“Finding adult twins without any family or people to ask after them was difficult,” Seb continues, speaking more to himself now. He crosses to the cabinets along the wall of skulls, cutting off Angela’s lament. “Imagine my surprise when I learned Manu was friends with another twin, an identical twin, working underground as an intern, and whom I recognized from down below. I only needed to follow Angela to learn where she lived, her interests, even her internship schedule. Once I saw her leaving Manu’s apartment, and that’s when I took the gypsy. I soon realized she would not serve my needs without her brother, but I kept her to serve as insurance. When Angela escaped, Manu became my leverage; Angela could not approach the police or the American embassy to obtain a new passport if she was the chief murder suspect, after being seen leaving Manu’s apartment the day Manu disappeared. The only thing left was to ensure Manu’s death appeared personal, emotional, as an angry friend might do it—with a shot to the heart.”

Anger swells within me, remembering the tidy front room. Her neat, stacked magazines. The pink photo frames. “You’re sick.”

Seb turns from steel drawers with a glare. “Luckily, medicine cures all sickness, Shayna. The greater good calls for my research, despite those who would impede it. The Nazis used these catacombs during World War II, yes?” He watches me, lapping up my angst as I paw through my memory, desperate for something to stop this.

“The best of them was Josef Molinare,” he continues. “A visionary. Physician of the Third Reich, banished to Brazil by the Allies for his extraordinary research. His experiments on twins gave me the idea.”

Seb’s hero: not just a textbook serial killer with unchecked impulses, but a sadistic tormentor.

I weigh my options for avoiding the same fate as Molinare’s victims, but I’m in zip ties, with an injured sister chained across from me. The only option is to keep Seb talking. “Did you learn about Molinare before or after you were dishonorably discharged?”

His smile falls. Seb peers at me as though seeing me for the first time.

“What did you do?” My words are breathless. “Kidnap Afghan twins?”

He needs us. He didn’t need Chang. He wants us alive. Fully functioning.

“Mourning,” he says, his eyes sharp. “I was grieving my dead brother and the horrifying way in which he died. I was so emotional, I struck the officer who tried to remove Baptiste from the tent, to ready his body for transport back to France.”

We lock eyes.

Valentin’s phantom voice fills my ears—Have you been watching the news?

No, I’ve been busy mourning, I snapped in his office.

Understanding mingles with disgust before I can dash the thought: I would have done the same.