The young lab tech led us back to a pair of vertical pods stationed side by side and connected with wires. He opened one hatch door and Malia opened the other. The insides of both concave tubes were coated in gleaming mirrors. Mirrors, once again. I had been told enough to tease out what was happening here. I knew Professor O’s early experiments dealt with importing consciousness into compatible vessels. Clearly some form of intelligence had been implanted into my son, and was now going to be transmitted to me. What I didn’t know was the nature of this intelligence or where it had come from. Questions would lead to more nebulous answers. Physical violence would end with me in a hospital bed like my wife, if not worse. Neither action would do anything to relieve my son of the unwanted passenger in his mind. Some chatty son-of-a-bitch, apparently. Sometimes inaction is the best option. Sometimes you just have to hold to your word and hope for the best. I don’t believe I made the right decision stepping into that pod, but I can’t take it back.

“It’ll all be over soon,” I said to Rox. “Be strong, buddy.”

Tears were in his eyes. “You too,” he said, then stepped into the pod and turned to look at me. I watched as the door was shut, and right at the final moment, saw him smile. But it wasn’t Rox’s smile. It wasn’t the smile he gave me when we hung the mobile of fighter jets from the ceiling in his room. Or the one he’d sometimes give when Cassie smeared whipped cream on my face for fun. This was something under the surface, like a shark in shallow water, smiling through him. Cold and mean and eager to enter me. To enter you.

I felt Malia’s hand on my back urging me forward. I walked robotically into the mirrored chamber. The door shut before I had the chance to turn around. No final words. No last requests. Just the reflection of myself from every angle, so bright and clear I could trace every wrinkle in my skin, view into every pore. Trapped with the last person I’d want to be stuck with.