Amy’s stuffed rabbit was still on the table; he took it in his hand. “Do you think she remembers it?”

“What they did to her? I do not know. Perhaps she does.”

“No, I meant before. Being a girl.” He searched for the words. “Being human.”

“I think that she has always been human.”

He waited for Lacey to say more, and when she didn’t, he put the rabbit aside.

“What’s it like, living forever?”

She gave a sudden laugh. “I do not think that I will live forever.”

“But he gave you the virus. You’re like her. Like Amy.”

“There is no one like Amy, Peter.” She shrugged. “But if you are asking what it has been like for me all these years, since Jonas died, I will say that it has been very lonely. It surprises me how much.”

“You miss him, don’t you?”

He instantly regretted saying this; a look of sadness swept over her face, like the shadow of a bird crossing a field.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

But she shook her head. “No, it is perfectly all right that you should ask. It is difficult to talk about him like this, after so long. But the answer is yes. I do miss him. I should think it a wonderful thing to be missed, the way that I miss him.”

For a while they sat in silence, bathed in the glow of the fire. Peter wondered if Alicia was thinking about him, where she was now. He had no idea if he would see her, or any of them, again.

“I don’t know … what I’m doing, Lacey,” he said finally. “I don’t know what to do with any of this.”

“You found your way here. That is something. That is a beginning.”

“What about Amy?”

“What about her, Peter?”

But he wasn’t sure what he was asking. The question was what it was: What of Amy?

“I thought … ” He sighed and drew his gaze away, toward the room where Amy slept. “Listen to me. I don’t know what I thought.”

“That you could defeat them? That you would find the answer here?”

“Yes.” He returned his eyes to Lacey. “I didn’t even know I was thinking it, until just now. But yes.”

Lacey appeared to be studying him, though what she was looking for, Peter couldn’t say. He wondered if he was as crazy as he sounded. Probably he was.

“Tell me, Peter. Do you know the story of Noah? Not Project NOAH. Noah the man.”

The name was nothing he knew. “I don’t think so.”