“Outside, in nine percent hydrogenated rain. Outside.”

O’Neil’s hands are in his pockets. I can feel his body heat from beside me. “The rain had stopped,” he mumbles, but Nonsiu does not hear. I concentrate on Nonsiu’s enormous desk, that spans half the room. How much space does he need?

“Outside,” Nonsiu repeats. He looks at O’Neil and then shakes his head. Then his gaze drops to me. “Aylah? Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

There’s a lump stuck in my throat. I should not have gone with O’Neil. But doesn’t the end justify the means? I look everywhere but at Nonsiu’s penetrative green gaze. “We found something that might have been washed away during the next shower.”

“At the expense of your lives. Does that mean anything to you? If you thought to steal a shielded tram, why not just take armour too?” Nonsiu paces back to his desk. The heels of his boots click against the tiles. He must have pressed down too hard and slid at some point because there is a black skid mark near his desk – though, I’ve never seen him fumble. We are in his office again. He was not pleased when the tram glided back to the Precinct. A pair of stern looking guards who refused to give in to O’Neil’s ill attempts at humour escorted us back to Nonsiu’s office. The muscles in my legs ached from all the climbing; did he really need to have his office eight feet in the air with the only entrance route being an antiquated flight of stairs?

“Taking armour would have notified you, meanwhile I’m authorised to programme trams and –”

“Not anymore, Investigator. Consider your tram access stripped. What you did was dangerous and uncalled for – and with Aylah who has no training whatsoever –”

“Actually,” O’Neil takes a step forward, the muscles in his jaw stiffening. “Aylah is sanctioned for fieldwork and has had the same training as every officer that works in homicide. All of which, including the basic understanding of Rereading, you would know, had you read the files you were supposed to.”

Nonsiu comes toe to toe with O’Neil, both their faces set in a straight-lipped frown. Nonsiu’s thin eyebrows are drawn tight. “Are you suggesting I’m unfit for my post?”

O’Neil does not flinch; his blue eyes flash. “I’m suggesting you prepare yourself for what being Inspector demands.”

“Because you could do better?”

I hesitate. Is this turning into a pissing contest? I bite my lip. I shoot O’Neil a dark glare, but he is too busy staring the Inspector in the eye to notice. “Sir,” I say. “You did imply we were allowed to retrieve evidence…”

“You didn’t find evidence. You found a random letter of an ancient alphabet scrawled into a wall using a badly reacted vial of liquidised Lysphil!” Nonsiu’s face is tinting a light shade red. He closes his eyes for a long second and like that, O’Neil and I are reduced to misbehaving children and he is cast in the role of the well-meaning but ultimately exhausted father. “And I didn’t think you two would be stupid enough to travel outside.”

“What were we supposed to do? Wait? And lose what little we found?”

“Lysphil?” I say, and the line of canopies screwed into the concrete walls flashes. The stench of disinfectant attacks me. My thoughts race and smash! into one another. Lysphil. Again. Blue-green eyes and dilating black pupils that swallow and swallow and swallow until nothing is left. It’s hard to feel small, no matter how disapproving the look received by your Inspector. It’s hard, because sometimes the things in your head are more real than anything that actually is. In my head, I am Stacia Zcu again. I am touching the cool glass of my window; it is locked. This time I know what happens next; I know how it ends.

“You’re still alive,” Nonsiu is saying. “Lio is dead and negligently dying for him solves nothing.”

“Not finding everything we can…” I can’t hear O’Neil anymore. His voice trails off, lost in the hammering in my ears.

It is hard to swallow. I can’t see. There are no shapes, only colours. Colours, colours, colours, blending and stealing pigment and giving it away in uneven sluices. I take a step back. Then a step forward. My legs have been boiled and steamed and now they are weak and rubbery. I can’t stand. I’m not falling. Not yet.

“Aylah?” A warmth attaches itself to my elbow. It is steadying and grounding. I close my eyes and the distorted world fades to black. I zero in on the heat clasped around my arm, until I can feel the outline of O’Neil’s hand.

“I’m fine.” Two words and my lungs feel emptied out. I try to inhale subtly but a loud wheeze crackles through the air. My hand shoots to my chest. I look up and Nonsiu is a haze of brown and bright green.

A moment of silences stretches over us and threatens to suffocate.

“Page Dr Midhurst. Take her down to the infirmary.” Nonsiu’s voice wanes and the shadow of him I can see, recolours with a painstaking slowness. There is a heavy breath of pause and a halt in his receding footsteps as he returns to his desk. “Don’t think that this absolves you.”

O’Neil’s grip on my arm tightens. “That would be easy,” he hesitates. “And here I thought you liked easy.”

The firm line of Nonsiu’s lips tighten and I think O’Neil is going to continue and rant on about how it is Nonsiu’s fault for delaying the investigation to this point, and the inefficiency of the justice system, but he stays silent and makes a move to leave. I imagine Nonsiu scowling at O’Neil – the angry set of his thin features – and O’Neil’s reaction becomes less incongruous.

“Do you have to antagonise him?” I say to O’Neil when we are out of the door and clambering down the steps. The heavy footfalls ripple through the air, and I shift my shoulders uncomfortably. I don’t like that I might be disturbing other people. That they might be noticing me.

“Are you feeling alright? What was that in there – everything okay?” O’Neil ignores my question.

I stop and face him. He stares at me. I fight the urge to look down. I meet his gaze. “I’m fine. It’s just…it’s a lot of excitement for one day.” I let my shoulders sag. O’Neil’s face blurs. “I – I knew him, you know, I knew him since he was six and now – now…”

O’Neil pulls me in, against him and I bury my face into the thick fabric of his shoulder. “I know,” he says, his lips beside my ear. I want to tell him that he doesn’t – that he can’t. That as calm as I’ve been about all of this, I haven’t been calm at all. It doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t feel like he’s gone and it’s so hard to reconcile myself with the reality that I’ll never see him again.

“Do you want to see Midhurst? Maybe he’ll have something you can take?”

I don’t. I nod anyway.

O’Neil’s hand stays steady on the small of my back as he leads me to the lift and all the way down to Midhurst’s office. My heads pounds and my eyes burn with unshed tears. Inside, I am in turmoil. O’Neil doesn’t say a word; his silence holds me together, bit by crumbling bit. I depend on the solidity of his hand on back – as though if it were to disappear I would too.

Midhurst’s private office is on the lower floors, where the hallways are always glaringly empty and the few on-site specialists reside quietly in their assigned spaces. His is just left off the lift and sparsely decorated, sprinkled with only a few necessities: a pen here, an extra glass tab there, a desk and a chair. It’s small, with bare walls and a desolate atmosphere. The only reprieve in this room is that Midhurst doesn’t spend much time here: if he’s at the Precinct, he’s with me – if not, he has other responsibilities that take him elsewhere.

Today, though, he is sitting slack in his high-back, staring contemplatively at the glowing desk before him. O’Neil presses a low knock to the door before, letting it slide open and escorting me inside.

“Aylah, O’Neil.” Midhurst stands in greeting.

“Aylah,” O’Neil casts me a questioning glance – permission to continue? – and then looks back to the doctor, “was feeling slightly faint in Nonsiu’s office.”

Midhurst walks over and presses a hand to my forehead. “Was the situation stressful?” He changes tactics and presses his finger to my neck. Old school unto the end.

“It was Nonsiu’s office.” O’Neil shrugs, unrepentant.

Midhurst gives a knowing look. I smile warily. Our familiarity with O’Neil’s proclivities are the result of a prolonged acquaintance. “Tell me about what happened.” Midhurst gestures to the bare-looking grey chair sitting opposite his desk.

I slide into place. “Well…Nonsiu was yelling…?”

O’Neil snorts in the backdrop. Midhurst raises a brow. O’Neil coughs, reprimanded. The doctor looks to me. “I doubt he was yelling at you.” Midhurst’s voice is quiet and directed.

I take a deep breath. “No,” I say. “I just…he mentioned Lysphil.”

“Did that mean something to you?”

“It doesn’t – I mean, it shouldn’t. But when he said it…I saw it.”

Standing beside me, O’Neil stiffens. “You…saw it?” probes Midhurst.

“I saw his eyes dilating. I saw him coming. But this time I knew how it ended.”

Midhurst’s eyes meet mine. “Nonsiu?”

“No.”

Midhurst looks as though he wants to say something. His eyes flash to O’Neil and then he says nothing at all. “How did you feel?”

A thousand questions, a thousand times. After a handful of interrogations, you learn to pick up the details doctors want and review them in the fashion they want. Working with Midhurst acclimatised me to his predilections.

“Dizzy. Disorientated.”

“What about now?”

“A bit drained. My head hurts a little.”

“How many times has this happened before?”

O’Neil shifts. He knows something is wrong. I know something is wrong. I look for the answer in the light crinkles of Midhurst’s face, but they are unrelenting. I try not to react. “This is the first time,” I lie. It’s not for my benefit. My gaze slides to O’Neil: he’s tense in his seat, visibly uncomfortable – as though, the ground will suddenly eject him into a bottomless crevasse. His knuckles are white, wrapped tightly around the back of my chair. To the outsider, he just looks antsy – to me…to me, he looks so much more. A stray lock of hair dangles over his forehead. My fingertips itch to brush it away. I turn back to Midhurst.

The silence is deafening. O’Neil breaks the ice: “So.” He clears his throat. “Recommendations, doc?”

Midhurst smiles: his lips curl upward, but his eyes are unflinching and unaffected. “It’s been a tiring day. Go home. Get some rest.”

“Right.” There is sound of disbelief hidden somewhere in O’Neil’s response. He stands up to leave, smoothing down his lapels. “Zulfiq?”

I don’t move. I smile charily. “I need a few more minutes here.”

O’Neil looks slowly from me to Midhurst and back to me. Somewhere in the moment, his green-brown eyes flash with hurt. I stifle the stab that resonates in my left rib. “Right,” he says again, and turns on his heel and leaves. The doors slowly shut behind him.

We wait – Midhurst and I – as though a retreat and a closed door isn’t enough to hide our secrets. “Why did you leave yesterday?” I ask. Our eyes are still trained on the door. The metal glimmers slightly in the dull glow of the computers in the room. “Or is it classified?” I still don’t face him.

“I’d tell you even if it weren’t,” Midhurst admits. His chair groans as he leans back. “Lio has – had ¬– been missing for two weeks. Meux called. He wanted to follow a private lead. He wasn’t sure if it would pan out and wanted to verify it before alerting the heads.”

I stiffen at the new information. “You told Szah Lio had gone under yesterday.”

“A lie.” Midhurst is unrepentant; his tone hard. “I wanted to gauge her reaction. Maybe she knew something – they did grow up together after all.”

I turn and his eyes are trained on me. “Did you know where he was?” Midhurst asks.

My tongue is dry and the sharp cut of betrayal slices through me. “No.”

Midhurst doesn’t question me on it. “It’s safe to conclude he was abducted and held then.”

Silence envelopes us. I hesitate. Should I confide in Midhurst? If anyone can help me, it’s him. “I’m scared,” I say, capturing a breath full of air in my lungs. A second passes and I correct myself: “Not scared. Horrified.”

“At what?” Midhurst is neutral. His eyes are trained on me, digesting my every twitch and breath.

“Myself.”

I feel Midhurst’s gaze assess me more fully – clinically. Before he can ask, I say, aloud, my voice shrill: “Why?” I laugh, my muscles clenching. “Because when Xio told me Lio was…gone, I felt nothing. Shock, maybe. Initial surprise. It was difficult to digest. Then, at the crime scene, the place where Lio died, I still felt nothing. Frustration, maybe. I was angry and frustrated – not because someone I knew – someone who had followed me through my life – was murdered but rather just because Rereading is easy and investigating is hard.”

I take a deep breath and look down. I don’t dare face him. I’m not ready to see whatever’s on his face. “And now...now it feels true but it isn’t. It doesn’t affect me. It’s shocking, yes. Hard to believe, yes. Sad, yes. But does it doesn’t click. It doesn’t…it doesn’t feel real anymore.”

“It doesn’t feel real? Or you don’t?”

I swallow the rock in my throat. “What I feel,” I hesitate and change my hand, “I don’t know what I feel anymore.”

“You feel like you’ve seen this all a thousand times? Like it’s nothing new? You’ve lived through it a thousand times? You’ve felt it, been it, are it?”

“Are what?”

“The victim.”

“I’ve died before,” I say. It doesn’t convince me.

“No,” says Midhurst slowly. “You haven’t. Do you think you’re feeling disconnected with the concept of death?”

I’m more inclined to say ‘connected’ than anything else.

“It’s…”

“Don’t you dare say normal.” I swivel and face him. His forehead is creased in what I can only assume is concern.

“Not normal,” he corrects. “But it is expected.”

“For whom? A Rereader?” The tears begin to well up again. “I’ve lost everything to this goddamn thing – must it take my humanity too?”

Midhurst opens his mouth to reply but I stand up and leave. I think I know enough. I think I’ve lived enough. “It’s not just you,” Midhurst tries to reason, behind me. “Prolonged exposure to something dulls sensitivity to it.”

But knowing that I’m not alone doesn’t console me. It doesn’t detach the fear and the loneliness that is burrowing itself into my skin. The pinpricks gradually intensify, my breathing growing shallow.

And everywhere, on my throat, and womb and arms and legs and being, I feel the hands and knives and ropes that killed me before, kill me again.