“Pause,” the director says beside me.

The scene around us halts abruptly, like a movie stilled in three dimensions. The waving arms of the audience freeze, their voices go suddenly silent, the countdown stops.

Min walks around the scene, studying the walls and the crowd. Daniel waves me forward, and I walk uneasily through my frozen memory with him. My brother stops before one of the halls on the other side of the room, where my memory of it goes a little fuzzy. It translates as a grainy view before us.

Daniel points to one of the halls. “Dominic Hann came out of there,” he says to the director. It’s something I hadn’t seen in the heat of the moment.

The director nods before she shifts to analyzing the crowd. We walk through the scene again until we reach the center of the arena. She points out a face near the front of the audience. “There,” she says. “One of Hann’s men. They were running this show.”

Daniel calls for the scene to continue. As if in a dream, I see myself with my drone, then everything that happens in the race.

“Pause.” This time, Daniel says it, and my drone halts in midair. He nods down to the corner of my memory’s scene, where the blur of the audience’s faces is. He points to the man that the director just called out as one of Dominic Hann’s people.

The man isn’t watching anymore. He’s standing up, exchanging a few words with someone else as his eyes dart toward me.

The race continues. We halt the scene several more times whenever my view returns to show Hann’s person. The man walks out with another associate as the race ends, and they disappear into the hall that Daniel pointed out earlier.

Then an hour later, halfway through the second heat, I see Hann emerge.

Daniel sucks his breath in, while Director Min lets out a low whistle. Her eyes veer to me. “So,” she says, “Hann came out to the race specifically to see you.”

Even as I hear her words, the scene continues to play, and I see the virtual version of Dominic Hann walk up to me. The unease that ran through me then—the instinct that told me this man was someone unusual—now washes back over me.

He looks so realistic that, for a moment, I genuinely believe he’s in the room with us. I take an unconscious step back as he approaches me. The virtual world around us shudders and blurs, and a haze fades the images around us.

Daniel steps toward me. “Pause. Clear,” he says, his gaze on his director. The scene halts, and Dominic Hann and the Undercity fade into white before the AIS chamber comes back into view. “Give him a rest. His emotions are interfering with the quality of the memory playback.”

“I can do this,” I say to him.

But the director’s not paying attention to Daniel anymore. Instead, her stare is fixed on me. She narrows her eyes. “What were you doing down in the Undercity, Mr. Wing?” she asks me. “You know drone races are strictly banned.”

She’s going to dock my Level hard for this, I know, but in this moment, I hardly care. My lips tighten into a line. “I don’t think it’s relevant to why you needed me here,” I reply.

She raises an eyebrow at me and glances at my brother. “Well, I see where he gets his attitude from,” she says wryly to him before returning her attention to me. “We’ll need to pull an earlier memory from you, of how you heard about this race and what sent you down there.”

Pressa. If the director digs as intimately into that memory as she did to my journey down to the Undercity, she’ll have AIS agents questioning Pressa in no time.

I cross my arms and frown at the director. “You said you just wanted my memory from last night. I didn’t authorize anything beyond that.”

“You are obliged to aid us in this investigation as we need it. That includes your past memories, including your thoughts and any dreams you might have had recently.”

My nightmares. And suddenly I can feel those haunting dreams of mine creeping up in the back of my mind, a faceless mother and a desolate Republic street, details I’ve never been able to fill in. The AIS system shudders around me as it tries to re-create the images popping up in my thoughts. No, I think, trying to hold back. Fear rips through me. I don’t want to show them.

I half expect Daniel to agree with her, to turn to me and insist that I answer her question properly. But he takes a step toward his director. “You’re not digging into his other memories,” he says. His voice is calm, but I can hear the familiar undercurrent of steel in it.

And, for once, I’m grateful.

The AIS system around me cuts off abruptly, along with the emerging whispers of my dreams. I let out a shaking breath.

The director turns to my brother with an exasperated look. This isn’t the first time he has disagreed with her. “Watch that tone, Agent,” she says.

He shakes his head. “Doesn’t change what I’m saying, ma’am.”

The director looks like she’s ready to reprimand him—but then she sighs and looks back at me. I hold my breath. “We’ll comb through the rest of the Undercity memory you’ve given us,” she finally says. I exhale. Before the relief can linger, though, she adds, “But that doesn’t mean your involvement on this case is done.”

Daniel speaks up again. “Director—”

“Stand down, Agent,” she snaps, and Daniel quiets into a scowl. She looks back at me. “You are the first person in months to get a glimpse of Dominic Hann, let alone direct access to him. When I tell you that this man does not just let you play a single game with him, I mean it. Hann likes to get what he wants, and he’s clearly expressed interest in you.”

She forces my memory to continue playing, and we watch the final moments go down before she pauses at the end of the race, right before the lights cut out, when Hann has risen from his seat. I didn’t notice it myself—but in that final moment, he had his eyes fixed on me as he murmured something to his associate. They were getting ready to approach me.

The director places a hand on her hip. “I’m willing to bet anything that he was about to make you an offer to join him. It’s not the kind of offer you can turn down.”

The thought makes my stomach recoil. Daniel stiffens beside me.

“Enough,” Daniel says.

Min ignores him and focuses on me. “Our proposal is this: We need you to draw him out. We will track every movement you make. If you lure Hann out into a space where our agents are ready for him, we can take him down before he can escape.”

My face pales. Daniel steps in front of me, his arm instinctively pushing me behind him as he’d done when I was still a kid. “You want to use him as a mole?” he snaps. Now the real anger is out.

“You are an agent for the AIS,” the director snaps back. “And right now, Eden is the sole link between us and the man we’ve been hunting.” She looks back at me. Even though she is stern, there’s a pleading glint in her eyes. “I am not going to force you to do something you’re uncomfortable with. This all depends on what you decide. But you are the closest thing we have to a lead, and it’s an overwhelming one. We are going to do everything in our power to keep you safe.”

“But we can’t guarantee that,” Daniel adds.

“Do you run this agency, Wing?” Min says coldly to him.