“You got me reassigned to the Kentaro Maru. You said it would be the safest place—for both of us. You said if your plan failed, you would probably be taken there. I promised to help you if that happened. The next time I saw you was in that cell yesterday.”

“So I failed,” Desmond said.

“Maybe. I don’t think we know enough to say yet. I think your first plan was to expose the Citium and cause a public uproar, focus media and government attention on them, and collapse the organization in one move. But they must have discovered you. You have one of the pieces of the Looking Glass. You hid it, or maybe destroyed it—that’s why they were so intent on capturing you alive.”

Desmond nodded. “Erasing my memories was a backup plan.”

“I think so.”

“Then it stands to reason that somewhere in my memories is the key to stopping the Citium and the pandemic.”

“And the key to completing their work,” Avery said. “You heard the conversation on the ship, Des. They scanned your body. You’ve got a specialized implant in your brain, in the hippocampus, where memories are stored. Conner was convinced that implant could unblock memories and that you’d left a backdoor in a mobile application that would trigger the memories.”

She glanced back at him. “In Berlin, did you find it? The application?”

Peyton turned to him and silently mouthed, Don’t tell her. She obviously didn’t trust Avery.

But Desmond had found Avery’s story very convincing. It explained how she had come to be a Citium employee. How she had gotten on the Kentaro Maru. Why she had rescued them.

And yet, her story lacked something very important: it couldn’t be verified. The Rubicon program was “strictly off-the-books,” in her words. There was no doubt in his mind she was a special operative of some kind. What he didn’t know was whose side she was truly on. What if her mission was to find the application that would unlock his memories? What if her story was just that—a story?

He made his decision.

“Yeah, I found it.”

She stared at him, waiting, hanging on every word.

“In Berlin, I found some prepaid cards sewn into the label on a suit I left at a cleaner’s. The card number led to a Google Voice line. One of the voicemail greetings referenced a web address, a hidden page on the CityForge website. There was a link to download an app called CityForge Tracker. It was location-aware, but I couldn’t get it to do anything.”

Desmond studied Avery, seeing if she bought the lie. It was a test. Revealing the Labyrinth Reality app would serve no purpose at the moment. Lying did. If she betrayed them now, they still wouldn’t find the app.

“Good,” she said. “We’ll download it when we land, see if it works now.”