“If it’s important to you.”

But he didn’t need a church. Not because he’d given up on God—but because church itself was the one place Eli had never felt Him. No, God had stood with Eli at the top of the cellar stairs. Given him each of those families to learn from. Led him here, to this house, and this couple, this new chance.

His room, when they got there, was comfortable and clean. A double bed, a closet, a desk. A pair of framed pictures hung on the wall over the desk, anatomical drawings, one of a hand, the other a diagram of a human heart. Eli stopped before them, studying the lines, startled by the intricacy, the elegance.

“You can take those down, if you don’t like them,” said Lisa. “Make the space yours. Put up posters or whatever boys your age do.”

Eli glanced toward her. “How long am I staying?”

Lisa’s eyes widened in surprise. Her face was an open book—that was the phrase people used. Eli had never really understood it until he looked at Lisa.

“As long as you want,” she said. “This is your home now.”

Eli didn’t know what to say to that. He’d been living in increments of days, weeks, which wasn’t really living, of course. Now, his future stretched before him, measured in months, years.

Eli smiled, and this time, it almost felt natural.

XV

FOUR YEARS AGO

XVI

EON

STELL sank into his office chair, and waited for the call.

His office, like the rest of EON, was composed of clean lines, spare and minimalist. Three thin screens drew a semicircle over his desk, and a vast grid on the wall live-streamed footage of each hall, access point, cell.

EON’s cells were state-of-the-art fiberglass cubes, each floating in the middle of its own concrete hangar. The majority of the screens on the wall were still dark, positioned as they were in half-completed wings, or looking onto empty cells, but on the central screen, Eli paced the confines of his unit like a lion tracing the edges of its cage.

To think, none of this would have happened without Eliot Cardale.

Eli Ever.

Stell took up a black business card, turned it absently between his fingers. The word EON, ghosted in spot gloss, showed up only when it caught the light.

EON had been Stell’s idea, yes, but it was at first a vague proposal, one motivated by his history with Vale and Cardale, by what he’d stopped, but also what he’d failed to. By the fact that ten years ago, Stell had put Victor in jail, and let Eli go free, and because of that choice—that failing to look beyond the obvious, to see through a single deceptive guise—thirty-nine people had died. It haunted him. Plagued him.