The house has become very loud in its silence. Logan goes to his door, pulls it open, and listens to the nothing of the hallway.

Jules? he calls.

Hours since he heard her moving around, but he never heard her leave.

Jules?

No question, she isn’t there. Unobserved, her position cannot be determined.

‌Wisdoms

The camera stirs, its eye widening to accommodate Logan, who has entered the room and adopted the chair opposite April’s bed. The film will show this to the court: their places reversed between the two visits. Its pixels will demonstrate that the accused stares for the first five minutes at the ceiling, but fail to pick out the sardine oil on Logan’s tie, the slept-in creases of his jacket.

I have some further questions, he says.

Go ahead.

I gather you’re pleading guilty to planting the bomb that killed your fellow students.

Dr Logan, I think you’ll find that’s a statement, not a question. Though her eyes are still on the ceiling, her smile is for him.

Logan is also split: what he logged on the system as a second pre-trial assessment is much more for his sake than hers.

Do you feel guilty about their deaths? he asks.

She hesitates, checking with herself. Strange, she says, still the science student, nodding at another small but vital discovery. I’m pleading guilty. But I don’t feel guilty.

You don’t feel guilty about killing fifteen people?

Oddly, no. Responsible, but not guilty.

Did you feel guilty before the process?

No. I felt they deserved it.

They deserved it?

An eye for an eye. I’m afraid I was rather Old Testament about it.

An eye for an eye? he says. Flora’s rebuke in the car: Dad, if you’re just going to play Dr Psychoparrot—

But Logan pushes on. They didn’t kill anyone.

No, says April. But they made someone want to die.

Fortunately, before his tongue can vandalize any rapport by asking who, he clicks.

Didn’t you already want to die?

She pauses, tasting her own lip.

Yes.

She seems very calm but he notes – and the camera notes – that her foot is jiggling, ever so slightly. Logan continues.

So you had nothing to lose. You decided to kill yourself, and take them with you.

It’s always on the news, isn’t it? Suicide bombers. I was in a bad place. It seemed like a plan. A gift, even.

A gift?

Second term. I’d just done an option on the chemistry of explosives. Thought it was… you know.

I don’t know.

Divine guidance.

The foot slows and stills, like a trout on a riverbank finally succumbing to the air.

So you pretended to be a convert to atheism.

Yes.

And signed up for their trip to the Richard Dawkins Memorial Lecture?

Yes.

What was your thinking that morning?

Somewhere down the corridor, an alarm sounds.