I’m racing from Nightshade as fast as I can, my mind churning and fear creeping its tendrils up my limbs. I look down at my plum, like somehow the time is going to ground me, or make me understand the gibberish I just heard. It’s 4:06 p.m.

What were all those strange, jumbled thoughts in Ollie’s head? What is it that we don’t suspect? What did he mean by “time stamp” and “installation” and “airtight”? Those are all meaningless words.

Only something about them is sending chills up and down my spine, causing me to take in gulps of the freezing air like I might hyperventilate. Because when it comes down to it, none of what I just heard makes any sense. And not only that—for those few minutes when I was standing there, watching Ollie type away on his plum, and hearing his nonsensical thoughts… It didn’t sound like him.

I stop at a bench, gasping for air as everything I witnessed roils through me. The way Ollie seemed to finally notice that I was there—five minutes after I arrived—and then turned on a dime just like that, smiling and referencing our movie marathon… It was terrifying.

Because for the five minutes before that, he didn’t seem like Ollie at all.

And if he didn’t seem like Ollie, is that because he’s been brainwashed? Did Gravelle get to him again? Do something to him?

The time—4:00 p.m. I remember now. It was 3:52 p.m. when Ollie left my room yesterday. And today, when I was reading his thoughts, he said something about a window. A five-minute window between 4:00 and 4:05 p.m. By 4:06, he was back to normal again.

Are there five minutes a day when Gravelle has some kind of hold over him? Is that what’s happening?

Then I hear it again, in my mind, suddenly remembering it so clearly.

This is 002.04, sending this message to Pollux.

002.04.

Pollux, the twin island to Castor. The one Seymour told us about.

I grab on to the back of the bench, feeling stabbing pains in my gut as the revelation hits me. How did I not see this right away?

Ollie wasn’t brainwashed.

He called me Eden. No one calls me that, except Gravelle.

002.04. It’s like the number that was written on the tag of the Tessa clone’s purple bomber jacket, 001.05.

That didn’t sound like Ollie back there because it wasn’t Ollie.

It was a Duplicate.

The Pretender

Ollie has been replaced by a Duplicate.

But how? How can this be? I try to find some semblance of order in my scrambled thoughts.

There was another Duplicate of Ollie. The first one. The one Gravelle murdered in Ollie’s place.

Ollie’s been cloned before, twice. First when Levi was created. And then, years later, when that Duplicate was introduced as a stand-in, a lifeless placeholder.