There was a long silence, and then Jeb’s hand touched mine. I grasped it, needing the help to get back on my feet. His other hand pressed against my back, and I started forward again.

“Curiosity,” Jeb said in a low voice.

No one replied.

As we walked, I considered a few sure facts. One, I was not the first soul they’d captured. There was already a set routine here. This “Doc” had tried to get his answer from others before me.

Two, he had tried unsuccessfully. If any soul had forgone suicide only to crack under the humans’ torture, they would not need me now. My death would have been mercifully swift.

Oddly, I couldn’t bring myself to hope for a quick end, though, or to try to effect that outcome. It would be easy to do, even without doing the deed myself. I would only have to tell them a lie—pretend to be a Seeker, tell them my colleagues were tracking me right now, bluster and threaten. Or tell them the truth—that Melanie lived on inside me, and that she had brought me here.

They would see another lie, and one so richly irresistible—the idea that the human could live on after implantation—so tempting to believe from their perspective, so insidious, that they would believe I was a Seeker more surely than if I claimed it. They would assume a trap, get rid of me quickly, and find a new place to hide, far away from here.

You’re probably right, Melanie agreed. It’s what I would do.

But I wasn’t in pain yet, and so either form of suicide was hard to embrace; my instinct for survival sealed my lips. The memory of my last session with my Comforter—a time so civilized it seemed to belong to a different planet—flashed through my head. Melanie challenging me to have her removed, a seemingly suicidal impulse, but only a bluff. I remembered thinking how hard it was to contemplate death from a comfortable chair.

Last night Melanie and I had wished for death, but death had been only inches away at the time. It was different now that I was on my feet again.

I don’t want to die, either, Melanie whispered. But maybe you’re wrong. Maybe that’s not why they’re keeping us alive. I don’t understand why they would.… She didn’t want to imagine the things they might do to us—I was sure she could come up with worse than I. What answer would they want from you that bad?

I’ll never tell. Not you, not any human.

A bold declaration. But then, I wasn’t in pain yet.…