Adam was in the Wellness Cabin that first day, and he seemed ill, but not on the brink of death. And the next day he was gone. “Did he escape, like we did?”
“It’s possible.” He taps his fingers on the countertop. I think back. Escape for us was hard. Escape for us meant planning. Adam didn’t escape. I meet Nazarin’s eyes, knowing what he’ll say next.
“Or Mana-ma sold him to the Ratel,” Nazarin says.
Which lost soul are you? Mia asked.
Did that mean there’s more than one? Who else did we lose in the Hearth? Who else might be here?
“In the year before I left, at least three teenagers died. A cut that went septic. A flu that wouldn’t stop. And then they’d be gone. They were all men.” My stomach hurts.
“So you think your Mana-ma might have … sold Adam and others to the Ratel?”
“She might. She just might have. It’d mean money to keep us afloat and keep the Hearth solvent. We weren’t self-sufficient from trading our makeshift items and selling produce. A lot of us were raised to be pliant, to listen to those in charge. Despite that, though, I can’t picture Adam turning into a hitman. And why would she do it? It’d be against the morals she taught us, to sell Hearth folk to the Impure.”
Nazarin exhales. “Brainwashing can be very persuasive, if it’s done over years. The Ratel might have been able to break him, psychologically. And I don’t know. Maybe your Mana-ma wasn’t as holy as she led you to believe. In any case, this is circumstantial evidence on top of more circumstantial evidence.”
“Stop calling her my Mana-ma. She’s no such thing.” Not anymore. How could I ever have believed in her?
“Sorry. You’re right. I’ll send the sketch back to the station, see if they can make any matches.”
“My drawing might not be good enough. Unfortunately I don’t have any photographs.”
“We’ll see what they say in any case. The drawing’s good.”
I feel a strange little rush of pleasure at that. “So, if this is all true, then there could be a link between the Hearth and the Ratel. Maybe Tila found that out. And that’s why she went after them.”
I fight down a rush of nausea. Even if this is why she did it, why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t she ask me to help? And if Vuk was actually Adam, why the hell would she kill him? She loved him just as much as I did. Wouldn’t she try to help him instead?
Tila was stupid, brash, and left me behind. She never used to leave me in the dust … but then, she never used to have a choice in the matter.
I look back at the autopsy and the police report to distract myself from the racing, circular thoughts I have no answer to. As I make sense of the words, I gasp. “Did you see this?” I ask.
Nazarin leans over my shoulder.
It’s a report from one of Mia’s neighbors, saying she was acting strangely yesterday and this morning.
“Like a totally different person,” the woman said. She didn’t give her name to the police. “She’d been singing really old songs from the 1960s, said she was giving up Zeal, moving away. She seemed happy, but also sort of manic? I thought she might have still been high, her eyes were so glazed.”
“She wanted to quit? This makes things so much sadder,” I say, nearly choking with grief.
Nazarin frowns. “Something’s weird about it, though. We saw her physical stats. She was really far gone, to change so suddenly.”
“Maybe I got through to her.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the dreamscape, just before we left, I told her she could be better if she wanted to be. Remember? I told her to try and be good again.”
Nazarin’s face goes still.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” He gets up and leaves me, confused, at the kitchen table. I can hear him hitting the punching bag in the gym.
About an hour later, he asks if I want to go for a walk, for some fresh air. His eyes dart imperceptibly to the wallscreens.
I agree, put on my coat, and we head out into the night. Nazarin turns on a White Noise, a tiny device the size of a fingernail, which will distort any nearby cameras trying to record our conversation. I wish we could use it in the safe house to speak freely, but the SFPD would wonder at the scrambled readings. We walk along the darkened streets, leaning close. Nazarin has his hand in his pocket, and I know it’s curled around a gun.
Whatever he’s about to tell me, he doesn’t want his employers to know, either.
“I’ve been developing a theory, over the last few months. I’ve been trying to find more definitive proof before I go to the SFPD.”
“About what?”
“I think Verve does more than simply giving people access to dreams.”
I focus on him. The light from the streetlamps plays across his face, casting dark shadows.
“I think,” he says, each word heavy and deliberate, “that some lucid dreamers can influence the Vervescapes and change personalities. I think … you might have done that to Mia. And I think the government realized that and they killed her, not the Ratel.”