Rain ran his fingers through his hair, turned and took a step to one side, like he was going to walk away or pace, and then stopped, because he couldn’t take his attention off the screen.

Tristan was in a hard place, knowing what he did but having a friendship on the line, Sveta maybe wasn’t as much of a friend to Rain but she was also more sensitive and kind, and she didn’t know as much. Rain didn’t really have other allies in the group he could turn to. Certainly not Ashley. Not Chris. Kenzie just wanted to know if she should get started building her thing.

Somehow, he ended up looking at me. He looked spooked.

“If Kenzie builds the thing, I can fly over and plant it,” I said. “I don’t mind showing my face there, it fits with the plan, there’s a lower risk of the surveillance operation getting discovered, it works.”

Rain nodded, tense.

“But I do think Chris may be right. If the group is extending a hand to you and you’re not extending trust back, that may not be fair. You should share something.”

“Okay,” Rain said.

Kenzie spun around. She grabbed one of her flying eyes and pried open the side, pulling out a black rectangle. She swapped it with a spare.

“It’s personal,” Rain said. “It’s emotional. Not helped by the dreams, by the possible personality bleed across the cluster. Some things I’ve caught lately made me think there might be some.”

I listened, my expression still, arms folded, mostly watching what Kenzie did while Rain talked. I was going to have to deploy this thing.

Kenzie popped open the jewelry case with the camera she’d put in Ashley’s eye, then tore off the section under the lens. She flicked at parts with her fingers to get them spinning and then held onto others, unscrewing them in the process.

“They blame me, for the events around the trigger. I’ve told Sveta all of this. The dreams are biased, selective, cherry picking from my perceptions. They make me out to be more of a bad guy than I am.”

“I don’t think you’re a bad guy at all,” Tristan said.

“I’m not a good guy either. And maybe that’s because of the bleed coming the other way. I feel like a completely different person than I was then. And I know—I think Snag is too. I’ve seen his perspective and his dreams, and he’s willing to murder now? Maybe the agent took half of my anger from back then and divided it among them, aiming it back at me.”

“What happened?” Ashley asked.

“I fucked up. I had a chance to save them and I didn’t,” Rain said.