Meditation never worked for Jenny because she could never quiet her mind. Misato agreed it was extremely difficult to master, but after a while she developed a way to turn off the thoughts and questions that normally plagued her. What’s that bump on my leg? What should I make for dinner? To turn it all off she pictured a black wall that stretched in every direction, and a glossy black pool at her feet. She walked slowly toward the wall, timing the guru’s chants with her steps, clicking off the thoughts in her head like light switches until everything was blank and dark. Then she would sit in that void until ideas offered themselves up.

Misato had found that the same technique worked, unexpectedly, with Foxfire, but instead of leading her to a void, it led her to an empty room where she could face the voice inside her head with greater clarity. And there, they conversed.

She hadn’t tried to talk this way with her parasite since the incident with Rayan and Piero. It was too painful to consider, and she didn’t trust herself not to simply explode with rage instead of listening and responding with deliberate composure.

But the excited buzzing in her head and body told her it was time to investigate. While everyone else fought the Foxfire, she had hoped to negotiate with it. So far, neither method produced encouraging results, but all things being equal, she would prefer to fight this battle with open ears and compassion. Losing gracefully was a victory of a kind.

This time, when she returned to the blank room, she found it occupied. That was new. A function of losing Rayan and Piero? Or did it have to do with their proximity to CDAS? She cleared her mind. The meditative state would break if she allowed in too many rushed questions.

“I’ve seen you before,” Misato told the figure calmly.

It was the blue woman, though she appeared blurry, as if being viewed through a lens smeared with gel. The woman said nothing, floating an inch or two above the black floor, her arms loosely at her sides. Her skin and hair were cerulean, her body not fully concealed but draped in a light cloth that billowed around her.

“You’re from my dreams,” she added. “Our dreams. We’ve all seen you.”

No reply.

Misato hazarded a few more steps toward her, but the farther she went, the blurrier the woman’s image became. There were no foolish questions in meditation, and so she asked, “Are you God? A vestige of God? Or are you my own creation, a way for my mind to process the abstract? Fungus doesn’t look like much to us. Is this form supposed to be more familiar?”

Nothing.

It would be easy to get frustrated and stop, but Misato had been successful in luring the Foxfire into conversation before. Forbearance, she thought, patience would see her through.