Park looked between them. “What are you talking about?”

Ellenex touched her hair, almost self-consciously. “It is as we told you, Dr. Park. There are anomalies on the ship.”

“What sort of anomalies?” The same word again, she thought. What did they all mean by it, or by ‘assimilation,’ by ‘synthetic’? Since when had they begun forming their own separate understanding of words, employing them in their own special modes of communication? Their own languages? And why had no one taken notice of any of it besides Park?

Ellenex shook her head, slowly. The damage to her skull made it look like her hair was in danger of sliding off. A doll, Park realized. She was just a human-sized, broken doll. She’s so damaged. I can’t take anything she says seriously.

“I’m sorry,” Ellenex repeated, her voice soft and mournful. “There are anomalies. I am unable to answer your query at this time.”

—

Eventually she left Ellenex there to watch Hunter, with Jimex, with Dylanex, too, because even if Ellenex herself was malfunctioning, the others would obey Park’s command to stay put and watch. Her stomach was growling—she could not remember the last time she had eaten. Famished, Park started toward the canteen, then stopped. She stood there in the hallway for a moment, cocking her head to the side. Was she thinking, or was she dimly receiving her body’s own instinct, some secret and sudden message from somewhere inside of her? She wasn’t sure. Then, almost irresistibly, she found herself turning and gravitating toward a different part of the ship. It felt only semi-conscious, as if she had some dense hidden core within herself that she’d never known about, and it was being dragged in one direction by a distant magnet.

“I need to speak with you,” she said when she reached her destination.

Fulbreech looked up from his schematics. He was working with METIS in his workspace, drawing holographic maps in the air of what Park assumed was Eos’s terrain. She caught a glimpse of a lake and a strange, twisting spire before Fulbreech gestured and closed the program. It vanished into the air like a blown-out candle flame.

“Sagara just stopped in, looking for you,” he said in response.

Park couldn’t help but glance around, imagining the sensors in the walls. “He’ll find me eventually,” she said. “If he really needs me.”

“What’s he want you for?”

“Hunter, of course. I suppose he won’t be happy that I left my post.”

Fulbreech shook his head. “How could he know so quickly that you left?”

“. . . He has eyes everywhere.” Sagara would hang her for that one.

But Fulbreech only smiled, thinking it a light-hearted joke. “I’ve begun to assume that at all times. Hello, Captain.”