At that, Jeran nods. “Perhaps they’re watching Talin’s mother.”

I’m silent for a while, but my head spins as I make a mental list of those patrols that seem to be missing from the festival. Someone must be guarding Talin’s mother. If I can find out where those patrols are stationed, I might be able to figure out where Talin’s mother is being kept.

We go on around the edge of the complex. Each time we run into a group of soldiers, we listen as intently as we can. They talk about the arena. Their posts. Some complain of hunger, wanting supper. Others talk about news of more unrest at the border states. No more clues on Talin’s mother or her whereabouts.

We’ve almost made our way around the entire lab complex when a crowd of people gathered by one of the complex’s side gates halts us in our tracks.

The cluster seems to be lining either side of the path leading up to the gate, craning their necks in curiosity as a team of soldiers walk along. Even as we approach the scene, I can hear some of the soldiers shouting.

“Back away! Back away!”

As Jeran and I make it to an open pocket in the crowd, I see several soldiers calling for someone to open the gate while two others rush back up along the path to help the patrol heading toward it. As the gate opens, the rest of the patrol down the path comes into view.

And that’s when I hear an anguished moan that raises every hair on the back of my neck. My other voice springs to life in my mind, shaking, as if I’m back on the defensive in the Laboratory. It’s the kind of sound made by a throat filled with blood, something you recognize from the battlefield. It’s the kind of sound you’ve heard in glass chambers around you, moans that filled your sleep with nightmares.

A small team of soldiers and lab workers are hoisting a stretcher down the path, and lying on that stretcher is a struggling patient. The source of the moan.

Though the victim has bandages over his eyes, I recognize him immediately. He’s one of the workers from the dig team that had been on our train to Cardinia, the man in charge of securing the cylindrical artifact to the train car. I’d woken on the top of the train that night, freshly disoriented from my dream about Talin, to see this man retching violently over the side of their moving carriage.

Something has burned this man so badly that his skin is a mottled red, blistered and angry. The bandages around his eyes are stained with blood.

“What happened to him?” someone beside us asks.

Their friend just shrugs. “Nothing, I heard.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly that. Nothing happened. He was on the train from Mara back here to Cardinia.”

The stretcher rushes past us and into the lab complex. Scarcely has it disappeared from view when another comes in its wake. Another person with the same injuries—a bloodied bandage over the eyes, angry red sores all over his body. The same skin-crawling moan. His head is turned weakly toward the crowd, his breathing laborious as he heaves a wet cough. Flecks of blood dot his shirt. It’s as if he’s bleeding from the inside out.