Then I find a folder that is unlabeled. I pause, wondering if I should open it. Anxiety gnaws at me. Once you know something, you can’t unknow it, I tell myself. But I tap the unlabeled folder and watch as its contents fill the screen.
They’re all images. Thumbnails that, when tapped, expand to their full size. All the images are of animals: even as thumbnails I recognize the wide yellow eyes of the igua, the remarkable ears of the kunike. I tap on a few, admiring them. Most of them were taken in the lab, specimens in containment, but there are a few that must have been taken by finders, the animals surrounded by the dense greenery of Faloiv. Some of the photos’ subjects are blurred, capturing the motion of the specimen as it turned to flee.
One image catches my eye: a maigno. I tap the thumbnail and it expands to fill the screen. My eyes widen with surprise. The maigno isn’t alone in the image. Beside it stands my grandmother.
Nana is young, her face unlined and her tight curly hair graying only at her temples—not the all-over eruption of white that I remember from my childhood. Her smile is broad and one hand is swung out to her side, gesturing toward the maigno as if to say Do you see this beauty? I wonder how old my mother was when the photo was taken. My age, perhaps: sulking in the half-built compounds and dreaming about the jungle, imagining what wonders her mother was out seeing. I tap the image again to make it larger and drag the focus to my grandmother’s face to examine her features. So much like my mother, the angled chin and round cheekbones, the bright eyes.
But there’s something about one of her eyes that isn’t quite right: a pixilation of the image that distorts her pupil. I hadn’t noticed when the image was regularly sized, but with it blown up and zoomed in like this, it catches my attention. I tap on Nana’s face to zoom in even further.
Her features fill the screen, slightly stretched, the wide, graceful bridge of her nose centered. I drag the image downward to find her eyes, and then I see what the distortion is.
It’s a box. A black box just like the file that Rondo sent me on my slate a few hours before: small and square with a digital lid. I stare at it, the unknown yawning up at me from my grandmother’s face. I sit there in the dark, the light from the slate glowing like a torch, my finger hovering over the box. I take a deep breath and tap it.
The box opens and the screen goes blank. At first I think the device has powered off, but then a window appears in the center of the screen, with the word Password blinking above an entry field.
I hesitate. Password? Rondo may be a hacker but I’m not.
At first I try Nana’s name: Amara. The file had been hidden in a photo of her, so maybe the password is her as well. But the box turns red and blinks, the entry field flashing. What would my mother use as a password? Guessing, I type in Vagantur.
Red. Flashing field. No luck. Tries usually come in threes, I think, and I rack my brains for what might be my last shot. I have no ideas, so I start to type in my own name. O-c-t-a-v-i-a, and I pause, my finger stopped above the enter button. I delete the entry and type my middle name instead: A-f-u-a.
The box turns green and disappears, an instant of blankness before the box’s contents assemble on the screen. Rows of files and images, some of them just repeated images of my grandmother with the maigno. Double encrypted, I think. What I see is mostly data; no species, though I’m fairly certain it’s all human. I scan the files quickly—I’ve already been in the study longer than I wanted to be—searching for something I can use. Blood work. Heart rates. X-rays. And then I see my name.
I tap on the file, but the only thing I find when it opens is more blood work and vital data. I know there has to be something here—why else would it be in an encrypted file hidden in a photograph? I close the file and keep looking until my eye falls on two images: brain scans. My hands are shaking, the feeling of walking through the dark and knowing something is in the trees, knowing and massive.
The first file is just like the one Rondo sent me. In fact, I’m almost certain it’s the same image. Normal activity, nothing unusual. I close it to look at the second image.
Most of the scan is normal: neurons firing as expected, healthy activity. Right in the center, though, knotted between the temporal and parietal lobes, is what looks like an explosion of color: bright tendrils all convening in a maze of twisting illumination, like blood spreading through water but clinging together like slime. My mind is buzzing, looking at the scan, but I barely notice.
“What is that?” I whisper to myself, holding the slate closer to my face.
Through the silence comes a whisper, behind me in the dark.
“It’s your brain.”
I nearly throw the slate in my shock, too startled to gasp. It’s my mother, halfway across the room, several steps from the door. She didn’t make a sound, slipping into the study like an inky shadow. We stare at each other in the darkness, my mouth slightly open and hers set in a look of almost sadness. We say nothing, each waiting for what the other might say. Suddenly I notice the buzzing: the quivering feeling of an echo happening inside my head. I know that feeling. But I’m in my ’wam: no animals around. No Faloii. Looking at my mother, I slowly tilt my head sideways.
And the tunnel opens. Quickly. Enough to make me dizzy with the images that are suddenly inundating my consciousness. I’m overwhelmed, trying to understand what’s happening. Images of my grandmother sitting at the very desk I lean against, smiling up at someone walking through the door. The jungle of Faloiv: Dr. Espada walking ahead and then turning back with eyebrows raised, grinning. My father, younger than he is now, in his white coat, weeping. My heart is pounding, my head swimming. I don’t know if I want to cry or vomit.
And then the tunnel closes, the images retreating and growing dim as the buzzing wanes into nothing.
“I’m sorry,” my mother whispers, now by my side, crouching and touching my hair. “Even after all these years, I struggle to control it. You’re much better at it, I think.”
The tears stinging in my eyes aren’t mine—it’s as if I’ve been injected with the sorrow from the vision and must wait for it to ebb. I struggle against the feeling of powerlessness. This doesn’t make sense! My mother is not of Faloiv. Is she? Is that another lie too, my parents’ lineage?
My mother takes the slate from my hands and sinks down on the floor next to me. I’m too shocked to move away. We huddle there in the dark. She holds the screen up in front of both of us.
“This is your brain, Octavia. As you can see, it’s a little . . . different.”
“B-but why?” I stammer. “What’s wrong with me? How can you . . . ?”