In a third one, both of them look a little older. They’re sitting in front of a TV—an older model that probably dates back at least seven or eight years—and on the screen, a thirteen-year-old Hideo is walking out onto a press stage to be greeted by an avalanche of flashing lights. He looks so unsure of himself at that age, lanky and shy-eyed, his clothes baggy and ill-fitting, his demeanor little more than a passing resemblance to the man he would become. He greets the reporters with a nervous wave.

Sasuke grips Jax’s arm. For an instant, the smile on his face is a genuine one. “That’s my brother, Jax!” he exclaims, pointing at the screen. “There! He’s on TV! You see him? Look at him! He’s so much taller!” His eyes are wide-open, shiny with new tears, fixated on the TV as if terrified the broadcast will stop. “Don’t I look like him? Do you think he’s looking for me? Do you think he’s thinking about me?”

He still cared for his brother then. I tear my gaze away. It’s too hard to watch.

Beside me, Jax watches with a grim calmness. “It was part of Taylor’s study, you know, letting him watch the TV,” she says.

“Why?” I ask.

Jax only nods as the scene ends and another starts to play. “You’ll see.”

Sasuke is crouching back in the same dark bedroom in the next scene. He’s thinner this time, alarmingly so, his arms whittled down to sharp limbs and his eyes hauntingly large in his small face. How many years has it been? His illness must be eating away at him.

This time, when the door opens, he sits up straight and stares sidelong at Taylor.

“How do you feel today, Sasuke?” Taylor asks him.

Sasuke is quiet, his child eyes regarding her with a look of suspicion beyond his years. His hands are still clutching the blue scarf. Then, he says, “I’ll make a deal with you.”

These stern words coming from such a small boy makes Taylor laugh.

“Let me skip today, and I’ll eat my dinner.”

Now the woman laughs in earnest. When she finally stops, she shakes her head at Sasuke. “I’m afraid not. You can’t skip a day. You know that.”

Sasuke gives her a thoughtful look. “Let me skip, and I’ll give you my scarf.”

At that, Taylor regards him with a curious smile. “You love that scarf,” she says in a coaxing voice. “We can’t even pry it from you in your sleep. Surely you can’t be serious, giving it up just for a day off.”

“I’m serious,” Sasuke says.

I lean forward, unable to tear my attention away from the exchange.

Taylor walks over to Sasuke, stares down at him for a moment, and then holds out a hand. “The scarf,” she says.

“My free day,” Sasuke replies, his hands still tight around the cloth.

“You have my word. You won’t be at the labs today. We won’t bother you. Take your time and rest here. Tomorrow, we’ll start again.”

Sasuke stares at her. Finally, his fingers loosen on the scarf. When she takes it, I can see Sasuke’s hands visibly tremble, as if it took all of his strength not to lunge for the scarf right then and there. But he hands it over, without making so much as a sound.

Taylor looks at the scarf, then tightens her hands around it and turns to leave the room. “We’ll see you the day after tomorrow, Sasuke-kun,” she says over her shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”

Sasuke doesn’t reply, and he doesn’t cry. He doesn’t crouch like he did in the first video I saw of him, either. He just stares calmly, carefully, as Taylor leaves the room, closing the door softly behind her. When it clicks shut, Sasuke’s shoulders droop. His hands clutch instinctively for the scarf that is no longer around his neck. When I look closer, I realize that he’s wiping tears away. Then he jumps to his feet, walks up to the security cam, and breaks it.

I startle. The tape buzzes with static. When it plays again, I see Sasuke struggling wildly in bonds, in a coldly lit room. Nearby is Taylor, watching him with a calm, cool expression. “And who helped you try to escape, Sasuke-kun?” Taylor asks.

Sasuke doesn’t look at her. His eyes are fixed instead on the door leading out of the room, like he might be able to will himself out of the lab. When Taylor walks over to him, standing purposely between him and the door, his eyes finally shift up to the woman.

“Who helped you try to escape, Sasuke?” she repeats.

Sasuke stays quiet.

When he still doesn’t answer, Taylor shakes her head and motions for one of her researchers to bring a young girl forward. My eyes widen. She has shorter hair here, but she is unmistakably Jax. She follows the researcher obediently to stand beside her mother, and the sight of Jax in such a frightened state is so odd that I can hardly believe it’s her.

“Did Jackson help you?” Taylor asks, still in that cool, calm tone.

Sasuke shakes his head again, although now his eyes are on Jax. I walk invisibly around in the recording, noticing how Sasuke’s leather bonds are stretched tight now, his arms so tense that I can see a vein standing out against his skin. He still doesn’t answer.

Taylor nods once at the others. As I look on, they loosen Sasuke’s bonds, so that his wrists and ankles are suddenly free.

Sasuke doesn’t even hesitate. He bolts upright and leaps off the table, his eyes narrowed at the door. But the others are already moving, too. Taylor reaches for young Jax’s wrist, drags her forward, and pulls her toward the same bench that Sasuke had been strapped to only moments earlier.

“Come here, my love,” Taylor says to her.

This movement is the only thing that makes Sasuke freeze near the door. Jax whimpers, too afraid to run as her mother ushers her up onto the bench.

“You want to leave so badly, don’t you, Sasuke?” Taylor says soothingly to him as a researcher begins to wipe Jax’s temples with a damp cloth.

Sasuke watches with a frozen expression. It takes me a moment to recognize that expression as fear. Temptation. Guilt.

“Then go. Die out there instead of letting us save you,” Taylor says, turning her back on Sasuke and focusing her attention now on Jax. “You aren’t the only patient we have in our ranks, and your progress has been slower than I would have expected. If you’re unwilling to cooperate, then I’ll simply have to replace you with someone else. Jax has always been the alternative for our study.”

The girl stares at Sasuke with a desperate expression, but doesn’t plead. Instead, she shakes her head. Go, she seems to be insisting.

Taylor turns around to meet Sasuke’s paralyzed gaze. “Well? The doors are unlocked. What are you waiting for?”

And for a moment, it really does look like Sasuke will make a run for it. There are no guards stopping him, no one looking his way. Taylor is too far away to catch him. No one will come for him, not if he runs now.

But he stands there and doesn’t move. His hands clench and unclench, his eyes darting from the woman to Jax, his expression tight.

Taylor sighs. “You’re making me impatient,” she says, turning back toward Jax.

Sasuke takes a step toward them. The movement is enough to make Taylor pause. Sasuke meets Jax’s eyes, then takes another step forward. When he speaks, he tries to keep his voice steady, but I can hear the trembling in it. “She’s not a part of the program.”

Taylor doesn’t move to release her. “You have so much potential, Sasuke,” she says. “But I need you to choose, and choose decisively. If you want to leave, then leave. We won’t come after you. But you know you are the only one this entire experiment hinges on, and what you do could change everything. The results of your study could save millions of lives. It could save your life. We’ve all worked so hard for you. And here you are, ready to throw it all away.” She gives Sasuke a disappointed look.

Even though Sasuke still seems afraid to step forward, I can also see hints of guilt on his face, Taylor’s manipulation wrapping around him like a vise. As if he’d suddenly owed this operation something, like he’d felt obligated to her—but most of all, like whatever happens to Jax will be his fault if he leaves. He meets her gaze now, and I can see traces of that unspoken bond between them, the accumulation of their days spent together and their nights huddled away in a nook.

I find myself wishing silently for Sasuke to turn and run away, to leave it all behind. Of course, he doesn’t. Instead, I see his shoulders droop again, his head lower ever so slightly, and him take the first steps away from the door and back toward the lab table.

“Let her go now,” he says to Taylor about Jax. On the table, Jax shoots a bewildered look at him, some panicked expression telling him not to do it.

Taylor smiles. “And you’re not going to run.”

“I’m not going to run.”

“And you’re going to commit to this.”

Sasuke hesitates, briefly meeting the woman’s eyes. “I will,” he replies.

The recording ends. I realize that my heart is beating so fast now that I’ve had to sit down on the floor of my room.

The next scene is dated only a month later, but Sasuke is a little taller, his limbs longer and his body ganglier. The most noticeable change on him is a single, thin strip of black metal now running along the side of his head, where part of his hair has been newly buzzed again. He’s back in the same laboratory, and answering a series of questions from the same technician who had been working with Taylor before.

“State your name.”

“Sasuke Tanaka.”

“Your age.”

“Twelve.”

I do the quick calculation. By this point, Hideo was fourteen, I was eleven, and Warcross had already become an international phenomenon, the NeuroLink welcomed into millions of households.

“Your city of birth.”

“London.”

“What is the name of your brother?”

“Hideo Tanaka.”

“Your mother?”

“Mina Tanaka.”

The questions go on for a while, a long list of simple facts and details about his life. I watch Sasuke’s face as he mentions the names of his loved ones—and for the first time, I notice that he doesn’t seem to react to the names. No flinch. No wince. There is recognition that sparks in his eyes, but it is as if he were saying the names of acquaintances instead of his family members.