It’s Tila’s notes on the Ratel, all written in our hidden alphabet and scanned, the originals destroyed. Tears prick my eyes as I read them. Yes, it’s proof she was working with them, but more than that: it’s proof she was really working against them. She’d hidden the notes in a place I knew about—if I’d come to leave a message and found these, would she have told me everything? I hide all the files in an encrypted subfolder, deep within my implants. I thank whatever fate or stars aligned that I found these before I went back in. These notes might just save my life.

I sift through more of Tila’s notes in my mind’s eye. I come across something that makes me both furious and shamed:

There’s a delivery boy/security Knight I’m going to use to get closer to Verve, she wrote, about four months ago. His name is Skel. There’s a party tonight. I’ll turn on the charm and get him to take me back to his. After, I’ll convince him to introduce me to Malka, and then I can prove I can lucid dream. I force down a flush.

The doorbell rings. I jerk in surprise. Hurriedly, I finish hiding the files in my implants and take the datapod out of my ear.

“Coming!” I call as I run to the guest room, stash the sketchbook and the pod in the cubby hole, and push the bed back into place. A few days ago, this would have winded me. Thank you, gym practice and muscle mods.

I peer through the peephole. It’s Nazarin. I take a breath, composing myself.

I open the door and Nazarin pushes past me, closing the door behind him.

“Why are you here rather than your place, like you said?” he asks.

I look around, shrugging. It’s a way to avoid meeting his eyes. “I realized I hadn’t been here since it all went down. And I needed more clothes.”

“Let’s head back to the safe house. We have your VeriChip putting a false signal here most of the time, in case the Ratel decide to track you, but you actually being here has messed with it.”

“There’s cameras there, right? In the wallscreens?”

“Yeah?” His forehead crinkles in confusion.

“Not here?”

A beat as Nazarin accesses his implants to scan the apartment. “No.”

“Then we should speak here for a moment.”

Nazarin opens his mouth to ask why, but I hold up my hand, cutting him off. My anger over what I discovered in the notes crystallizes to a fury just as strong as I felt in Mia’s dream world. I lead him to the living room.