“That doesn’t make any sense.”

He ignores me. Glances at Juliette. Her eyes are closed, her head resting against the wall behind her. She seems almost asleep, except for the tears still streaking softly down her face.

It kills me just to look at her.

“As you can see,” my father says, “she’s a bit out of her mind right now. Heavily sedated. She’s been through a great deal these last two years. We had no choice but to turn her into a sort of guinea pig. I’m sure you can imagine how that goes.”

He stares at me with a slight smile on his face. I know he’s waiting for something. A reaction. My anger.

I refuse to give it to him.

His smile widens.

“Anyhow,” he says happily, “I’m going to put her back in isolation for the next six months—maybe a year, depending on how things develop. You can use that opportunity to prepare. To observe her.”

But I’m still fighting back my anger. I can’t bring myself to speak.

“Is there a problem?” he says.

“No.”

“You remember, of course, the warning I gave you the last time she was here.”

“Of course,” I say, my voice flat. Dead.

And then, as if out of nowhere: “How is Lena, by the way? I hope she’s well.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

It’s barely there, but I catch the sudden shift in his voice. The anger when he says, “And why is that?”

“I broke things off with her last week.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me?”

Finally, I meet his eyes. “I never understood why you wanted us to be together. She’s not right for me. She never was.”

“You don’t love her, you mean.”

“I can’t imagine how anyone would.”

“That,” he says, “is exactly why she’s perfect for you.”

I blink at him, caught off guard. For a moment, it almost sounded like my father cared about me. Like he was trying to protect me in some perverse, idiotic way.

Eventually, he sighs.

He picks up a pen and a pad of paper and begins writing something down. “I’ll see what I can do about repairing the damage you’ve done. Lena’s mother must be hysterical. Until then, get to work.” He nods at the stack of files he’s set before me.

Reluctantly, I pick a folder off the top.

I glance through the documents, scanning the general outline of the mission, and then I look up at him, stunned. “Why does the paperwork make it sound like this was my idea?”

He hesitates. Puts down his pen. “Because you don’t trust me.”

I stare at him, struggling to understand.

He tilts his head. “If you knew this was my idea, you’d never trust it, would you? You’d look too closely for holes. Conspiracies. You’d never follow through the way I’d want you to. Besides,” he says, picking up his pen again. “Two birds. One stone. It’s time to finally break the cycle.”

I replace the folder on the pile. I’m careful to temper the tone of my voice when I say, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about your new experiment,” he says coolly. “Your little tragedy. This,” he says, gesturing between me and Juliette. “This needs to end. And she is unlikely to return your affections when she wakes up to discover you are not her friend but her oppressor. Isn’t she?”

And I can no longer keep the fury or the hysteria out of my voice when I say, “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you purposely torturing me?”

“Is it so crazy to imagine that I might be trying to do you a favor?” My father smiles. “Look more closely at those files, son. If you’ve ever wanted a chance at saving your mother—this might be it.”

I’ve become obsessed with time.

Still, I can only guess at how long I’ve been here, staring at these walls without reprieve. No voices, only the occasional warped sounds of faraway speech. No faces, not a single person to tell me where I am or what awaits me. I’ve watched the shadows chase the light in and out of my cell for weeks, their motions through the small window my only hope for marking the days.

A slim, rectangular slot in my door opens with sudden, startling force, the aperture shot through with what appears to be artificial light on the other side.

I make a mental note.

A single, steaming bun—no tray, no foil, no utensils—is shoved through the slot and my reflexes are still fast enough to catch the bread before it touches the filthy floor. I have enough sense to understand that the little food I’m given every day is poisoned. Not enough to kill me. Just enough to slow me down. Slight tremors rock my body, but I force my eyes to stay open as I turn the soft bun around in my hand, searching its flaky skin for information. It’s unmarked. Unextraordinary. It could mean nothing.

There’s no way to be sure.

This ritual happens exactly twice a day. I am fed an insignificant, tasteless portion of food twice a day. For hours at a time my thoughts slur; my mind swims and hallucinates. I am slow. Sluggish.

Most days, I fast.

To clear my head, to cleanse my body of the poison, and to collect information. I have to find my way out of here before it’s too late.

Some nights, when I’m at my weakest, my imagination runs wild; my mind is plagued by horrible visions of what might’ve happened to her. It’s torture not knowing what they’ve done with her. Not knowing where she is, not knowing how she is, not knowing if someone is hurting her.

But the nightmares are perhaps the most disconcerting.

At least, I think they’re nightmares. It’s hard to separate fact from fiction, dreams from reality; I spend too much time with poison running through my veins. But Nazeera’s words to me before the symposium—her warning that Juliette was someone else, that Max and Evie are her true, biological parents . . .

I didn’t want to believe it then.

It seemed a possibility too perverse to be real. Even my father had lines he wouldn’t cross, I told myself. Even The Reestablishment had some sense of invented morality, I told myself.

But I saw them as I was carried away—I saw the familiar faces of Evie and Maximillian Sommers—the supreme commander of Oceania and her husband. And I’ve been thinking of them ever since.

They were the key scientists of our group, the quiet brains of The Reestablishment. They were military, yes, but they were medical. The pair often kept to themselves. I had few memories of them until very recently.

Until Ella appeared in my mind.

But I don’t know how to be sure that what I’m seeing is real. I have no way of knowing that this isn’t simply another part of the torture. It’s impossible to know. It’s agony, boring a hole through me. I feel like I’m being assaulted on both sides—mental and physical—and I don’t know where or how to begin fighting back. I’ve begun clenching my teeth so hard it’s causing me migraines. Exhaustion feasts, slowly, on my mind. I’m fairly certain I’ve got at least two fractured ribs, and my only hours of rest are achieved standing up, the single position that eases the pain in my torso. It’d be easy to give up. Give in. But I can’t lose myself to these mind games.