Grief like a geyser, for the memory of Jamie’s hands on a blue blouse, for a lacy cream bra and a slender neck, for the words of the sanction on her lips, for everything I didn’t see. I force myself to picture what would have followed, brutalising my imagination with her hands on his chest, at his waist, on his belt. Him laying her down, his mouth on her neck, his weight on her hips. Her hands on his back, tracing his scars and her – her not fainting.

My jealousy is a monstrous, roaring, fevered thing and I’m blind and insensible until I’m sore all over from clenching my muscles, hoarse and half-suffocated from tears and sheer exhaustion in a pain-weakened body.

He said – he told me it wasn’t like that between them. Not “together” together. Not touching or kissing or taking clothes off “together”.

Is that what he said?

And I don’t know if that doubt is the Proxy or me. Is that what he said? Had I just wanted to believe it wasn’t like that to justify giving in to my own pathetic and insistent want of him? And what use is jealousy over someone I’ve lost all rights to? Aren’t I the betrayer of trust? The Proxy’s words stab at me. You’re a liar and a sneak, Evangeline. You only think about yourself. Then I’m falling again into darkness, the bandwidth like a chasm as I plunge.

PRISONER

“Do you know why it’s a secret?” The Proxy. Her cool slim hand holds mine. She tugs my arm.

When I open my eyes, I am standing again in ReProg, this time it’s my own body strapped in the chair. Tesla and Knox’s voices echo faintly in the background. I look terrible, like I’m having a massive seizure, my face contorting, my body straining beneath the restraints. I watch repulsed as wetness spreads on the front of my gown and trickles from the edge of the seat, a translucent yellow spatter on the concrete floor. Somehow I’m dry where I stand.

“Sorry about that,” she says. “It was bound to happen.”

I try to yank free from her grasp but I’m too weak.

“Don’t do that.” She squeezes my hand, grinding my finger bones. “Don’t fight me. I told you before, what use is it if you become a vegetable?”

“What do you want?” I lean away from her.

“I asked you a question. Do you know why it’s a secret?”

“What?”

“Your parents, your birth, your brother – God, what else?” She squints at me like I’m simple. “Did Miriam explain it to you, or not?”

“She – she said it would be dangerous if anyone knew.”

She nods at my body in the chair. I’ve stopped seizing. My eyes are closed and I seem to be asleep. The Proxy turns to me and searches my face. “I’m sorry.” She nods at the screen. “It was cruel of me to show you that. Childish. But, wow, the whole Synergist jealousy thing is something else.”

I don’t reply, partly because I’m exhausted and confused by the sudden turns and mostly because I don’t want to talk about Jamie and Helena. I don’t trust myself not to lose it. I want to crawl into my bed and sleep and never wake.

“Brünnhilde,” she says with a smirk.

Wrong-footed, I look at her blankly. “What?”

“She was a warrior queen from Norse mythology. Isn’t that what Ethan calls you?”

I scowl at the teasing in her voice, embarrassed to know Tesla has been making fun of me.

“No, it suits you,” she says. Then changing tack, “You shouldn’t be angry with Jamie. You can’t blame him for having a past relationship. It wasn’t like he cheated on you. Besides, it might not even mean what you think it means. It can be hard to know what to believe.”

“It’s none of your business.”

She gives a brittle laugh. “Everything is my business, otherwise they wouldn’t float me in the tank.”

She looks back over her shoulder at the black glass. There in cinematic display is my memory of the night after Barb shot me. Jamie sits in Kitty’s reading chair, pulling his shirt up over his head, balling the fabric in his hands, his expression uncertain. My hand reaches out and strokes his cheek. The moment of relief. Seeing it feels like a knuckle pressing a bruise in my chest. My voice hitches. “You’re sick …”

Impossibly, the scene changes point of view. There I am, half naked and cradling my bandaged arm.

How is the Proxy doing it?

“Practice.”

It’s like an external camera moving slowly around Jamie and me. Pitifully, it’s the sight of my hair spilling down my back and Jamie’s hands tangling in it that makes me want to cry, but then it’s the whole scene, the slow unspoken exchange of reconciliation, shadows slipping over our skin as we find our way back to each other.

But overriding it all, there’s violation, humiliation, shame. My private memories exposed. I hate knowing Tesla can see it. Knox. All of them like a pack of voyeurs. I want to shout and swear and beat the screen with my fists. Helpless tears blur my vision, wet my cheeks.

The Proxy sniffs next to me, her silver eyes huge and swimming. “This is my favourite. Even more than the willow, and seriously, I love the willow, but this is … raw. You should feel it in Jamie’s memory.” She rolls her eyes up, fills a sigh with yearning.

My skin crawls.

“It’s a crime you haven’t slept with him.” She wipes her cheeks with her free hand and chuckles at my scowl. “It is. The whole Synergist buzz. It’s like a drug. Better than drugs and he’s divine and you’d be good at it. I can tell.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Don’t be embarrassed, I know you want to be with him.” She smirks. “It won’t be long. Your body is already adjusting, your nervous system catching up to your signal. Soon you won’t faint any more. I suppose if you’re desperate you could sleep with a regular boy. It’s just, ugh, why would you want some No-Signal-Civ?”

“Let me go.”

“Do you want me to tell you if he slept with her? I know you were thinking about it.”

I jerk my arm. “Go to hell.”

“I could show you.”

I squeeze her hand hard to hurt her, but my strength evaporates and my arm turns limp.

“Don’t,” she says, the humour gone from her face.

“Then what do you want?” I jerk my head at the screen, where the scene has skipped to the morning after the gunshot, my body entwined with Jamie’s on the recliner, mouths and hands roaming. “To humiliate me, torture me, make me piss myself, threaten me with brain damage? To get your perverted kicks? What else?”

“Not much,” she says, keeping her expression even. “Maybe a little sunshine. Fresh air.”

Like I’ve walked into a pole, I blink, dazed and slow to understand. “Sunshine?” Then comes an icy sliver of realisation.

She’s a prisoner.

“Slave.” Her eyes flit over my face, a slight tremor in her lips.

I feel it then, in the bandwidth. Like a giant wave stopped mid-peak, its shadow stretches out across my mind. Rage, hopelessness, desperation. She’s holding it back but I can sense the weight behind it. She could crush me, drown me in a static super-storm, leave me dribbling and incoherent, lost in my own mind. It’s frightening, her power and despair. Then my tears aren’t for me. Though I don’t invite them, they come. “Stop.”

“Not very nice, is it? Being forced to feel? You get to choose when you Transfer or Harvest. I’ve never had a choice.”

I swipe the moisture from my face, shaky in the aftermath.

“Don’t get me wrong; there are okay bits like love and sex, if it’s not gross stuff, but mostly it’s dire. That’s a good word isn’t it?” Her eyes move towards the door. “Felicity says it a lot.”

There’s warmth in her voice for the older woman. She likes her.

“Mostly.”

I wonder if she’s her mother, but I think Felicity’s too old.

“Close as I’ll get to one,” the Proxy says. “Felicity’s more like a keeper, but I’m not supposed to call her that. It upsets her. She can be kind and she likes to look after me. I guess I’m as close as she’ll get to a daughter.”