She’d told me that her body felt like it was hers for the first time ever, after Orchard had finished with her. That she could breathe for the first time ever. I could see why. She’d want to bring it up once she’d digested it. I wouldn’t push her and I wouldn’t pry.

No, I wouldn’t raise her name.

“Chris Elman,” I said.

The scene had the same impact as the aggressive visions. Chris in a bestial form, as big as car, quadrupedal, with a human face that over-enunciated, by the way it seemed to move as it uttered words. It faced down Amy, pressuring her, barking words at her.

She backed away one step. The beast that was Chris Elman, that was Lab Rat, advanced five steps, traveling a quarter circle around her, ending with his face inside Amy’s personal space, scowling.

She hung her head.

“It always gives the worst details,” Tattletale told me. “Stuff that cuts right to what’s most important, what’s most visceral. Hard details, weaknesses, the key elements that make us us, that would be hardest to uncover otherwise. Stuff you’d never want to admit or let out of the box.”

I had a chance to get answers, as ugly as those answers were, to face down those people who were most incomprehensible and get that key insight.

“You could ask it a million questions and understand everything, I bet. There are less filters while we’re in here, probably,” Tattletale told me.

“I always thought of myself as an answer-seeker,” I said.

“Yeah, sure. Absolutely,” Tattletale said, quiet. “Here’s the deal, though. By the time you’re done asking a million questions, I guarantee you that you’re going to hate everyone and everything. You’ll abhor them, despise them, be afraid of them.”

I looked away from the crystals, which had gone dim. Tattletale’s expression was sad.

“Sometimes you gotta just pick a few promising runts out of the litter, and just plug in that one big assumption,” she told me. “Start with the assumption they’re good people and build on that belief. Sometimes they step it up and live up to what you think of them.”

“What if I did that, and they disappointed me, and I need to know why?”

For every fucking name I’d brought up so far.

Tattletale shot me an apologetic look. “Kiddo, you could go down that rabbit hole forever. Do you want to go there, or do you want to do what you came here to do? Help us find a way down.”

“I have an idea,” I said. “Lead the way to the safest part of the ledge?”

The crystals around us shifted, showing a few example sites. Tattletale took a second to absorb it and track it, then took off.

I started to follow, then hesitated by a small fraction.

“Jessica,” I murmured.