I look back at the autopsy and the police report to distract myself from the racing, circular thoughts I have no answer to. As I make sense of the words, I gasp. “Did you see this?” I ask.

Nazarin leans over my shoulder.

It’s a report from one of Mia’s neighbors, saying she was acting strangely yesterday and this morning.

“Like a totally different person,” the woman said. She didn’t give her name to the police. “She’d been singing really old songs from the 1960s, said she was giving up Zeal, moving away. She seemed happy, but also sort of manic? I thought she might have still been high, her eyes were so glazed.”

“She wanted to quit? This makes things so much sadder,” I say, nearly choking with grief.

Nazarin frowns. “Something’s weird about it, though. We saw her physical stats. She was really far gone, to change so suddenly.”

“Maybe I got through to her.”

“What do you mean?”

“In the dreamscape, just before we left, I told her she could be better if she wanted to be. Remember? I told her to try and be good again.”

Nazarin’s face goes still.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” He gets up and leaves me, confused, at the kitchen table. I can hear him hitting the punching bag in the gym.

About an hour later, he asks if I want to go for a walk, for some fresh air. His eyes dart imperceptibly to the wallscreens.

I agree, put on my coat, and we head out into the night. Nazarin turns on a White Noise, a tiny device the size of a fingernail, which will distort any nearby cameras trying to record our conversation. I wish we could use it in the safe house to speak freely, but the SFPD would wonder at the scrambled readings. We walk along the darkened streets, leaning close. Nazarin has his hand in his pocket, and I know it’s curled around a gun.

Whatever he’s about to tell me, he doesn’t want his employers to know, either.

“I’ve been developing a theory, over the last few months. I’ve been trying to find more definitive proof before I go to the SFPD.”

“About what?”

“I think Verve does more than simply giving people access to dreams.”

I focus on him. The light from the streetlamps plays across his face, casting dark shadows.

“I think,” he says, each word heavy and deliberate, “that some lucid dreamers can influence the Vervescapes and change personalities. I think … you might have done that to Mia. And I think the government realized that and they killed her, not the Ratel.”

I take a few steps, trying to process the information. It doesn’t want to process. “Fuck.”