I try to walk around him but he sidesteps in front of me. His eyes have gone from troubled to sympathetic. It makes my stomach tighten. “There’s something else,” he says.

He sighs, only making my gut squeeze tighter. “This probably isn’t the best time to tell you this, but we gave you our word. We have some news about Manchester.”

I thought they forgot about that. I had almost forgotten myself. “Did you find something?”

He nods. “They got into the labs. They had to burn the whole place down to cover their tracks, but they found something.”

I close my eyes. I know what the something is. I’m not sure I can take any more bad news right now, not one more complication. “Are they bringing it to me?”

“It’s here. Right now.” He tilts his head gesturing behind him. “Over there.”

A beat-up plumber’s truck is parked outside the apartment. Jake stands next to it. I take a couple of deep breaths. Hold it together, Locke. “Have him bring it up.”

“He can’t.” Xavier signals him and Jake rolls up the back door of the truck.

I’m not sure how long I stand there before I start hearing again; how long before I start seeing again. Xavier grabs my injured arm where a deep wound is still healing and the shooting pain brings me back to the present.

“They’re labeled with two names,” he says. “Kara Manning and Locke Jenkins. About a hundred of each.”

Row after row of six-inch cubes all attached to battery docks, like houses on a city block. A whole city of nothing but Kara and myself.

“What should we do with them?”

A hundred possible Karas. Maybe one who is whole, or maybe a hundred who are the wreckage of an experiment gone wrong. A hundred Lockes, each one still trapped in a world of endless black corridors that have no beginnings or endings, still begging for a way out. A hundred Lockes listening to the tortured screams of Kara. But maybe one Locke who is more than me. Better than me. A whole city of uploaded minds—spares—that might have been forgotten for another two centuries on a storage shelf, or used as floor models all over the world. Hari still had dollar signs in his eyes even after Gatsbro’s death.

“What do you want us to do with them?” he repeats.

I look at him, trying to understand his words. Do with them?

I always thought I knew what I would do. But a hundred. Maybe one that is—

I shake my head. I can’t think. “You’re right. This is a bad time.”

Right now all I can manage to do is to stay the course.

Suspects

I walk around the small basement apartment, making my promised appearance, but also needing to ask Miesha something. The apartment takes up about half of the basement of the gallery. I look up at the small window that looks out at street level. Everything about the basement is different from when Kara and I used to hang out here with Jenna, except for the stone walls and the windows. “It doesn’t look anything like I remember.”

“It’s been centuries. The whole house has been gutted and restored several times over,” Jenna says. “It took some hits during the Civil Division too, and that had to be repaired. Only father’s study on the second floor is still intact with all the original walls and contents—right down to the books in his library and the pen on his desk. I guess when you create something as groundbreaking as Bio Gel, people want to get a glimpse of the mind that created it. But most of the house is devoted to the art gallery now.”

“It’s strange to think you’ve been here before,” Miesha says. “I keep forgetting how far back you two go.” She walks over and brushes hair aside that hangs over my eye, like she’s still my caretaker at Gatsbro’s estate. “You’re looking better than you did yesterday.”

“What else would you expect?” I answer, trying to put her at ease. I even add one of my impish grins.

She balks. “Don’t even try to use that on me. I know you too well.”

I put away the smile and pretense. “You do know me, Miesha. And there’s something I need to know about you. But no questions asked.”

She delivers a long slow blink, clearly not fond of conditional information, but waits silently for me to continue.

“When you lived in Cambridge with Karden all those years ago, who knew your address?” She looks startled and I tell her I’m only curious, trying to piece together the early activities of the Resistance. “I remember you told me that you and Karden lived under the radar and moved frequently, but you must have told some people where you lived.”

She shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have done it, but when we returned to Boston I contacted my parents. I wanted them to see their only grandchild. I thought if they saw Rebecca, that might change things between us, but they refused to come. They rejected her the same as they rejected me. They would never accept me being with Karden.”

She pauses, looking down as her hand slides over her scarred forearm, the lasting proof that her long-ago nightmare really happened. Her gaze jerks back to me. “But if you’re wondering how Security found us, it wasn’t them. My parents had plenty of opportunities to turn me in before but they never did. They may have hated Karden but they didn’t hate me. I told you before that Karden had been working on his next maneuver. We stayed in Cambridge longer than we had ever stayed anywhere before. Too long. I think Security must have traced his activity.”

“And no one else knew your address?”