Sato reached for words to reply. The lady’s eyes showed no lunacy, no fear, no confusion. She seemed perfectly sane.

“What do you mean?” he finally asked.

“My name is Renee,” she replied, ignoring his question. “But right now he is in my head, and I will do whatever he says.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Sato said, taking a step back.

Renee stood up. Her beauty shined despite tattered, dirty garments. She was short and thin, but held herself with confidence—back straight, shoulders square, chin up.

“Why has George sent you here?” she asked.

Sato took another step backward, this time bumping into the stone wall across from the woman. “How . . . how do you know—”

“Stop acting the fool, young man. I know everything. I’m Reginald Chu, and I find it very interesting that you’ve come here, to this strange place, with a syringe in your hand. Why?”

Sato pulled his right hand from behind his back, looking down at it as if ashamed. He didn’t know which felt worse right then—his head or his stomach. “I don’t understand. What do you mean you’re Reginald Chu?”

“I think I’m the one who doesn’t understand,” Renee replied. “George seems to know so much about my project, yet here you stand, without the slightest clue of the danger you are in. How can you trust such a leader?”

“Nothing you say makes sense.”

“Everything I say makes sense.” Renee crossed the short span of the tunnel, stopping directly in front of Sato. “Once I have my partner, once Dark Infinity is fully functional, you’ll understand. The Realities are about to have a great change, my friend.”

Sato swallowed, trying to build his courage. “You’re crazy, lady. You think Reginald Chu is controlling you somehow. Don’t you see how crazy that is? You need help.”

“I told you,” Renee said with a sneer. “We’re not crazy until he leaves our heads.”

“My boss—he thinks he can find a cure for you. If you’ll just let me . . .” He held the syringe up, raising his eyebrows in question.

“A cure?” Renee backed off two steps, shaking her head. “A cure? Does that man think I’m a toady research assistant at some under-funded university? He thinks he’s going to stop me with a cure? He’ll sooner cure cancer, Parkinson’s, diabetes, and regenerate amputated limbs before he’ll stop Dark Infinity.”

Confusion swarmed like a pack of bees inside Sato’s head. The lady really and truly thought she was Reginald Chu. And it worried Sato that he was sliding toward that same belief as well. “What is Dark Infinity?”

Renee folded her arms. “As they say in your Reality, that’s on a need-to-know basis and you don’t need to know. A cure. Ha.” She barked a laugh.