“Do you consent to be medicated?”

“Yes,” she pleaded. “Yes, please, make it stop, make it stop!”

He placed his front four fingers of his left hand together, a small, syringe-like device forming at the tips, and he inserted it into her neck. The effect was immediate. It didn’t stop her hyperventilating, but it did pull back the prickling of her skin, the swimming of her vision. “I’m sorry,” she managed, her breath still fast and shallow, but slowing down. “I tried . . . to stop it. I didn’t . . . want it . . . to affect you . . . I’m sorry.”

He removed the syringe, the extensions on his fingers melting back into him. He stood still for a moment, as if recalibrating, and then lowered his body right next to hers. Ampersand didn’t “sit” like a human. More than anything, it reminded Cora of a deer, arms tucked neatly underneath his chest and digitigrade legs to his side. Then with both hands, he caressed her cheeks, then her temples, then ran his fingers through her hair. In doing so, he caught where she had made herself bleed with her fingernails. “Why do you do this?”

“I wanted . . . to make it . . . stop,” she said between breaths. “I . . . don’t know . . . I just . . . wanted . . . it . . . to stop.”

He’d already repaired the damage on one side of her head by the time her breathing slowed to something normal, which was so superficial he could do it with one hand.

She opened her eyes, by now able to make herself take deeper breaths. Not long ones yet, but deep. This room they’d put him in was so austere, about thirty by fifty feet and with nothing in it but a mattress foam top for him to . . . chill on, she supposed. She knew most of what he needed to function was a part of his person, but there was so much nothing in here. The only thing on the walls was surveillance cameras, which her eyes floated to.

“The cameras . . .,” she breathed. “You’ve still . . . They won’t . . .”

“They will not see anything I do not allow.”

She closed her eyes. He’d done this before; hacking human surveillance was old hat to him. She suspected that he spent most of his time outside of the complex with the people at ROSA none the wiser, but she had no idea where he went if he did. The few times she had asked, he evaded the question. “I have much work to do, much still to study.”

She looked up at him, his big head not a foot away from her face. Now that her eyes were used to the dim room, she could see his, a pair of giant almond-shaped gems that absorbed the light and reflected it back in an amber glow.