Ariana looked down at her left hand. “Only a little. It was barely even a scratch. I didn’t think . . . It didn’t feel like anything, and then it did. I wasn’t hallucinating.” She looked up sharply and glared at me. “There really was something there. I could feel it moving under my skin. At first it was small but . . . it grew. I was not imagining it.”

I couldn’t say anything. It was as though there was a hand clamped around my throat.

“All I could think about was getting it out of me,” Ariana went on, her voice growing stronger. “It was like—it was like I was fine one moment, and the next I couldn’t think of anything except getting it out. I’ve never been that scared. I couldn’t think of anything else. I thought my heart was going to arrest.”

Xiomara said, “We think it must be a biomechanical parasite. That could be what Dr. Lago had on board instead of a virus. That’s our best theory.”

“Maybe,” Ariana said. “All I know is that it—it changed. Like somebody hit a switch. I was still afraid, but I couldn’t do anything. I was awake, but I couldn’t move my own hands, I couldn’t turn my head, I couldn’t do anything. It was like I was trapped inside my own body and . . .” She trailed off, her breath hitching. Xiomara rubbed her shoulder soothingly. “I couldn’t stop it. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop it from doing what it wanted to do.”

“That’s awful,” Xiomara whispered.

“What do you mean, ‘wanted’?” I asked, and Ariana started. I said, more gently, “You said ‘what it wanted to do.’ What do you mean?”

“I meant . . . Oh, fuck, I don’t know how else to describe it.” Ariana’s words were ragged still, and her hands trembled as she clutched at Xiomara’s arm. “It was—it was like that. Like this switch came on and—and there was just this overwhelming feeling of inevitability.”

“Did you hear a command?” Baqir asked.

“No, no, I didn’t hear anything. I wasn’t even really understanding words, when everybody was talking.”

“But you spoke,” Xiomara pointed out. “You spoke to us.”

Ariana shook her head. “I didn’t. It did. It was like . . . input and output. That’s what it felt like. I don’t know how to explain it. My mouth was moving and sounds were coming out, but it was all just noise. Fuck. Fuck. How can I not even know what I said? It felt like I was making sounds because those sounds went in that order. And moving because those motions went in that order. Then there was suddenly something. Something else. More input. A reason to change direction.”

Baqir glanced at me. “We think we accidentally woke one of the other—machines, whatever they are. That could be what you heard.”