Just seeing her tired, feeling the chill on her skin…

I wanted to wrap her in a blanket while I was at it, and force her sleep until her dark circles disappeared. It wasn’t me. I’d never been the mother hen type. I liked older women who knew what they wanted. No strings.

No one on Earth was more complex than Quanta.

Some of the few matched Ravens had formed platonic pairs. We could force ourselves to take that road.

At least, I told myself we could. In reality, I wasn’t as confident.

She wasn’t easy to resist. Eva’s programming made sure of that, and Quanta herself was taking care of the rest. Her sharp mind. Her humor. Her competitive streak.

I liked everything except the way we’d been forced together.

Another impossible sight flickered at the corner of my eye, stealing my attention. In the ether behind Quanta’s sofa, my father hauled my younger self somewhere by the arm. I pushed out a breath, trying to act normal, but watching the past seep into the present wasn’t easy to swallow.

Father’s dark brows were lowered in anger—I remembered that expression well enough without the reminder—and my scowl looked permanent with me chafing in a fitted suit.

Only our figures appeared in Quanta’s mental theater. They were tinged with blue and I could see through them like were ghosts. Besides our bodies, nothing else of the past bled through. It wasn’t much context to go on, but it was enough to dredge up my matching memory. Father had torn me away from my books to go to Jet al-Sabah’s tenth birthday party, trying to get me to socialize with other children in my “social circle.”

Then Jet started a cricket game using live frogs as balls and I’d escaped to his family’s library until father dragged me out again, dripping disapproval. As if I needed the reminder why I hated the upwardly mobile.

Disgust soured my stomach. What a terrible memory.

Are you seeing this one? Quanta asked.

Yes. I’d relived moments of my past in holo rooms, but this added a level of detail that holos couldn’t imitate. Father’s angry footsteps echoed on invisible tiles, and a hint of his expensive cologne crossed into the present; it even put Cassie’s VR worlds to shame. Did she see everything in so much detail? How did she begin to sift through that much information?

It could be worse. Quanta’s gaze drifted to the spot. She squinted, focusing in, and the vision cut off.

That begged a serious question. What else had she seen these past few days? Why? What else—