She stands and throws her arms around me. I hold her tight, my body convulsing as I let all the pain of the years since I was imprisoned flow through me.

My mom gently pushes me back and signs again. I can make it go away, Luka. I can make them stop.

What do you mean? I ask.

The harvest, the paralyses, the vicious tricks they play; I can make it all stop. You’ll be a prisoner still, but they’ll leave you alone.

How?

Tell them, Luka; tell them where your friends are. Tell them where the Missing are. I know, I know—it’s not right, it’s not fair, it’s a horrible thing to have to do. But, Luka, in the long run it won’t make a difference. Happy will find them either way, so why shouldn’t you benefit? I love you so much and I can’t bear to see them take you apart like this.

I feel my hands begin to move into the shapes that would disclose the locations of Pod and Akimi and Igby and Pander. I see the eagerness in my mother’s eyes, and finally a voice far off inside me screams loud enough for me to hear. This is not real. My mother died three years ago. This is a projection generated by Happy to trick me.

Go away, I say with my hands.

Luka, my son, please … she replies, her hands moving slower now, sadness falling over her face.

Go away. You are not my mother.

And now it’s her turn to cry. I try to build a wall between us but the sight of my mom crying—even though I know it’s not real—crushes me.

I’m trying to protect you, she says.

You’re not real.

I love you.

You’re not real.

I love you.

I will never tell you where they are.

The vision of my mother stops crying and smiles. She opens her mouth and speaks aloud. “One day you will tell us, Luka Kane.”

“I’ll die before I tell you anything,” I reply.

“No. We will not allow that.”

“We’ll see.”

“We will.”

And with that, my mother is gone, fading out of existence once again. And for the next three or four hours, I sit there in the silence of a replica cell, and wait for the routine to begin once more.

Day 49

I no longer want to simply let go of hope; I want to kill it, I want to burn it, I want to bury its ashes.

Ever since Happy tried to scare the location of my friends out of me with the apparition of my mother, there has been no Sane Zone. I think it’s been four days, based on the guards’ shift pattern, but time no longer feels real. Hours stretch out into infinity, and the days never end.