If I could find out more about how consciousness works—if I could find out what it would take to reverse the effects of the pill…

Maybe this is how I can help the girl. By asking questions. Even if it means starting a dialogue with the enemy.

Annika might not approve, but the Colony doesn’t have to know. Not yet, anyway. Not until I can find the proof I need.

Are you really doing this? Are you sure it’s safe? my thoughts call out.

I shut my eyes tight, and my heart gives an answer. I have to try.

I press my fingers to my wrist and breathe.

Something tugs my chest, and my mind races for the stars. When I find myself in the black void—the place with no beginning or end—I see Queen Ophelia standing several yards away from me.

I don’t move, but she tilts her face toward me, black eyes never quite landing on my own. She’s dressed in gray and silver, robes shining like smoky quartz. A matching circlet sits on her head.

“I wondered whether you’d find your way back,” she says with that strange, haunting voice. I’ve heard the other Residents speak with emotion—react with emotion. I don’t know why Ophelia is different.

I step to the side, but her gaze doesn’t follow me. She might know I’m here, but she can’t see me.

“You’re afraid. I can feel it,” she drawls.

I can feel you.

I swallow, and this time her sight trails toward me—toward the sound.

“If you’re going to come into my mind uninvited, you may as well speak,” Ophelia says, unblinking.

I hesitate. “Is that where we are? In your mind?”

Ophelia doesn’t react. “A part of it, yes.” She takes a few steps toward me, then past me, her arms hidden within her robes. “You feel familiar to me. Like a shadow I’ve seen before.” When I don’t answer, she adds, “But I suppose so many of you do. You may take on different shapes, but you’re all the same.”

“We’re not all the same,” I say defensively.

She turns to my voice, the silver circlet around her forehead reflecting only darkness around us. “A human who insists they’re unique may be the most human thing of all.”

I should’ve come here more prepared. Part of me wasn’t sure it would definitely work again, but now that we’re connected, I feel completely out of my depth.

But I know I need to keep talking.

“How is it possible we can speak to each other?” I ask. “Have there been others who could do the same?”

Ophelia tilts her chin, scanning something in the distance. “You are not the first person to reach the walls of my mind.” She pauses. “But you are the first I’ve let in.”