A month has passed.

  My world is a circle of smooth, black stone. They call it the clean room. I call it the display case. Each day is the same. Food arrives on a silver tray. I am watched. I am not spoken to.

  I see Teddy in the yard sometimes. He waves.

  My hand wants to rise. It does not.

  From a high window in the main building, a figure watches. Maximus. To be loved by me is to be a weapon he can use.

  My hand stays at my side.

  I try the door. As always, two guards appear from the shadows and kneel, blocking the exit. I am a god on a leash.

  I press my hand against the cold stone of my prison, staring down at the yard. Then, I turn to look at my reflection.

  This is not the face of a man who buried a wife. This is not the body of a man who built a life.

  This face is a forgery.

  For a heartbeat, my reflection ceases to be a face. It is a black mirror, and the thing looking back has no eyes.

  From that void, the sound comes. A series of tones like a harp string being plucked by a shard of glass.

  Th..s st..s..s ..s a w..ste.

  I stumble back. What was that?

  I should tell someone. I won't.

  I don't want to look in mirrors anymore.

  A sudden clatter of metal from the corridor breaks my trance. My evening meal. The only ritual in this empty life.

  The Collector who brings my meals is stamped with a heavy figure: 8. The others call him the Brute. He slams the tray down.

  "Is there a problem, Eight?"

  He looks at me, and I feel the hatred burning through the mask. "My problem," he grates, "is that I earned my scars. You were just born clean."

  I stand. "You will show respect."

  A low, dangerous chuckle. "Respect is for leaders. Not Maximus's little pet."

  He turns to leave.

  "And you, Eight?" I ask. "You're just a dog. And what do we do with dogs that bite?"

  He pauses at the door, his shoulders tense.

  The alarm is a shriek that shatters the sterile quiet.

  From my high window, something twitches in the shadows at the far perimeter. A figure, small and hunched, stumbles through the grasping shadows of the watchtowers. It moves with the clumsy panic of flesh, not the clean glide of a Collector.

  "Take me there," I say to the Brute. "I will see to it myself."

  He goes rigid, his body caught between defiance and obedience. Then he nods. He leads the way, my two kneeling guards falling in behind us.

  We find her slumped behind a collapsed wall, gasping, a satchel pressed to a dark stain on her side.

  The Brute raises his weapon.

  "Stop."

  I step forward into the grey light. The world narrows to a single, impossible face. It's Nora. Here. In this hell.

  "Nora?" The name is a strangled sound torn from my throat. "What are you doing here? Are you insane?"

  Nora looks up, her stare sharpening. "Derrick?" Her hand, trembling, reaches for my face but stops short. "No. It can't be. You look... by the gods, you look like you did the year your father's boat went down."

  She stares at my face, at my glowing skin, her own pain forgotten with this impossible miracle.

  I turn to the guards. "Leave us." My voice cracks on the last word. "This asset is a high-value intelligence source. I will conduct the initial interrogation alone."

  The Brute's mask tilts. He looks at Nora, then back at me. "Protocol is clear," he grates, his hand resting on the hilt of his weapon. "Unauthorised presences are terminated. On sight."

  "That protocol is overridden," I snap. "That is an order, Eight."

  The Brute is silent for a long moment. Then, he gives a stiff, resentful nod and herds the other guards away.

  But at the edge of the shadows, he pauses and turns back.

  "Enjoy your interrogation," he says. "The midnight sweep starts early tonight. And they hate surprises."

  I can imagine his grin beneath the mask.

  He disappears into the fog.

  The moment they're out of earshot, I sink to my knees beside her.

  "What have you done, Nora?"

  "What I had to." She pushes herself up, air hissing through her teeth. "That brand on your skin. It was a sign. My work wasn't finished."

  She clutches my arm. "I don't understand what you are," she says, her eyes studying my impossible face, "but you wear his soul. I can feel it. You must listen."

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  Her voice cracks, losing its fire, becoming a strained whisper. "I had a hunch. A feeling... in the west wing workshop. I didn't know what I was looking for." Her eyes burn with a fierce, triumphant light. "And I found it. Their research. They weren't just making an abominable formula. They were trying to find a cure. I had the research in my hands... and then they found me."

  She pushes her satchel into my hands. "Larkvale. A flower." A cough racks her body. "They call it the Sunfire Rose. It can reverse the process. We can save..." Her voice trails off into another wet, ragged cough.

  I stare at her, at the fierce, triumphant light in her dying eyes. And I have to be the one to destroy it.

  "Nora," I say, my voice breaking. "The villagers you want to save are not just prisoners." I have to force the next words out. "The monsters in the masks. The Collectors. They are the villagers. Your neighbours. Our own."

  The blood drains from her face, leaving the skin tight and grey over the bone. She doesn't scream. She doesn't cry. She just stares through me. "My son. He's been here all this time."

  My first instinct is to reach out, to steady her, to offer a comfort.

  She bats my hand away.

  "No time," she hisses.

  I can see the grief trying to swallow her whole, but she shoves it down.

  Her jaw sets. "The cure, Derrick. It's all that matters now."

  She shoves the satchel into my chest. "The research is in there. But the key is the grove's location. I have to tell you where to find it."

  A beam of pure white light slices through the fog. We freeze. We are two insects in a jar. The relentless thump-thump of the patrol is a monstrous, patient heartbeat.

  "Move," I whisper, pulling her into the deeper shadows.

  The next fifty yards are hell. Every grunt of her pain is a shout in the darkness. Every scrape of my boot on gravel is a gunshot.

  We dive behind a stack of leaking barrels as the searchlight sweeps past, plunging us into a brief, precious pocket of silence and darkness.

  She clutches my tunic. Her face is a pale, waxy shape in the sudden dark. Her breathing is a ragged rasp.

  "Derrick," she says, her eyes locking with mine. "My son. Promise me. Save him."

  I look into her eyes, the words 'I promise' forming on my lips. But the searchlight begins its swing back toward us. The beam is so close I can feel the heat of it on my cheek.

  The patrol passes our position, their featureless masks turning in unison.

  My only answer is to grab her, haul her to her feet, and plunge back into the darkness.

  We reach the first derelict shack I can find. A cramped, stinking tool shed. I haul her inside, and the door swings shut.

  I lay her on the damp floor, my hands shaking.

  "Hold on, Nora," I say, tearing a strip from my tunic. "The grove," I plead, leaning in close. "Nora, where is it? Tell me."

  I press the strip to the wound on her side.

  But there is no warmth. Her skin is cold.

  Not cooling.

  Cold.

  My hands freeze. I look at her face. A fly lands on her open eye. She doesn't blink.

  She is already gone.

  Her last request, 'save my son', is lodged in my mind. I look down at her lifeless face and the words come out anyway.

  "I promise."

  The boots are outside the door. A heavy thump against the wood.

  I stare at Nora's body.

  Cold sweat slicks my skin. My breath catches in my throat, a dry, useless knot.

  I look at the door, about to splinter.

  The air in the tiny shack becomes a solid wall, crushing my lungs.

  There is no way out.

  Then something in me answers.

  A deep thrum that starts in the pit of my bones rises. It is a key turning in a lock I never knew existed.

  The boots thump against the door again, harder this time. A splinter of wood flies inward.

  My body has a plan. My hand rises. It knows what to do.

  My hand, steady as stone, rests on Nora's forehead.

  The process is a creeping, chemical cold. Her skin becomes translucent, her paper-thin map of veins dissolving into me. Her knowledge seeps through my bones like a cool sap, staining my marrow. My flesh answers, going rigid. I feel the clarity of my vision thicken, as if seen through a pane of old, warped glass. I feel the tendons in my wrist realign with the silent, purposeful strength of a root finding its way through stone.

  Nora's will is a geometric labyrinth. Her intellect, sharp and analytical, fights with hard logic. Absorbing her is to be lost in a maze of memories, theories, and paradoxes. When it ends, there is only the sound of shattering glass. Her entire mental fortress, every memory and theory, collapses into a million cutting shards of insight. I am left holding the pieces.

  My body shudders. The last of Derrick is expelled as a terrible, dry avalanche. A fine, grey dust seeps from the corners of my eyes. It is the dust of a man who was a rock, ground down to nothing.

  The Echo of Derrick is extinguished. The Echo of Nora is kindled.

  It is Vivid, its flame a grasping light.

  ?

  A life consumed awakens the Blight, its pulse a dull throb.

  ~

  I open my eyes. The world is a smear of muted brown and grey, a film of age over my vision. I try to push myself up, but my arms are sticks. My hands, wrinkled and spotted, come up to my face.

  Derrick's gifts are voided. In their place, Nora's gifts are now yours.

  Her rooted mind.

  Her patient eye.

  Her guarded heart.

  A knot of cold pressure forms deep in my stomach. A moment of stillness, and then the knot gives way. Then her memories fracture into me.

  The press of a thumb into damp earth, a precious seed tucked into its dark bed.

  Years blurring under a patient sun, a sapling reaching for the light.

  A boy's tearful face, his hands laying a broken bird to rest beneath the new tree.

  My head pounds. I am Nora. I am in a dark room. I remember the patrol. I remember my wound.

  But there is another memory. A final one. Clearer than the rest. I am standing in the cold, looking at Derrick, the tavern keeper. He is telling me a terrible secret. He is telling me the Collectors are the villagers.

  Then nothing.

  I look around the room. It is wrecked.

  I struggle to my feet. My hand, old and wrinkled, pushes against the floor.

  And beside it, in the dust, is a handprint. Not mine. A large, square handprint of a man. Of Derrick.

  My eyes fix on my own hand. Then on his.

  A thought lands, cold and sharp.

  My last memory is of him.

  But I am here. And he is gone.

  A cold pressure enters my skull. And then, a stranger's whisper in my mind.

  He is gone. Good. And so, we begin again.

  A sudden ice floods my chest, washing away a warmth I didn't realise was there.

  "Who... who are you?" I ask the empty room.

  A question you ask every time you forget yourself. I am the Voice that has always been with you. Your last Echo was simply too loud to hear me.

  "I don't understand. I am Nora."

  No. You are a thing that is wearing Nora.

  It is wrong. It has to be. I press my wrinkled hands to my face, digging my fingernails into my skin. I am Nora. I can feel the ache in my joints from a long day of walking. I can still taste the bitter tea I brewed beside the swamp at dawn.

  I get to my feet, my legs trembling. "You're trying to confuse me," I say, my voice shaking with a fury that is all Nora's. "You're a poison in my mind."

  Am I? Then tell me, Nora. What was the name of the first creature you ever loved? The small, loyal shadow at your feet.

  The question is absurd. Trivial. Of course I know. It was a dog. A scruffy little terrier mix. His name was… His name…

  My mind is a blank slate.

  Such a simple thing. Perhaps a harder memory, then. The man who gave you life. The one you called father. What was he called?

  I… I don't know.

  Do not be afraid. It is only an empty room. Now, the most important name. The boy whose face you see when you close your eyes. Your son. Say his name. Prove to me who you are.

  Panic claws up my throat. The face is there. The love is there. But the name is a locked room in my own head. I rattle the door, but it will not open.

  A small, dry sob escapes me.

  I crawl to the corner of the shack. My stomach tries to turn itself inside out. I collapse, retching up nothing but air.

  I lie in the dark. A long time passes. There is only the pressure of the Voice in my skull and the hard press of the satchel against my back.

  My hand hovers over the satchel for a moment before I reach for it. I open it. Inside is a map. A place called Larkvale. A quest for a cure.

  A story. Something to fill the emptiness.

  I get to my feet, my movements slow. I will follow the map. I will see how her story ends.

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