Glenn had smiled at her. “There is no ‘me,’” he said. “Only a version of the thousands of units of Glenns.”

“That version is you,” Park insisted. “You’re different from everything else.”

He’d laughed lightly, a sound like pent-up steam hissing from a pipe. “I’m different because you’re different,” he said. “I am what you require me to be.”

—

She slept again, uneasily, raising her mental fists in preparation to fend off another dream. Another memory. Thankfully, this time she dropped into bottomless sleep, and when she woke again, the lights were on and a silhouette was standing behind her curtain. Waiting.

Park sat up but didn’t call out. “Who is it?” sounded feeble and imploring, like an old frightened woman afraid to answer the doorbell. Better to wait and see what the shadow did. For a horrible instant she thought it might be the stranger, come to silence her—it certainly wasn’t Fulbreech, whose shape she thought she could recognize easily by now, or Sagara. She could move again; the fuzziness of the sedatives was wearing off. And the observation shields were down. When she looked around for a weapon to defend herself, all she could see was her bedside table, with a spoon and a cup of vita-gel for her to eat. Park grabbed the spoon, held it in a reverse-grip. Her heart was rapping inside her chest like someone pounding their fist on a door. She wondered how long it would take someone to come if she screamed.

As if on cue, the figure outside the curtain stirred. A head appeared between the drapes. “Get up,” Boone said. “And get dressed. Chanur says you’re fine.”

Park resisted the urge to draw her blanket up to her chin. She looked at him, despite her tousled hair, yesterday’s decksuit, the grit and salt in her eyes. “What do you need?” she asked.

“I heard from Fulbreech,” Boone said, “that you think someone’s aboard the ship.”

Park said nothing. Obviously he didn’t know she’d overheard his earlier conversation. Had he come to bully her? Threaten her? In the half-dark she couldn’t see his expression; his body was still partially hidden by the curtains. “What do you need?” she asked again, warily. She hadn’t lowered her spoon.

She didn’t expect what he said next. “You’re going to help me look,” Boone said. “Come on, get up.”

Slowly, cautiously, Park swung her legs out, testing her returning mobility; she winced at the thought of putting her bare feet on the cold metal floor. “Look for what?”

Boone threw her an impatient glance; seeing her still sitting there in her pod, he came all the way into the room and looked around. Bending, he flung her boots at her from a little storage locker on the floor. “Look for the thing,” he said curtly. “I mean the guy. The guy you saw.”