Tossed onto the table: the latest satellite footage from above Area X, images from on high reduced to 8½×11 glossies. Glamour shots of an inexhaustible resource. This blank mimicry of the normal, marred only by the blurs you might expect to find on photos taken by ghost hunters. Definitive proof of a change, this blurring. As if somehow the Southern Reach is losing the ability to see even the lie.

“Evil advances with good. But these terms have no meaning in Area X. Or to Area X. So why should they always apply to us in pursuit of an enemy to whom they go unrecognized? An indifferent context deserves equal indifference from us—if we want to survive.”

You’re not expected to answer, Lowry taking a break to philosophize as he fills up his drink for a second time. Nor would you know what to answer, for you would never characterize Lowry as indifferent, or as expressing indifference through his actions. As ever, this is part of the deception: the ability to convey authority by instilling in others his own confidence.

Lowry’s already threatened to put you under hypnosis, but the one thing you have resolved, having lived on the outskirts of Lowry’s experiments, is that you will never allow him that. Always hoping that Lowry must have limits, can’t be untouchable, can’t operate without some constraint from above. Surely every action he takes reveals something about his motives to someone somewhere with the power to intervene?

So you’re at what appears to be an impasse.

Then he surprises you.

“I want you to meet someone else who has a stake in this. Someone you know already. Jackie Severance.”

Not a name you expected to hear. But there she is—escorted in by Mary Phillips, one of Lowry’s assistants, through the mirror door to your side of the glass, Severance oblivious to the way her heels are crunching broken glass. Dressed as impeccably as always, still addicted to scarves.

Has she been listening the whole time? The dynastic successor to the legendary Jack Severance. Jackie, about fifteen years removed from her last stint with the Southern Reach—a bright star still shining in the firmament of Central’s personal cosmology, despite a dark star of a son in the service that she’s had to rescue more than once. Lowry the outlaw and Severance the insider seem unlikely allies. One’s holding the silver egg in her hand and petting it. The other is trying to smash it with an invisible hammer.

What’s the play, here? Does Lowry hold something over her, or does she hold something over Lowry?

“Jackie is going to be my adviser on this situation. She’s going to be involved from now on. And before we make a final decision on what to do with you, I want you to repeat for her everything that’s in the report—everything that happened to you across the border. One last time.”

Severance smiles the way a crocodile smiles and sits on the couch next to you while Lowry shuffles off to make her a drink. “Nothing too formal, Cynthia. Nothing you need to prep. And in no particular order. You can tell it in whatever order you like.”