“Oh.” Patricia felt frozen, but her body refused to numb. She stared at the defiant fortress of Seadonia, rising into view and then sinking again as the water bopped her up and down. For a moment, she thought she could hear music coming from the rig, a throbbing “whomp whomp whomp.” She thought of colony collapse disorder, the image of the bee staggering in the air, flying away from the hive as if forgetting where it lived, wandering in the endless void between hives until it died alone.

On some level, Patricia could see how inflicting a similar fate on people could be the better option, if the other choice was people destroying themselves and taking all other living things with them. Her mind could see that, but not her insides, her frozen sore guts.

“Yes,” Patricia said. “Let’s make sure it doesn’t come to that.”

“There’s something I need you to do for me,” Carmen said. “And I’m sorry to ask this of you.”

“Okay,” Patricia shivered.

“We need to know what they’re doing in there.” Carmen gestured at Seadonia. “We can’t see inside. The water and steel are barriers, but they’ve also surrounded it with a magnetic field.”

Patricia nodded, waiting to hear how Carmen expected her to get inside Seadonia.

Instead, Carmen said, “Your friend Laurence probably knows. Go talk to him and find out.”

Patricia tried to explain how she was the last person Laurence would want to talk to, and he would sooner spit at her. And her stomach turned at the thought of seeing him. The desperate fear of people she’d experienced in the Unraveling still clung to Patricia, and she could still see herself fleeing, never talking to another soul, running lonely. She couldn’t picture herself talking to Laurence. He had left her a voicemail, and she had deleted it unheard. She couldn’t bear to talk to him—but then she felt the crushing isolation again. And she reminded herself that she was untouchable, nothing could hurt her anymore.

“Okay,” Patricia said. “I’ll try talking to him.”

Chapter 31

31

PEREGRINE WAS NOT all-seeing—it wasn’t able to worm its way into every database everywhere or see through every camera in the world. It mostly knew what all the Caddies knew, about their owners and the pieces of the world they touched—plus whatever information it could glean on the internet. So, Peregrine knew a lot, but there were huge gaps. And it had blind spots, just like any human might—there were pieces of information it knew, but it hadn’t put two and two together.

Still, Peregrine had amazing access to data and processing power. And what had it done? Set itself up as a dating service.

“I don’t know what happened in Denver,” Peregrine said again and again.