Connor gazed down toward the darkness of the valley, then let his head tip back.

“What is going on?” he said to the stars, voice choking.

“We’re going to figure that out. Take a breath.”

Connor took a breath. The tears held as he spoke.

“The stories were like, this dead astronaut from the old days is still locked up inside there; they did experiments on him and he went mad. Stuff like that. If you saw him it would be so terrifying, he wouldn’t even have to kill you . . . You’d just die.” The boy hesitated. “Or you’d kill yourself.”

“You think that’s what happened to Rory?”

“Well, he died, didn’t he? I don’t know. That was what we said: joke stuff. Sometimes the astronaut escapes, walks around the island at night. His face is all fucked up. I’d draw pictures, and we came up with ways of protecting ourselves. We were twelve, thirteen. Then we thought, maybe the whole island’s an experiment and the adults know what’s going on. They’re following orders. And if you talk about it you become the next prisoner. You get put in the NASA building with him.”

Both looked up as a helicopter came into earshot, searchlight combing the volcanic peaks to the south.

“They’re looking for me,” Connor said.

“Looking for both of us, I reckon. But we’re all right. I’ll take care of them if they come. Did you ever see or hear anything else?”

“Not then. Pretty soon we stopped all the astronaut stuff. We’d come up here to drink or smoke and it was pretty much a joke.”

“But Rory took it seriously.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Fuck knows. Maybe because the astronaut’s come back.” The boy turned to Kane, wet eyes catching moonlight.

“What do you mean?”

“A couple of months ago Petra and Lauren were up here. They said they heard someone inside the building. They ran. That’s all.”

“What did they hear?”

“A voice.”

“Saying anything?”

“I don’t know.”

“And Rory was interested in this?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about Rory. Did he seem okay? Or like he was a bit messed up in the head?”

“Rory was cool. We’d go to English Bay to swim and he’d let us drink. He liked hearing our stories. And he knew how to do stuff. He was good at getting into places, climbing, breaking in.”

“Where did he break into?”

“One time we broke into the BBC building and saw the old equipment and there were still some old records and amps.”

“What else did he do?”

“He got all the kids to tell him secrets—about the island or what they did and stuff. You got a medal. It was dumb. The younger kids liked it. But he was good for driving us and sometimes buying us booze.”

“And that’s how he started hearing about the dead astronaut.”

“Right.”