“I think it was brain scans or something. Like his version of an MRI.” She had been entertaining the idea of telling him what else Ampersand had been doing (omitting the parts about him leaving his lair without permission, of course), admitting that he had been aping something that could be considered friendship, but the alarmed and borderline disgusted expression on Sol’s face dampened her desire to tell him, or anyone. “But then Enola Gay happened, and he didn’t have time for it anymore.”

Sol’s look of concern only intensified, and he turned back to the road ahead. “You can’t cure PTSD.”

Cora almost clapped back, “How the fuck would you know?” but she didn’t see in him the snide sureness that often accompanied one of his assertions. He was looking ahead at the barely moving traffic, deep in his own thoughts.

“What do you mean?”

“PTSD is like cancer. You don’t cure it. Maybe it goes into remission, but you don’t cure it.”

It was something she hadn’t considered, a thought too ugly to touch, the idea that this might not be temporary. She’d taken for granted that the night terrors were a phase, that Ampersand had such a good grip on human physiology that he would figure it out, eventually find the right brain-button to push and push it, and the symptoms would go away. She had never considered that she might be broken for the rest of her life. That fear quickly turned into anger. “Are you just being shitty?”

Sol snorted. “What do you mean?”

“I mean are you just fucking with me? With this whole, like . . . ‘you will always be broken’ thing?”

“No,” he said, his lip curling in offense. “Do you really think that little of me? I wouldn’t joke about that. And besides . . .” He put the car into reverse, backing up far enough that the car behind him honked in alarm. “I didn’t say anything about you always being a broken bird. I just said it’s not something you can cure like it’s syphilis. It’s more complicated than that.”

“It’s just . . .” She was so tired of keeping her defenses up around him. If he was going to use this vulnerability to savage her later, let him. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any support, I don’t have any money, I don’t have any health insurance. And I don’t know what sets me off, it just . . . happens.”

“You mean your panic attacks?” he said, putting the car in park.

She looked at him, surprised to see sympathy on his face, something she hadn’t ever really seen in him before. Then she remembered the surveillance Ampersand had found in her apartment. “Have you been spying on me?”