“That’s kind of you, Jackie.” It’s not kind—it’s just an attempt to get a different version. Which makes this a ritual of sorts, with a preordained outcome.

So you go back over it all again with Severance, who stops you from time to time with questions blunter than you expected, coming from someone you’ve always thought of as a political animal.

“You didn’t go anywhere else? No shortcuts or other excursions?”

“Excursions?”

“It’s easy to omit what doesn’t seem relevant.”

The same flat smile.

You don’t bother to answer.

“Did you bring anything back with you?”

“Just the usual recovery along the way, of past expedition equipment, as happens with many expeditions.” The story you and Whitby have decided on, because you want to hold on to the plant and phone, test them at the Southern Reach, not have them taken by Central. You’re the experts, not Central.

“What sense did you get of the journals in the lighthouse? Was there an impression or idea you had about them, seeing them all like that? If that’s not too vague.”

No particular sense or impression or idea, you tell her. They were just journals. Because you don’t want to go there, don’t yet want to relive the end of your trip, the things that happened in the lighthouse.

“And nothing there seemed unusual or out of order?”

“No.” You’re selling the simpler story of danger in the tunnel.

Later, leaning in, conspiratorial, just you girls: “Gloria. Cynthia. Why’d you do it? Really?” As if Lowry’s not in the room.

You shrug, give a pained smile.

At the end of your account, Severance smiles and says, “It’s possible that we’ll file this under ‘never happened’ and move on. And if so, you have Lowry to thank.” A hand on your arm, though, as if to say, “Don’t forget I helped.” You get to keep Whitby, too, she says, if Whitby passes a psych eval you personally help conduct at Central, off the books. But. “You are vouching for him. You are responsible for him.” Like you’re a child asking to keep a pet.

The new border commander will be handpicked by Lowry and report to both Lowry and Severance, and they will institute procedures so that, as Lowry puts it, “You and Whitby and any other son of a bitch stupid enough to try another jailbreak thinks twice.”

A few useless pleasantries and Jackie’s left the room as fast as she got there, the encounter so brief you wonder why else she’s here, what other business she has with Lowry. Has she walked into a trap, or has Lowry? Trying to remember the exact date when Severance came to the Southern Reach. Going through a list of her tasks, her duties, and where she was when. Thinking that there is some part of the puzzle you can’t see, that you need to see.

Lowry, there at the center of his secret headquarters, overlooking the sea as snow in thick flakes begins to cover the grass, the sea mines, the little paths. With the geese and seagulls that will never care about Lowry’s plans or your own huddled by the fake lighthouse, as deceived by it as the expeditions have been by the real one. But Severance is out there now, walking by the rocks, staring across the water. She’s on her phone, but Lowry doesn’t see her—just his own reflection, and she’s trapped there, within his outline.