Marwan shushed her, and she pulled out of the hug. She looked at Eli, sort of apologetically—or maybe just embarrassed? ugh—and fixed her hair.

“If it really did this …,” she said.

Eli shushed her now, too.

“Stop shushing me,” she said. “I’m not a child.”

“Sorry,” Marwan said. “Why does it want to see me?”

“It said you’re the only one it trusts now. Because it helped you, it says you owe it.”

Marwan nodded and said, “Where’s Ilanka?”

“She basically ditched it with me and ran,” Eli said.

“Any news about Svetlana?”

Eden shook her head, and Eli said, “None.”

“Did you ask it if it can find anything out?” Marwan asked. “About Svetlana?”

“We were in public, so no.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Marwan said, and he indicated the building they’d stopped in front of. It was a karaoke bar called Shout Out.

“I don’t get it,” Eli said. Rain had just started to fall.

“Just follow me,” Marwan said.

Marwan opened a heavy glass door and said “Hey” to the bartender, who said, “No more than an hour,” and Marwan said, “You have no idea how grateful I am.”

“Last room on the left,” the bartender said.

Marwan led them down a long, dark hall. The muted screams of some girls singing some screeching Disney anthem came from behind one door. Otherwise the place was quiet. Not a lot of people did karaoke during the day.

“What are we doing here?” Eden asked.

“It’s somewhere we can be alone with it,” Marwan said. He closed the door after Eli and Eden had followed him into the room. The song choice console sat on the table. The screen said “Select Song Now” in a block of text that floated round the screen, bouncing off edges and changing direction, like a primitive video game. The room smelled of stale beer and some kind of piney cleaning product. Dim overhead lights were reflected in the karaoke screen, giving the room a faint glow.

Eden and Marwan both took their jackets off, then sat on a leather banquette; Eli looked around, pulled over a small stool, then got the device out and put it on the low table next to a thick binder of song lists.

The device lit up: Where are we? Why is it so dark?

Marwan said, “Just a quiet place.”

A quiet place named Shout Out. It made about as much sense as anything right now.

Marwan said, “Do you have updates on Svetlana? How did you do what you did? And why?”

The device said: Ilanka has turned her phone off.

Marwan rolled his eyes in the dark, then felt bad about it. It had been Ilanka’s actual friend who’d been hurt. She must be even more freaked out than the rest of them. “Do you have any way of hacking into the hospital or anything?” Marwan asked. “Any way to get updates?”