I press my back against the sealed door. “Others,” I repeat, so confused I’m only able to echo his words. “You mean you’re not the thing that took Flynn?”

Flynn shakes his head. There’s nothing to suggest he’s changed; his eyes are still black, his face still devoid of emotion. “Once, we were all the same. Part of each other. But that was when the rift still connected us. Now we’re alone. And I do not wish for the kind of freedom the others want.”

For the first time since Flynn turned those empty eyes on me, my heart flickers with hope—a tiny, guttering flame that makes my eyes burn. I want so badly to believe the creature. I want so badly not to be alone. But I tighten my grip on the gun as panic sweeps back through me. “It’s a trick,” I spit. “You’re trying to—I don’t know. If you really were different, you’d let Flynn go. You’d give him back to me.”

“We can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t? Upstairs you said you would let him go if I helped you.”

“The others have learned deception. It is a human art, and we have had a very clever teacher.” The thing makes Flynn shake his head. “When we take a mind this deeply, for this long, there is no going back. His mind is still here, but it would be damaged beyond repair if I tried to leave him now.”

Despair surges in me. “You took me over for hours and I’m still here. You made me go to the rebel hideout, and I came back, and I was fine. My mind’s intact.”

“You’re different.” Flynn’s eyes stay on mine, watching me. There’s an odd, probing quality to his gaze. I can’t shake the disturbing feeling that he can see my thoughts.

“Different. Soulless, like the men say?”

“The opposite.” Flynn’s mouth curves into something not very much like a smile, but far from being comforting, it’s just a reminder that it isn’t Flynn, not really. That smile should be his, for me. Not an echo summoned up by the creature infesting his mind. “You and I have met before.”

“You’ve got me confused with someone—”

“We do not have time for me to be gentle,” the whisper interrupts. “I cannot hold off the others forever. You must remember. You are Jubilee Chase, daughter of Mei-Hua and Noah Chase, and we have been together for a very long time.”

It’s like someone’s punched me in the stomach. I can’t breathe, I can’t see—my vision blurs, my hands lose feeling. I gasp for air.

Flynn isn’t done. He’s watching me curiously, as though he’s a scientist observing a particularly fascinating chemical reaction. “You’ve felt our touch before, when we were first learning to understand your kind. When you were young and malleable. This has made you different. This has made your mind stronger. Your soul stronger. We remember you.” He pauses, hesitation briefly so human, so familiar, that I ache. “I remember you.”

“I wasn’t imagining it all.” The fragments of memory refuse to coalesce, leaving me with pieces of truth, too fractured to help me now. “There were whispers on Verona; I thought they were ghosts. I remember….” I swallow a sudden, dizzying sweep of grief. “Then it was the Fury that caused the riots there. You made those people kill my parents?”

“Death does not exist for us. How could we have understood, then, what our keeper was forcing us to do?” His jaw is squaring now, black gaze locked on me.

“Forced,” I echo. “By LaRoux?”

“He told us that if we complied he would send us home. Only after he moved us here from the place you call Verona did we realize his deception, but by then he had learned how to cause us great pain.”

“He’s torturing you.” My stomach roils, sickened, hatred surging for the man I’ve only ever seen in holovids and news feeds.

Flynn nods. “Each time he punishes us the others grow further apart, more and more different. They are lost, alone. And their agony infects your kind; it is what drives them mad.”

“And you? Why are you different?”

“Because I remember you, Jubilee Chase.”

“I’m not special,” I snap. “I’m no more important than anyone else.”

“You’re the most important thing in this universe. You; this vessel; the people of this planet; lovers, warriors, artists, leaders, dreams more numerous than stars. Each mind unique, each thought created for an instant and then broken apart to form new ones. You don’t understand the unbearable beauty of being you.”

My eyes burn, and though I try to reach for detachment, the barrier of stone that saw me through the years since my parents’ deaths, my voice shakes when I speak. “We can still feel alone.”

The whisper gazes back at me through Flynn’s eyes. I feel hollow, as hollow as that stare; and yet there’s a knot of sympathy smoldering in the back of my mind. Perhaps I can’t understand the agony of true isolation; but right now, looking at Flynn, inches from me but infinitely far away, I feel like I can imagine it.

“You wished to be an explorer,” the creature says, still holding my gaze. “You wished to explore the seas and the stars. You dreamed of it so brightly.” Behind him, the white room is changing. Blue and green unfurl from the walls, spilling across the floor, enveloping me. Seaweeds and corals sprout like flowers, and a million kinds of fish, each one a different color, dart here and there.