“Quanta?” Tair crouched next to me. “What’s happening?”

Not a bad question. I waved him away and dragged myself onto the log.

Darren’s workroom. I never dug into whatever he was researching. It made me remember things I really didn’t want to remember. Being his subject. Being in pain. Being—

Just a lot of things I didn’t want to be anymore.

Now it was blocked, meaning Darren’s research had to do with me in a big way. But beyond that… My stomach churned.

It had to be the leak.

Maybe he’d cracked some code in my subconscious and figured out how to read between the lines of what I saw? Or maybe he’d perfected some new serum I couldn’t remember? I liked to think I would’ve seen that by now, but Darren was always a blind spot and my limits were more and more obvious these past few days. If those names were the names of Red Helix girls…

They’d die.

Whatever Darren was doing, every cell I had screamed that we needed to stop it. “What’s—” My voice cracked. I swallowed and tried again. “What’s Darren working on now?”

“I don’t have access yet.” Tair started to adjust his glasses, and then moved to rub his nose when he realized they were gone. It shouldn’t be cute.

Ugh.

I shook myself, trying to focus. Now that I’d found the nameplate, I could go back to it, but every time I tried to see past the door, I got punched in the brainstem. “How long until you get cleared?”

“Weeks. Maybe months. Darren doesn’t trust me.” Tair scratched the ridge of his elf ear. “You can’t see what he’s up to?”

“That’s too long.” I ignored his second question because I didn’t want to explain. “We need to get to his workspace. I think it’s where the list of Reds came from.”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know.” I could see the hallway, but it was white and sterile like exactly every other one down here and it wasn’t like I had a map. “But we have to find it.”

“We?” Tair asked. “There’s no way you can sneak around the facility.”

“Not sneak.” I wasn’t that naïve; I knew how this game worked. “We’re going to walk around together.”

“You think Doctor Nagi will allow that?” His eyebrows lifted almost to the fake crown on his head. “You think Darren will allow that?”

“They will if I make it worth their while.” It always came down to giving them more information. A few little misleading tidbits could get me pretty far. Nagi would be easy to work with just that—he only cared about results. But Darren…