It was his fault she was gone, his fault the whole thing had gone off the rails.

He’d asked Aizel too many questions or not enough. Or not the right ones?

He’d been too trusting or not trusting enough.

And then he’d done nothing to stop Marwan, in the end, from destroying the one good—no, interesting—thing that had happened to him in his life, basically.

He was being melodramatic. But if there was a time in life to be that way it was probably the day after you’ve been chased down by a sinister drone device that you suspect had a hand in killing your grandfather.

The doorbell rang, and he half hoped it was some kind of authority, coming for him and the others. Someone who would explain everything about Aizel and maybe even punish them for how they’d handled it—or someone who could arrest the people behind it all.

Why hadn’t they just gone to the police—or even just the principal—when the whole thing started? Why had they let it go so far?

He opened the door, fully expecting men in black or FBI agents in bulletproof vests with their weapons drawn. But it was just a delivery. An edible arrangement—a grotesque approximation of a bouquet fashioned out of chocolate-dipped strawberries and pineapple on sticks surrounded by the baby’s breath of fruit: skewered melon cubes.

He set it on the kitchen table and peeled back some of the clear plastic wrapping and pulled out a strawberry stick. When was the last time he’d had a piece of fruit? God, it tasted good.

He thought about texting the others, just a quick message to tell them that his grandfather had died. But they wouldn’t care; why would they? He didn’t even want them to; didn’t want them to know that maybe he—they?—could have prevented it.

They’d done something wrong.

They’d done everything wrong.

He tossed his stick in the trash after finishing the strawberry and found the notebook he’d scribbled his notes about the device in. It wasn’t up-to-date at all, so he set about fixing that. First, he updated the rules, which didn’t take long. There hadn’t been that many of them—not new ones, anyway—toward the end.

Then he got up and paced in circles, trying to shake off the feeling that it mattered that he do this. What was the point, really?

He ate a piece of half-dipped pineapple, then sat back down and tried to remember every other thing Aizel had said and done, day by day.

Why hadn’t he kept better track? What if he’d missed important clues about its origin?