“Is this Ward, then?”

Bolton nodded.

The king looked the body up and down. He did look ordinary. He could be anyone.

Clarence leaped up and sat just next to the dead citizen’s head. He craned his neck, moved his face closer to the body, and sniffed the skin in several places.

The king grimaced. “What the—Clarence, that’s disgusting.”

Clarence looked up at the king and Bolton. “This isn’t Ward.”

“What?” said the king. “How do you know?”

“I was there when he was caught, I remember his smell.”

“But it must—” began Bolton, then stopped. “Oh my god. It isn’t him.”

“Then who the hell is it?” said the king.

“I don’t know,” said Clarence.

“But you know everyone.”

“That’s the most troubling thing.”

“Where is he then?”

* * *

“Can you look at what else is in their heads?” said Iona as she walked back into the cargo bay.

Victor was busy toying with the switches inside one of his cohort of citizens. He looked up. “Like what?”

Iona was about to speak when she realized the citizen he was working on was Carter. She looked into Carter’s “eyes” and the illusion of a human face flitted across her vision. She tried to hold the face in her mind, see her colleague as she used to, but then she remembered his face was all part of the illusion that had kept her trapped here. If she saw it again that would be a bad sign.

Victor gestured at Carter. “Is there something you want to get out of him?”

Iona shook her head. “Not him specifically—in fact one of the others would be better.” She hoped this theory would stand up when she said it aloud. “Right, by my reckoning at least half the people in this city don’t do anything. They don’t have jobs, or at least not that I know of, and I’ve designed nearly every type of office and factory we’ve got.”

Victor paused a moment while he took this in. “Okay, that’s true.”

“Why is that?”

“Makes the city look more . . . like a city if it’s got more people in it, I guess.”

“Maybe—but . . . they were made to serve us. We’ve been lulled into believing they’re just people like us, and they’ve gone along with that because they thought it was what we wanted. But think about it—if they were built to serve us, what would they be doing?”

“Looking after us.”

“And if they know we’re locked in a cage, the best way to look after us would be . . .”

Victor didn’t take long to arrive at an answer: “To get us out.”

“And you’ve seen them sitting at home, right? Just sat there facing each other. What if all of them, the ones who aren’t doing jobs, are working on exactly that problem?”

Victor tapped a screwdriver against the palm of his hand, then he reached into Carter’s hatch. “Let’s find out.”

* * *