I’d spent years after that apologizing to her for being an asshole when I was a kid. I still have voicemails saved, just to hear her voice. How she’d tell me everything would be alright, even when it might not. The advice she’d serve up with instant coffee and buttered toast in the morning when I’d visit her years later, hungover from an editing bender. I know I’m a wallower—“You ruminate,” Narek had told me, in therapist-speak—but I hate that she never got to see me be someone.

A near-death experience, a mom who would sit with an infuriatingly calm face while I screamed at her about how everything was bullshit and I was going to sneak out and do whatever fuck else I wanted, plus a few doc assignments that had me at the wrong end of a cop’s bullhorn taught me how to cram my feelings in a lockbox and keep cool. All of which came in handy as I followed Kaori through the hallways, ignoring the part of me that wanted to run for the exits. Instead, I badgered her until she plucked a two-way radio from her belt and asked Yusuf to take me to some tests.

I didn’t piece together what “tests” meant at first, because the Storyteller voice in my head was already spinning film reels and telling me to chill. There was a story here, itching my brain. The voice was as cool as the air-conditioning against the back of my neck. Wait this out. Roll over and play nice and dumb.

Yusuf met me and Kaori at an intersection of white hallways, where half a dozen painted lines on the floor crisscrossed. He’d slipped on a white lab coat—the stiff collar a snowy cliff ledge against his brown neck—since I’d last seen him. He led us through a main hallway of white glossy tile and glass walls. A few short hallways and small conference rooms for whiteboard-brainstorming branched off from the main drag. Temporary rooms for visiting researchers were down that way, he waved, and a cafeteria just big enough for a couple of tables waited down at the other end.

I still had my phone on me, though when I ducked into a bathroom I saw that I had zero service here in the middle of nowhere. I waved off Yusuf’s offer for me to leave my bag in his office since my laptop and Scarlett were still stashed inside. I figured one of the white coats that fluttered around was going to snatch them and tag the back of my neck with a barcode or something. Kaori’s researchers breezed the hallways in pairs, their eyes suddenly interested in the clear glass tablets in their hands when we passed. Sometimes they wagered a “Good morning, Dr. Hassan” to Yusuf, who tossed a low hmm back.

“What’s your deal here?” I asked him.