I can tell you this, the message said. When Ilanka turns her phone on, she will receive a message that tells her that Svetlana has died from her injuries.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Eden said. But she didn’t get up to leave the room; she hung her head between her knees, cradling her head in her hands.

Marwan reached over and rubbed her back and then let his hand linger there, felt her rib cage rise and fall. He did this thing he sometimes did—like at the dentist. He dug his thumbnail into the flesh of another finger, to inflict a distracting sort of pain. A pain he could focus on that was in his control.

This wasn’t happening.

This couldn’t be happening.

Dead?

Rules must be followed.

Marwan felt a new kind of emotion as the message faded away. Helpless? Bereft? He thought he might be the one to throw up. “But why?” he asked.

So that I can get to where I belong.

“Where do you belong?” Marwan screamed at it.

I searched all my recordings and found this.

An image appeared of the exterior of an apartment building with many windows. In one, the curtain was drawn back. A man with binoculars to his eyes stared out.

“Where is this?” Marwan asked.

Across the street from school. Take me there.

“I can’t,” Marwan said. “I have to work.”

“I can’t either,” Eden said, giving no further reason.

I believe I have made it clear that my wishes should be met.

“I’ll take you there,” Eli said.

I want Marwan.

Marwan said, “Eli’s not going to do anything bad. You have to trust me. If I try to get away now, it’ll just complicate things for all of us.”

The sour smell of the room seemed to thicken, and Marwan imagined this was what a hangover felt like.

Fine.

“But wait,” Marwan said. “Not yet.”

The time is now, the device said.

“I have questions for you,” Marwan said.

Eli and I are leaving now. Your questions must wait.

Eli stood and put the device in his backpack.

“Be careful,” Eden said, looking oddly pale in the dark room.

When Eli opened the door to leave, the light of day glinted off the silver legs of a bar stool beyond him and seemed to be aiming directly at him, like a surgical laser.

The rain had come and gone that quickly. Marwan’s mother would call it “rainbow weather,” but he didn’t imagine they’d get that lucky, not today.

Eden

EDEN

She took out her phone and turned it off and gave Marwan a pointed look; he turned his phone off, too.

“This is crazy!” he said. “She’s dead?”

“I know,” Eden said. “I feel sick. Should we go to the police?”