As night fills the barracks, Zeno tells himself to get up. Any minute now, Bristol and Fortier will load the truck. The truck will pull away, the guards will come and do the headcount, and Zeno’s chance will have come and gone. His brain sends messages to his legs but his legs refuse to move. Or maybe it’s his legs sending messages up the chain of command—make me move—and it’s his brain that refuses.

A last few men come in and drop onto their mats and some whisper and some groan and some cough and Zeno sees himself rising, slipping out the door into the night. The time has come, or has already passed; Peisetairos is waiting inside his drum, but where is Euelpides?

Is that the growl of the truck engine starting?

He tells himself that Rex will never go through with it, that he will realize that his plan is unsound, suicidal even, but then Bristol and Fortier return and Rex is not with them. He studies their silhouettes for a clue but can read nothing. The rain lets up and the eaves drip and in the dark Zeno hears men snapping the bodies of lice with their fingernails. He sees Mrs. Boydstun’s ceramic children, their rosy cheeks, their unblinking cobalt eyes, their accusatory red lips. Sheep Shagger, Wop, Swish. Fruit Punch. Zero.

Around midnight the guards roust them and shine battery-operated lights in everyone’s eyes. They threaten interrogations, torture, death, but without much urgency. Rex does not reappear in the morning or the afternoon or the morning after that and over the next several days Zeno is interrogated five separate times. You are confidants, you are always together, we’ve heard that you two are always scratching code words in the dust. But the guards seem almost bored, as though they are participating in a show for an audience that has not arrived. Zeno waits to hear that Rex has been captured a few miles away, or relocated to another camp; he waits for his efficient little frame to come round a corner, push his glasses up his nose, and smile.

The other prisoners say nothing, at least not around Zeno; it’s as though Rex never existed. Maybe they know Rex is dead and want to spare him the pain or maybe they think Rex is cooperating with propaganda officers and implicating them in lies or maybe they’re too hungry and exhausted to care.

Eventually the Chinese stop asking questions and he is not sure whether this means Rex has escaped and they are embarrassed or Rex has been shot and buried and there are no more questions to which they seek answers.