No. I won’t let myself think that. I can’t. This is one of Gravelle’s plots. To pull the wool over our eyes yet again, for some messed-up reason I can’t even begin to guess at. But he wouldn’t kill Ollie—his biological son. Would he?

My friends arrive and crowd around me.

“Emma?” Pru exhorts. I must look the way I feel on the inside: utterly bereft. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

I tell them everything. About leaving my room at 4:00 p.m. the past two days. About how I read his thoughts and heard him communicating with Gravelle about the installation. How he mentioned Pollux.

“Four p.m.,” I tell them in a rush, my words tumbling out in no order, with no organization. “That was the time when Ollie’s Duplicate… It was like he turned off, or on, or something,” I say, trying to explain it. “He was there physically, but mentally, he wasn’t. I heard these strange thoughts, not the thoughts of Ollie or someone resembling Ollie, but more like instructions. I bet they aren’t even in his head the majority of the day, when he believes he’s Ollie. Because they do believe, don’t they? Even the first Duplicates who came here believed they were Tessa, Archer, and Jake. When Ollie deactivated—or whatever it was that happened from 4:00 to 4:05 p.m.—he communicated with Gravelle via his plum. He mentioned a time stamp on his wrist,” I add, recalling that detail now. “I don’t think he consciously wanted me to hear him think that. Maybe he knew it might give him away? But you know what it’s like when you try not to think about something. It only makes you think about it more.”

I stop, getting my bearings, then remember I haven’t told them everything. “He said something about an infrared light. That must be how you can see the time stamp,” I explain.

I watch as my friends process this, going through the same line of thinking I did. Wondering how, and when, and why?

Maude’s pacing, trying to work this out in her mind. “The first Duplicates who came to campus were Duplicates of original kids. Of Tessa. Of Archer. And of Jake…”

“And now Ollie,” I supply. “It’s the kids who were originally cloned…”

“Resulting in us,” Ansel says.

“Who does that leave?” I jump in. “Just Madison.”

“And Pru,” Pippa says, her voice sounding deflated.

We all turn, on reflex, to stare at Pru, who shakes her head.

“But I’m not—I’m me,” she says, squaring her shoulders. “This time stamp. What is it exactly?”

“My guess is that the Duplicates were all given date and time codes, kind of like birth-certificate records from when they were ‘born,’” Jago says. “And Gravelle put that information on their wrists so he could track them. Like produce or a carton of milk.”