“A woman dressed in blue. Her skin is blue, too, and her eyes. She’s . . . covered in vines, or maybe those are her veins. I can’t tell. When I still slept I dreamed of her. That’s how I picture you,” she murmured. “But that doesn’t make any sense.”

Oh?

“You don’t have form, not . . . human form. You’re just spores, some kind of network bound at a molecular level but also a telepathic level. I don’t have to understand the nuances of that to know you aren’t a human woman,” she said. “So it’s either a trick, or there’s something here I don’t yet understand.”

You were always the smartest one.

“Ha. Nice try. Flattery is an old tactic, and even we simple Homo sapiens know that.”

“What are you doing?”

Misato had been so distracted by the exchange that the intrusion made her gasp. Snapping her eyes open, she reoriented, relaxing again when she realized it was only Edison. He stood at the entrance to the lab, and she must have looked awfully strange, wedged in the corner, facing the wall, a box placed before her as she knelt.

Standing, she brushed at nothing on her pants and turned to face him. “Putting some things to rest,” she said. “How’s Rosalyn?”

Edison drew in a deep breath and fiddled with his glasses, as he always did when he was anxious. “Shaken. Angry. I left her alone to clean up.”

“You should talk to her.” Misato bent down and picked up the box with Rayan’s things, then returned to the crew lockers and put the crate in his. Then she went back to the drafting table where she had left her coffee, and swigged it. This time it was mixed liberally with vodka. “I think she could use a little kindness.”

“We could all use that,” Edison said. She held out the cup to him and he took it. He drank without sniffing, then coughed. “Jesus, that’s strong.”

“I needed a little something after . . .” Misato blinked and shook the cobwebs out of her head. “When you dream, do you see a blue woman? Can you smell lemons?”

Edison nodded, seemingly unfazed by the question. They had all compared notes at the beginning, but then Rayan locked them in seclusion, and that triggered private battles with the demons within. Misato had heard the others go mostly silent except for the occasional bout of rage as they tried to get Rayan to let them out.

“Yeah, it freaked me out. But she—it—always tries to look like my mother. Why?”

“Just something I’ve been thinking about,” Misato said softly, retrieving her cup from him and sipping it. She let her mouth rest on the lip and glanced up at him, noticing a new, ugly bruise spreading along his jaw under his beard. “Why would it look human? Why would it be a woman?”