But she remained vague about her actions in the lighthouse, her retreat to the island. “I did what I had to do.” “That’s all in the past. I have made my peace with it.” “I don’t sleep much.” All of that a jumbled mess. In the past? It had just happened.

He had held on to some hope or delusion of last redoubts, of hardened siege mentality, of making common cause to fight the enemy. But that had been a sick fantasy, a kind of abject denial. The Southern Reach was done even if they hunkered down in the science division for the next century, became the subterranean seeds for pale cave-dwelling people who lived in fear and whose children’s children heard cautionary tales of the fucked-up surface world waiting for them above.

“You had expedition training?” A guess, but an educated one based on her supplies.

“The basic protection package, we called it,” Grace said. “The director came up with it for department heads, management.” Because she’d valued their safety so much, had hoped the head of their props department would survive the apocalypse. He was willing to bet “the basic protection package” had applied only to Cynthia and Grace. She’d never shared it with him.

“If you planned for this, that means there’s a mission?”

“Does it look like there’s a mission?” A terse, ironic grin. Her tone of voice different, as if aware Ghost Bird, who had begun to stir, might be listening. “The mission is survival, John. The mission is to take it day by day. I keep to myself. I follow certain protocols. I am careful and quiet.” Grace was prepared to live out her days here. She had already resigned herself to that paradigm.

Ghost Bird propped herself up on one arm. She didn’t look groggy. Her stare seemed like a weapon, as if she had no need of a gun or knife. Ghost Bird didn’t look like someone who would appreciate being told she had been drugged, so Control didn’t. A respectful, fearful look Grace gave her, now that she wasn’t a sleeping lump on the floor.

“What attacked the convoy?” Ghost Bird asked.

No Good morning or even an interest in what they’d been discussing. How much had she overheard, lying there? What had seeped into her half-conscious mind about fakes and the director’s doppelgänger?

A grim chuckle from Grace, followed by a shrug, but no other answer.

Ghost Bird shrugged, fell upon a protein bar, gutted it with her knife, wolfed down the contents. Between bites: “This is horrible and stale. Have you encountered anything unusual on the island?”

“It’s all unusual here,” Grace said, with a kind of exhaustion, as if the question had been asked too often before.

“Have you seen the biologist?” Direct speaking to direct, and Control tense, waiting for that answer.

“Have I seen the biologist?” Turning that question over and over, examining it from all angles. “Have I seen the biologist?” Grace’s clicking of the holster strap came quicker now, the pattern in the dust drawn at knife point more complex. Was that a helix? Was that two intertwining spirals? A starfish or just a star?