detention centre?”

Pressure in my chest. A bad feeling. Regret. “I broke a window. I hurt some men. Five men. They were scared. I frightened them. I didn’t want to hurt anyone but I had to get him out.”

“We’ve seen the footage.”

“I broke a mirror at the motel.” My mouth feels slow. “I didn’t mean to but I didn’t pay for it, either. It wasn’t a very nice place but … oh, I damaged the fence at – at the place. Aiden was too heavy for me to make the jump.”

“Never mind the mirror and the fence,” he says. “I’m sure you’re very sorry.”

“I am.”

“Did you do all this by yourself?”

“Only the bad things.”

“Did someone help you do good things?”

I get teary. “Kitty helped me.”

“The girl your brother was trying to kill? She helped you?”

I rock beneath the restraints. “I tried to make her leave after the allergy test.”

“You put your best friend – Jamie’s sister – in the same room as the boy who tried to kill her as an allergy test?”

I know I need to explain something, an important detail that will make my confession less shocking, but I can’t remember it. Heat washes up my body and a soft voice fills my head. You put Kitty in danger like it was nothing. You’re selfish, ruthless, cruel. The Gallaghers trusted you and you betrayed them without hesitation. Jamie loved you and murmured the words of the sanction against your lips, words about choice and trust and belief – how could you do it to him?

All of these things are true, horribly true. Am I finally admitting what I am, what I’ve done? I start to cry hard, wrenching tears.

Knox lets me weep then finally he says, “Your grief gives me hope, Evangeline.” But the gentleness in his voice fuels my shame. I don’t deserve forgiveness and turn my head away.

“It shows me,” he says, soothing, “you know what you’ve done violates your core identity as a Shield. You were made to protect and defend, to lay down your life for the weak, and now you’ve endangered your friend, betrayed her family and the boy you love to release a killer into the world.”

I hate not being able to cover my face, hate losing it before an audience, and the voice whispers again, That’s your sick pride, your arrogance. The same pride and arrogance that led you to act without Miriam’s knowledge, to scheme and skulk behind everyone’s backs because you thought you knew better. You, a seventeen-year-old girl, not even initiated, not even a proper Shield, counting your own ignorant opinion above everyone else’s. If you were a real Shield like Miriam or Jamie, if you had ever suffered the loss of a Spark, it would never have entered your head to do what you’ve done. Now you’ve threatened the secrecy of the organisation that exists to support and help you.

How can I make up for it?

What is wrong cannot be made right, what is lost cannot be recovered … I know those words – I know them. Then I remember, Jamie’s arms, the bands of ink around his biceps. How many times have I traced the Latin translation on his skin, murmuring the words? Quid est iniuria fieri non posse jus. Illud Quod deperditur non posse eruit. It always made me sad thinking of how he must have felt when he first Sparked, his hope for the future snuffed out, so resigned to his lot that he’d marked himself permanently with such cold, stoic words. Is he right? Have I acted for nothing? Am I lost? How can I make it up to him or his folks? How can I be part of the Affinity Project if they can’t trust me?

The arm and headrests intensify their glow and calm returns, a soothing wave of comfort. I slump against the restraints and my weeping subsides.

“I believe you’ve made a terrible mistake, Evangeline,” Knox says.

“A mistake.”

“If you had been properly educated, brought in upon Activation, taken through Orientation, I do not believe you would have made these mistakes. Your shame and regret are genuine and we share in it. The choices of those around you made room for this outcome.”

A sob swells and breaks from my lips.

“You are not the first to be deceived by unnatural compassion, to hold a conviction based on false hope.”

“Hope?”

“There is no cure for the Stray mutation.”

I get that disoriented feeling like I’ve walked into a room and forgotten why I came in, forgotten what I was looking for. Something I’ve misplaced.

“We are here to help you, Evangeline, to lead you to the truth, to bring you back to us. You have so much potential. You are an Asset. We want you to belong, to rebuild trust.”

Warmth fills my chest. “How?”

“By doing the right thing for you and everyone. Tell me where Aiden is.”

Again that feeling there’s something I need to explain. What is it? “But I don’t know where he is.”

“Perhaps you’ve just forgotten.”

Have I?

“We can help you remember. Would that be easier?”

“I don’t know.”

“Close your eyes. Relax. You’ll feel so much better when the truth comes out.”

The bandwidth is soft and deep and wide. I fall back into it, a fuzzy plummet. My brother’s face foremost in my mind. I see us in the alcove of the detention centre, Kitty pale but determined, Aiden terrified. I feel like we’re nearing the point I’ve been missing when their fingers touch on the coffee table but the scene skips abruptly ahead. I’m leaping the wire fence, kicking the window of the recreation room, grabbing a terrified guard. Another skip. I’m wrestling Aiden in the bathroom of the motel. Kitty’s there in that ridiculous T-shirt from school, Aiden’s cold and unresponsive. I’m lying in the narrow bed pressed against my brother, punching Kitty’s arm where she lies on the other side of him. Then comes a blur, a smudge of images, like trying to see through foggy glass. Instinct tells me it’s important and I focus hard but I can feel the memory wanting to skip ahead. I try to stay on the smudge. I lean towards it, like I’m pressing against an invisible force field, then I’m shoved back and the memory flicks ahead. Pain in my neck. I’m slumped over the vanity. Kitty’s cutting my tracker out. She shows me the tiny silver sphere coated in blood–

Blood.

I jolt like I’ve been poked with a stick and my eyes spring open. On all three screens there is a close-up of the dirty sink hole, the broken tracker pieces swirling in pink bile as they slip down the drain. The image is luridly bright, razor focused in the centre but blurry on the edges, my memories on-screen, like a foreign film with no subtitles or soundtrack.

“Blood.” My throat sticks, a dry croak.

“Evangeline,” Knox says. “You mustn’t resist the Symbiosis - you could hurt yourself. You’re doing so well. This already shows us a great deal. I believe we’re nearly there. You just need to yield.”

I pant through my nose and shake my head, already feeling the important detail slipping from my grasp. “Blood,” I say again. “Blood is the thing.”

“Don’t worry about blood. Relax.”

I throw myself at the detail, a desperate leap into the bandwidth. I not only picture it in my mind but see it on-screen. Aiden on the motel bed, I’m leaning over his arm, a syringe in my hand, drawing his blood into the barrel. That’s it. “He’s deactivated! He’s deactivated! I – I took his blood so we could prove it. He’s not a Stray any more. You can’t kill him. Please. It’s in my pack. Check my pack.”