She turns, and almost by the far wall, far enough to appear as a speck to the unaided eye, there he is. She uses the embedded camera on the Whistle attached to her temple to zoom in, and he appears in high definition before her eyes. Lanky limbs awkward, like he’s folded in on himself in the chair next to the hospital bed. She knows it’s him because of the bullet scar on the side of his head. There’s no one else it can be.

Peter.

A gasp catches in her throat. A cord snakes from the back of his neck into the cerebral monitor by the patient’s bed. How could she have not seen that outlet before? Ify thinks back to that time on Paige and Amy’s porch with him sitting next to her, then him jumping down a few steps and pleading, face to face, that she not reveal his lies, then him threatening to expose her past as a war criminal. Had he somehow managed to disguise it? There was no hair to hide it. Ify squints, then realizes her foolishness and zooms in further with her Whistle’s camera.

The cord isn’t connected to a cerebral monitor. It vanishes beneath the bed. Ify’s jaw tightens.

It’s connected directly to the patient.

The patchy skin. The outlet. She’s sure that were she to cut open the skin of his forearm, she would see gears and pistons and oil.

She’s seen a boy like him once before.