Nazarin has us get off before the safe house stop and take another train too far before we circle back. I have no patience for the circuitous route, but it makes me nervous just the same. Does he really anticipate people trying to follow us? As we trudge up the steps to the pastel Victorian house, I’m exhausted.

When we’re inside and Nazarin is making the strongest coffee he can from the replicator, I tell him about Leylani and Vuk. I kick off my heels, leaving them under the table. He’s surprised, and a little sad. I suppose it’s reassuring to see that even a hardened undercover cop can still feel for a girl who’s lost her lover, the father of her child, and doesn’t even know he’s dead yet. I doubt he felt very sorry for Vuk, though.

The coffee does nothing to wake me up; my eyelids are drooping as I sit at the table. I trudge to the Chair and climb in. I don’t even have the energy to clean my teeth or wash the makeup off my face. Nazarin dutifully plugs me in and draws the blanket up over me, and I’m asleep before he leaves the room, to brainload still more information on the Ratel. Instead of dreams it’s endless interrogation scenes, reams of numbers, facts and dates settling deep into the folds of my brain.

Flitting behind all the lessons is my never-ending unease. It’s almost like I can sense Tila hiding in my mind, just out of sight and reach.

Do you really think you can find out what happened? Do you really want to know? she seems to taunt.

And my mind can’t answer her.

9. Tila

NINE

TILA

That tablet we found didn’t last forever, of course. Without charging, something we were unable to do even if we’d known how, the battery only lasted a few months before it died. I felt so sad when the screen went blank for the last time. For a while, I’d had access to a completely different world, and then it was taken away. We were left back in Mana’s Hearth, isolated and alone.

Taema even came around. Well, somewhat. She stopped pretending to look away from the tablet, although she never suggested topics to research. We were lucky nobody ever found us with it. We wouldn’t have been punished, really, but people would have treated us differently—as if we’d wronged them by showing curiosity about life outside, when life inside was supposed to be so fucking perfect. Disappointment can be worse than anger. They’d also have been wary, wondering what we’d learned. But I knew Mana’s Hearth for what it was now, and Taema did too, even if she didn’t want to admit it.

It was a prison.