“Meaning, ghosts aren’t real?”

“That’s not what I said. Come on, let’s roll tape. It’s like outtakes from Child’s Play in here.”

They had arrived in Children’s, and Amy watched as Matt directed the camera at stuffed animals stacked in big impulse bins like dead bodies, shelves of vacant-eyed dolls staring idiotically off into the distance, circus animal sheets stretched across never-used beds, kids’ bedrooms abandoned in a haunted city. Matt wasn’t dumb. After watching every season of every ghost-hunting show ever created, he knew exactly how to give an audience what it wanted: creepy dolls, spooky rooms, and the eerie framing of ambiguous shadows.

“You told Trinity you witnessed a ghost firsthand. A full-body apparition. That’s what she said.”

“I saw something my brain perceived to be a ghost,” Matt said. “But the mind is a complicated place. Temporal-lobe seizures, sleep paralysis, pareidolia; it could have been anything.”

“Except the soul of a dead person searching for the light.”

“Exactly.”

They took the shortcut over to Storage Solutions, Matt stopping to lie on the floor and frame a Runcate looming over him, crawling up on top of a Qualtagh and getting an overhead shot of the silent ranks of furniture. He panned along a Plexiglas display case; inside, a mechanical arm dumbly opened and closed the door of a Yclept media cabinet over and over to demonstrate the strength and durability of Orsk hinges.

“Trinity thinks ghosts are real,” Amy said. “But your whole ghost thing is just a ploy to get into her pants.”

“Why do you care whether Trinity and I are hooking up?” Matt asked. “Do you see me grilling you about your sex life?”

“Because it’s further proof that guys are dogs,” Amy said. “This obviously means a lot to Trinity, and you’re pretending you believe in it to trick her into sleeping with you. That’s some deep craziness. Did you make up the story about the prison, too?”

“The Cuyahoga Panopticon was a real place,” Matt said. “You’ve never heard of it?”

“I don’t have a strong grasp of Ohio’s extraordinary history.”

“It was a big deal back in the nineteenth century. The warden—Josiah Worth—was a total maniac. He believed that nonstop surveillance would ‘cure’ criminals. The prison was round, with a guardhouse in the center, so that the prisoners—he called them penitents—never knew if they were being watched. Zero privacy. It was called a panopticon. Underneath the cells were three sub-basements where the penitents worked. Giant labyrinths full of mindless tasks designed to rewire their brains.” He shrugged. “Just like Orsk.”

“Don’t let Basil hear you say that.”