The images shifted. Contessa, holding down someone who was mutating, Contessa’s hand at their throat. She batted aside reaching hands and claws. Kenzie was changing settings on the box she’d been using to get sound, so we mercifully didn’t have to hear the screaming from the person on the table.

On another wall, I could see Contessa on the beach, wearing civilian clothes, a loose fitting top and knee-length skirt, her hair tied at a point nearer her shoulder blades than her head, swinging in the wind, her feet in the water.

“When we talk about a subject, it resonates,” I noted. “When Rain, Kenzie and I were traveling, the kinds of things stored in one area were related to that area. Here, the data relates to Contessa. If we figured something out as a starting point, we could branch out from there, get more information elsewhere. But… this is responsive, a bit different. In some ways, it’s like Tattletale’s part of the dreamscape.”

Sveta reached out, and her arm was slow to extend, unfurling. She placed a hand against an outcropping of crystal at the edge of the island. “A scared little boy named Dimitri, who fell.”

Existing scenes dropped away. There was only darkness in the walls, swirling like some kind of faint smoke moved within.

“Strike one,” Chris said, from his seat.

“A little girl named Nadia. My sister.”

Again, darkness.

“Strike two.”

“…Patient six-two-four-five-six-B,” she said.

The scene shifted. Contessa, and a very early Sveta, distressed, lashing out with tendrils, far shorter than they’d ended up growing to be. A door opened up in space, and Sveta was placed in confinement.

“Patient six-two-four-five-six-B, earlier,” Sveta said, facing the wall.

“How did you know your number?” Rain asked.

“Micro-dots, hidden in the tattoos,” Sveta said, touching her cheekbone, where the tattoo stood out. “One of the Irregulars had it discovered while they were in the PRT, trying to figure out if the tattoos were applied in a specific way.”

It was the scene I’d seen as she’d walked across this little island, but at a different point in the timeline. Contessa laying an injured child of ambiguous gender on a table. The child’s tunic was folded down, exposing a mess of lines that extended from waist to shoulder, all inflamed and festering. Flesh had come away in ribbons, and that flesh had died, curled up or sticking out dry and stiff.

“Some cases changed over time,” Five clarified. “Mantellum was one. Cauldron found it useful to have a way of tracking subjects.”

Sveta brushed a hand along the child’s face, and I could see the resemblance. A younger her. Especially around the eyes.

“Patient six-two-four-five-six-B, location discovered,” she said.

The image shifted, showing a computer screen in a large office. A map.