He cocks his head at us, wild-eyed, and it’s all too obvious so much has changed in a decade. There’s a danger here, something off, something cracked.

I feel it, and Tai feels it, too, because we both scrabble back.

“You need to know,” he says, struggling to breathe and staying put. Holding quivering, thick-veined hands out, as if to calm us. “Quickly, before the police come, you need to know the rest. I can only tell you in person. When Mitso was just a kid, he was messing around in the Hero Pharm systems when he accidentally came across details of people affected by Viloxin testing. He started to sell shreds of it to the big papers, and everyone at Hero Pharm was flipping out over the breach. This happened just as I came over to study at the institute, and your mom was begging Hero Pharm to give me a more serious internship, anything that wasn’t helping out around Stökéwood. She wanted to make it up to me because she said we couldn’t tell anyone we were related, not just yet. At the time, my identity was known only by your mom, Teddy, and Nítuchí. They decided not to even tell your Dad who I was. He couldn’t be distracted or disturbed when he was in the middle of formulating another breakthrough like Ladyx. He wouldn’t appreciate it, they said. He would fall into one of his infamous chilly moods if he learned your mom had chosen that moment to trot out a relative and announce who she was to the world.

“Nítuchí was the one who approached me with a project. Nítuchí said I could sort paperwork related to a new miracle drug the company was testing for panic attacks. I proved I was good at it and got to know the man. Then he approached me with something more: I could help the company by investigating a local kid who frequented the same online forums I did. If he was spreading lies about Mireille and Hero Pharm online, I would report back to him.