The pinched expression returns to Seb’s face. “I didn’t want to hurt Angela. She was different from the other experiment resources. You won’t believe me, but it’s not something anyone dreams of. No one dreams of this,” he says, pointing first to me, then Angela. “I was concerned for Angela when she escaped, and I went to Leroux, believing he might know where she was. But he became suspicious. So he had to be dispatched.”

I don’t reply. I don’t know how. I shouldn’t feel this shock and terrible sadness that Seb’s pragmatism would mean killing an acquaintance, possibly a friend. Even if he seems disturbed by his actions, too. Seb lost his brother to war—his only family, his sanity, he said—and somehow that means pursuing a cure at all costs. Maybe the tightening of my stomach, my chest, has more to do with finally seeing him for who he is. Who he was all along.

Weeping willow, my ass.

“What about Manu?” I say, trying to solidify the details still out of focus. “She disappeared two days before Angela but only turned up last week, deposited back in her apartment.”

Seb shrugs, his candor revived. “In every experiment a control and a variable are needed. Without both, the experiment is flawed. Before it became clear identical twins held the key, I believed I needed her brother to advance my theories. Without him, my findings were assuredly inconclusive.”

I picture the French heartthrob in the photo, his cheek pressed so lovingly to Manu’s. Not her boyfriend, after all. “Manu was a fraternal twin.”

“She blamed me for Christophe moving away to Belgium,” Angela says, breaking her silence. She stares down at her dirt-covered sneakers. “For months she followed me around, pleading with me to speak to him, get back together with him, stealing my metro tickets so I’d need her to drive me home and let her talk.”