I stop abruptly. There are prison cells lining the walls.

“Remember who you are,” Lachlan says under his breath. By which he means, remember who I’m supposed to be. A young psychology student with her Center guide, come to interview the renegade Ash about why he would betray his home, his very species. My knowledge, through my father, of the workings of high-level Center medicine will allow me to answer at least the most basic questions anyone might throw at me.

“I think the me I’m pretending to be would still be surprised at this.”

I’ve seen the violent side of Eden, but I haven’t seen it institutionalized.

Walls and bars. Through some of them I see fingers straining. For what? For aid, for food, for freedom?

Civics vids always talk about how there’s so little crime in Eden. Who would steal, or kill, when to steal is to take food from the entire human species, to kill is to end a statistically staggering percentage of the surviving human population? I suppose there aren’t many prisoners in comparison to the entire population of Eden. I can see maybe a hundred cells spread along in diminishing perspective down the long rectangular room. But there are far too many for a society that claims to be a utopia. I wonder how many people, normal people, know about this place?

Two burly guards stand at the entrance. I expected them to be armed, but oddly, they aren’t.

“We’re here to see prisoner eighty-nine,” Lachlan says brusquely, twirling a pen cleverly around his fingers. There’s another stuck behind his ear.

“You’re not on the list,” one of the guards says without moving.

“Request should have been forwarded while we were en route.” Lachlan sounds supremely bored, and adds a yawn for good measure. “Overtime for me, firing for my secretary.” He shrugs, and gestures to me over his shoulder with his thumb. “I have to shepherd this one around to make the boss happy.” He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Boss’s pet.” He winks, and I look uncomfortable. Not a hard act under the circumstances.

“Do you need him out of the cell?” the guard asks.

Lachlan looks at me, and I play my part, saying primly, “The psychology of the deranged mind cannot be properly explored through bars.” I fiddle with the clipboard in my hands, taking out the attached pen and slipping it back again. “It is important to understand what inspires these societal aberrations so that we can nip such actions in the bud.” I hope I sound like a pure academic without any motivations beyond proving myself to my lead professor. I practiced the pedantic tone a lot.

I see Lachlan roll his eyes. “Wants to rehabilitate him, probably.”

“Too late for this one,” I snap, “but maybe we can help other people before they go astray.”

Lachlan clenches his hand and pummels his other palm. “There’s only one way to correct people like this,” he says. “The fist if you catch them early, and a more terminal solution if the fist doesn’t work.”

The guard laughs and, recognizing a like-minded man in the young official Lachlan pretends to be, waves us through to another man, who waves a handheld device over us, checking us for weapons. I assumed we’d bring the guns, but Lachlan said no. No weapons are allowed in the secure area, not even for the guards. Lachlan says this will make everything easier. When there are weapons, people die . . . and some of those people might be us.

All we have to do is get Ash out of his cell.

The guard escorts us to a stark room that is bare except for two chairs, a table with built-in hand restraints, and a dark tinted window I can’t see through. “Wait here,” he says. “I’ll bring the prisoner to you.”

“Lachlan,” I whisper, “there will be someone watching.” I tilt my head toward the window. “And if he’s handcuffed to the table . . .”

“Shh,” he cautions. “It just means we have to act right away.” The original plan was to pretend to interrogate him until we were sure the guards were in the right position. I thought I had a few minutes to brace myself, to take a few more deep breaths. I’m not ready for this!

But I have to be.

“We have to do it outside, in the main room,” Lachlan says, so we step out of the interview chamber.

“Psst!” I hear from the cell next to the interview room. Lachlan shakes his head. Don’t get involved. Focus, he seems to project. But I can’t help looking.

It’s a small, portly man I don’t recognize. He’s dressed in a gray prison uniform, and there are marks on the exposed skin of his face and hands that look like burns. He creeps up to me then says the most frightening thing of all. “I know who you are.”

My eyes fly open wide in horror. He’s speaking in a low voice now, but all he has to do is shout, get a guard’s attention, and we’re done for. “What do you want?” I hiss.

To my dismay, he starts to blubber. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tell them, I swear.”

He might know me, but I have no idea who he might be. “Who are you?”

He says a name I don’t know. “Clayton Hill.” Then he adds, “You look so much like your mother, and your brother. I’m so sorry she was killed. It’s all my fault.” Tears stream down his pudgy cheeks. “I didn’t even hold out very long. I couldn’t. They . . . they . . .” He holds up his hands, showing the burn marks. “Then they told me she was killed. That was worse than the torture. She was such a lovely person. Such a big, kind heart.”

Can it be? “You’re . . . the Center official who was helping her?”

He holds his hands through the bars in supplication now. “Forgive me, please. Forgive me for not being strong enough.”

It wasn’t Lark. It wasn’t her fault. The bitterness that had consumed me at the thought that she, however inadvertently, brought about Mom’s death evaporates.

I have to force myself to turn away because the guard is bringing Ash out now. His hands are bound behind his back, his pale, confused face bruised. He’s staggering; the guard has to hold him up. Is he drugged? For a second his bleary eyes see nothing. Then he seems to wake up, and in a horrible moment, before I can flash him a warning gesture, before he can figure things out himself, he blurts out, “Rowan? What are you doing here?”

Bikk! The guards flanking Ash look confused. We could probably play it off, say he was drugged, confused, or attempting a ruse, that he’s never seen me before. But suspicions once roused are hard to quell, and we only have one chance at this.