Levi moves closer to me, gingerly, on the bed. Not too close; there’s a handbreadth space between us. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, Emma. I can’t make you any promises, because I’ve never lived in fantasies,” he says, raw and low and under his breath. “All the time I was growing up on Castor Island, all throughout my childhood, I knew there was this other life. This other way. And then, a few years ago, I found out about you. I hardly remembered anything about the three years we spent on the island as toddlers, growing up together. Gravelle showed me plenty of video footage, though. And I knew you were the one to escape our limited life on the island. Still, I didn’t dream that my life could be your life. It was impossible. I knew the life you were experiencing, with a real dad, and real friends, in the real world, would never be anything but a painful nightmare for me, since, as dreams go, it was wholly unattainable. It’s much harder to lose yourself in a dream and then be disappointed when it’s wrenched from you, than to never let yourself dream at all, isn’t it? That’s why it became my rule. No dreaming. Ever.”

I stare at Levi’s face, taking in every last familiar section of it. The pain there. The soul, and wisdom, in someone so young, who only ever wanted a childhood. Who was denied that from birth.

“What if he kills them?” I say, finally letting myself speak out loud the thought that’s haunted me every night since I realized Ollie was a Duplicate. “Or already has? What if he kills us too? Would he? Would he really do it?”

Levi sighs. “I believe that Augustus Gravelle feels so alone and isolated and abandoned that he would not hesitate to terminate every single one of us. Once he’s gotten everything he needs from us.”

He folds his arms over his chest, and I watch as he shifts his position, crossing one leg over the other. His strong, broad shoulders lean lightly against the headboard.

Now. All you’d have to do is scoot closer. Just an inch. Or less…

An ache starts in my chest that quickly travels to every extremity.

“Gravelle is unpredictable. The fact is, we just don’t know what he’ll do.” Levi furrows his brow, thinking hard, and I make a mental note how sexy he is when he’s contemplating something deeply. Then I mentally smack myself: Stop it! This is definitely not the time. It’s never going to be the time.

“Do you think they even know they’ve been replaced?” I wonder out loud.

“Hard to say. Who knows what lies Gravelle has told them.”