Naomi Lovelace maintains that she simply needed to get it out of her head so it could stop haunting her. It took her weeks to tell me her story, in fits and starts, always in the middle of the night. Naomi didn’t have to go to work the next day, but she seemed to forget I did.

By night, I listened to the jumbled events of her time on the Atalanta. She’d skip the chronology as things occurred to her. By day, I’d go to work and program my AI machines. Yes, a psychologist would likely say I’d chosen that line of work to remain close, in some way, to the women who founded the long-defunct company of Hawthorne.

In the evenings, my tired brain would try to figure out how to unpick my mother’s story, to make sense of events and discover the best way to arrange it all before her voice started again, hushed in the darkness.

“Iris—” she’d whisper, startling me from slumber. “I’ve remembered something else.”

My father and I switched places, funnily enough. I’d gotten a long-distance transfer to an office not far from Naomi’s quarters, so I could stay for a few more months. He had been asked back out to Los Angeles two years ago when Valerie’s health started failing. He’d stayed there, sorting out her affairs and consulting at a few companies. He sent missives regularly, but it wasn’t the same. He and our mother have remained together despite the rags printing stories about them now and again, salaciously reminding the world that Grace Lovelace Kan’s parents were step-siblings raised by none other than Valerie Black herself. My sister loved to read any article with her in it, running her fingertip over the shape of the letters of her name. They never bothered printing mine.

Naomi woke me up the first night just after she’d found out Valerie Black had died in prison after thirty years in custody.

She had always been this nebulous, frightening figure, our grandmother. We’d grown up hearing about her. Other children teased us, pretended we had the Sev and ran away, giggling.

Valerie Black was the woman who had nearly killed the world. The woman who thought she’d be able to make a better one. Long before that, Valerie had proved she had been willing to stop anyone who got in her way, even those she loved.

We were never allowed to meet her, not even a video message. When Grace asked, over and over, our mother grew more irate.

At fifteen, Grace found some more recent clips—unlike Naomi, now and again Valerie consented to be interviewed. Grace would load them late at night, with me tucked up tight next to her.