A woman sits at the bar, a black boot braced against the chair next to her. Even sitting, it’s clear she’s tall, her shoulders broad. Her long black hair is tied back, and she holds a glass of dark liquor in one hand, an Elicit in the other.

  “You must be Sonya Kantor,” the woman says, her eyes still on the Elicit in her hand. “We’ve never met and you want to come into my apartment? I usually like to go out for a drink first.” She sets the Elicit down and sips from her glass. “Maybe that’s why you’re here now.”

  Everyone else in the bar—a small scattering of people buried in the foliage—is silent as she speaks.

  “You know the hood’s not really doing much to disguise that thing in here, right?” the woman—Emily Knox, obviously—says.

  Sonya tugs the hood down. The Insight is a perfect white circle around her iris, an eclipsed sun. Knox pushes the chair beside her back with the toe of her boot, and gestures to it.

  Sonya sits, her knees together. Knox hugs a knee to her chest, balancing her glass on top of it, and stares at Sonya.

  “I came to ask for your help,” Sonya says.

  Knox laughs.

  “Ice princess,” she says. “Poster Girl. Descending from her kingdom on high—” Light laughter ripples through the other people in the bar, their faces hidden. “All right, maybe ascending from the shithole to which we’ve exiled her—to ask for my help? Little old moi?”

  She sips her liquor.

  “I never thought I would see the day,” she says.

  “Well,” Sonya says. “Neither did I.”

  Knox laughs again. “Get the Delegation girl a drink, on me. Who’s that?” She gestures at Alexander, lingering a few feet away.

  “My minder,” Sonya says.

  “Nobody likes a babysitter,” Knox says. “Sit down and stop looming, Minder.”

  The bartender sets a glass in front of Sonya, the drink clear, the glass frosty.

  “I don’t drink alcohol,” Sonya says.

  “Oh, you do today,” Knox says. “I’m not talking to you until you spend some DesCoin for me.” She smirks. “Figuratively speaking, of course.”

  She’s older, but there is no sign of it in her face, her skin smooth, her dark eyes lively with scrutiny.

  Sonya feels like a puppet dangling by Knox’s strings. She sips from the glass. It tastes like pine and citrus, and burns her tongue. Another thing she has to trade away, she thinks, to find Grace Ward.

  “There’s someone I need to find,” Sonya says. “Her name is Grace Ward. She was rehomed—”

  “Rehomed.” Knox snorts. “No. Try again, without the Delegationspeak.”

  Sonya sets her jaw. She hears Alexander laugh a little, beside her.

  “Oh, let’s not pretend you’re not a former Delegation henchman yourself, Alexander Price,” Knox says. “Alexander Price, with his father’s face and his mother’s name. Just because you figured out which way the wind was blowing faster than your girl here doesn’t mean you’re not still Delegation scum.” She raises her glass to him in a toast. “Lucky for you, scum drinks free today, on me.”

  “Did you memorize some kind of Delegation leadership database?” Alexander says, his brow furrowing.

  “I have a stellar memory for the people who tried to put me away for life—and their families, just in case I needed to do some blackmailing,” she says. “My arrest was ordered by August Kantor, and I was sentenced by Nikhil Price. What a pair. Cheers, to my narrow yet somehow inevitable escape.”

  Little pinpricks of light shine all around them as people raise their glasses to Knox. She looks expectantly at Sonya.

  “Well?” Knox says. “You want my help but you don’t want to toast my freedom?”

  Sonya raises her glass. Knox touches it with her own.

  “Let’s hear it again, Ms. Kantor,” Knox says. “And say it right this time.”

  “I need to find a girl named Grace Ward,” Sonya says. “She was taken from her parents—”

  “By whom, pray tell?”

  “By the Delegation,” Sonya says. “She was placed with adoptive parents and given a new name. I need to find her and reunite her with her parents.”

  “And what’s in it for you?”

  Sonya hesitates.

  “Freedom,” she says.

  “Ah, freedom. Freedom for the Children of the Delegation, I hear that’s all the rage these days.” Knox drains her glass and drops it on the bar top. “There was a very straightforward sense of justice when you were sentenced. For decades, the Delegation held people accountable for the actions of the people around them. It saved us all money on police, you see. You don’t need nearly as many ‘peace officers’ if you turn your own citizens into them. I bet . . .”

  She leans closer. Her eyes are straight at the top, single-lidded, irises so dark they are indistinguishable from the pupil.

  “I bet you were great at that,” she says. “I bet you would have shushed your own mother at the dinner table if she dipped even a toe into sedition.” Knox frowns, sits back. “Well, maybe not. I bet you at least did the cost-benefit analysis—negative DesCoin for disrespecting your elders versus positive DesCoin for defending the state.”

  Sonya never scolded her mother—she never had to, as Julia was more careful to respect the Delegation than even August had been. But she remembers the mental math. She still does it all the time.

  “Anyway,” Knox says. “It seemed so nice, so clean, to put you Delegation children in the Aperture—to do the same damn thing to you that the Delegation did to us, hold you responsible for your family. Heap their crimes on your head. Only . . .”

  Knox tilts her head.

  “It’s still not really justice, is it? Because all of you fucks living in the Aperture get to just remake your little kingdom in there,” she says. “Which brings me to an interesting cost-benefit analysis of my own—because I don’t want to help you earn any freedom, Sonya Kantor. But I also think it would be more of a punishment for you to reenter the real world than to spend the rest of your life in that birdcage.”

  Sonya’s drink has lost its frost; water beads on the bowl of the glass and runs down the stem. She came here empty-handed, with nothing to trade.

  “Maybe it would be simpler,” Sonya says, “if you considered Grace Ward’s parents.”

  “Nothing simple about them, either,” Knox says. “Reuniting them forces a new awareness of all those years stolen from them, in retaliation for something that’s not even a crime anymore. That wasn’t a crime for everyone even then—weren’t you a second child?” She clicks her tongue. “But your parents earned you.”

  They had showed her the permit once. Exception to Protocol 18A, it read at the top. The blanks were full of her parents’ information, her sister’s. DesCoin amounts at time of application. Height, weight, existing health issues. All the right criteria met.

  Alexander takes the silver device from his pocket, along with the length of cord and the headphones, folded up neatly. He puts them on the bar top and slides them toward Knox.

  “She called them yesterday,” he says. “So I’m pretty sure they want to find her, and she wants to be found. There’s a recording of it on this thing.”

  For the first time since Sonya walked into the bar, Knox hesitates. She picks up the silver device and looks at it, the cord still stretching across the sticky bar top.

  “Mr. Price,” Knox says, after a moment, wagging a finger at him. “You’ve got a point, clever man. You ought to thank him, Sonya, he’s a better negotiator than you are.”

  Knox expects her to actually thank him, Sonya knows—to prove that she will be obedient. Knox is her puppeteer in earnest now, a performer with a captive audience.

  “Thank you,” Sonya says, terse.

  Alexander looks down at the glass that the bartender put in front of him. He doesn’t respond.

  “All right, then, let’s settle up your bill,” Knox says. “I require that my Delegation clients pay in advance, you see. In your case, you’re going to finish that drink . . .” She slides Sonya’s glass closer to the edge of the bar. “And then you’re going to sing me a song.” She smiles. “A Delegation song.”

  She glances at Alexander.

  “They’re illegal now, of course,” she says. “But God, I miss that good old-fashioned propaganda, don’t you?”

  Every song on the radio had once been approved by the Delegation, for the most part a perfunctory process as long as there was nothing scandalous in the lyrics. But there were a few commissioned by the government to promote good values—five, maybe.

  Knox went on: “Which one do I miss most? Probably ‘The Narrow Way,’ what a catchy little dirge it was.”

  It’s possible Sonya’s mother wasn’t humming “The Narrow Way” on that last day, that it was one of the others, and she has just heard them all so many times that they are stuck together in her mind like a box of birthday candles melting on a stovetop.

  Sonya wonders if Knox knows how this song haunts her. Could she know?

  “Fuck you,” Sonya says.

  Knox laughs again, but there is flint in it, this time.

  “That’s the price,” Knox says. “Pay it, or fuck off.”

  Alexander, now employed by the government, could object to the illegality of performing the song—but he doesn’t, and Sonya doesn’t expect him to. She thinks again about Vasilisa, sent again and again into the wood by the stepmother that wanted her dead. That story ended in fire. There’s no reason to expect there won’t be fire in this one.

  Sonya tips the entire drink into her mouth at once. It scalds her throat on the way down. She’s glad for the muddle it brings to her mind when she steps away from the bar and faces the room. It’s still too dark to see anything concrete—instead, she gets impressions of people, the flutter of fingers, the white of an eye, the flash of a leg.

  Won’t you come with me

  Along the harder road?

  Sonya’s voice is reedy and thin and coasts just under the right pitch. Her face flushes with heat and she is glad, then, of the darkness in the bar, hiding her humiliation.

  Won’t you walk with me?

  The path is one I know.

  People hoot and raise their glasses. Knox puts her head on her hand, and watches.

  Five, six, seven, eight. Sonya feels like she’s back at that table with her family. It wasn’t vibrato shaking her mother’s voice as she sang. Sonya looked at the water her father poured for her, at the way it rippled despite all the Kantors being still, like the earth itself was trembling in anticipation of what they were about to do—

  I’ve been down that other road

  And it’s as easy as they said.

  Some people are swaying along with the lilting melody, lifting their hands in the air and laughing. Sonya remembers Susanna’s guitar, her fingers stumbling over the strings, her mother’s rich voice chiming in from the kitchen. Mom, stop! I need to focus, Susanna says, and Sonya thinks of it as Susanna stares into her water glass, pill in hand, cheeks shining with tears—

  But wide and flat though it was then

  Sonya trembles, and her voice trembles, but she presses on.

  I didn’t much like where it led.

  A group in the corner holds up their Elicits, screens lit, and sways back and forth.

  Everyone laughs.

  Won’t you set aside

  The lies that you’ve held dear

  Don’t you know that

  What’s better is right here?

  As a child it was her favorite line, what’s better is right here, because her father used to pat his knee whenever he sang it, and when she went to sit on his lap, he squeezed her tight and kissed her cheek with a loud smack. And she could always believe here was good, was right, was better than whatever else was out there.

  This walk is narrow and it’s steep

  It’ll surely test your heart

  But it’ll fill all those hollow places

  You’ve had since the start.

  “Hey, Deb,” someone calls out. “Want to go get ‘filled’?”

  “Don’t threaten me with a good time!” someone—presumably Deb—calls back.

  Won’t you keep an eye on me

  And I’ll keep an eye on you

  One step after another . . .

  We’ll make it through.

  Everyone joins her for the last few words: “Make it through.”

  Knox applauds. Sonya sits on the stool, her face hot, her hands cold. She tries to steady herself.

  Then Knox’s eyes glitter strangely, and she drags the headphones toward her, gathering the cord in her palm as she leans in to say—quiet enough to make their conversation private at last—“You know what I’ve never told anyone?”

  She straightens the headband of the headphones, and drapes them over the back of her neck.

  “I actually miss it sometimes, the Delegation,” she says. “Well, not the Delegation exactly, but the Insights. I was so good at Insights. I’m good at a lot of things, but they were such lovely little toys, so difficult to misdirect.”

  “Misdirect?” Sonya says. She’s still trembling from the song.

  “Yeah, you can’t turn them off, once they’re on,” Knox says. “It’s an extremely resilient technology. Mine is still on right now, taking in data. It’s just not connected to the rest of me; same with everyone else’s in this city.” She runs a fingertip over her temple, right on top of the scar along her hairline. “But it emits a signal. They all do. I’ve tried to tell people, but they all think I’m a little nuts. Or—a ‘radical.’” She performs quotations on either side of her face. “I think it’s more that they don’t want to believe it.”

  Sonya doesn’t know whether to believe her or not either. If she’s right, the Triumvirate is lying to everyone in the megalopolis about their Insights. But she could just as easily be toying with Sonya.

  “Why don’t they just remove them?” Sonya says.

  “By the time you reach adulthood, your brain has developed around the implant,” Knox says. “You can’t remove it without doing serious damage. At least that’s what Naomi said.”

  “Naomi.”

  “Naomi Proctor,” Knox says. “My former teacher.”

  If Sonya’s Insight had been fully functional, it would have given her information about Naomi Proctor, but it would have been unnecessary; every person brought up by the Delegation knew that name. She was hailed in all the history books as the one who made paradise possible, who made great strides in improving public safety, who brought them the order and safety of the Insight. She never worked for the Delegation—instead, she taught at the university. She died when Sonya was a child. Sonya’s mother took them to the public procession, the slow march of the coffin through the streets. Sonya gave her handkerchief to an old woman with tears streaming down her cheeks—an act that earned her one hundred DesCoin, just as she knew it would.

  Naomi’s death cemented her legacy, made her famous in a way that slowly fading away couldn’t have. The great inventor, a brilliant light who gave her all to the Delegation.

  “I was told people came to you to have their Insights temporarily disabled,” Sonya says. “But you’re saying that’s not possible?”

  “Insights can’t be killed, but they can be deceived,” Knox says. “When people came to me, I redirected their feeds for a few hours—looping, we called it. The Delegation would receive some repurposed footage, which I pulled from the person’s history—a night at home with spouse and child, usually. But the person’s actual feed would pour into my own servers.”

  “I’m sure that was useful to you.”

  Knox grins.

  “It certainly was.” She puts the headphones on, and presses the power button with her thumb. Her fingernails are bitten down to the quick.

  Sonya watches her as she listens. Her eyes narrow, at first, and then drop to her glass, the ice melting at the bottom. Knox listens to the message once, then begins it again, her head tilting. Sonya can hear the door slamming in the background of the recording through the earpieces, and she remembers how Grace’s voice broke on the words I’m scared. Finally Knox takes the headphones off, folding them.

  “What’s the name of this kid again?” she asks Alexander, the playful quality gone from her voice.

  “Grace Ward,” Sonya says. “Alice is just a nickname.”

  “Grace Ward,” Knox says. “An exemplary name. Worth one thousand DesCoin at least.” At Sonya’s blank expression, she continues. “Oh, you didn’t know that different names could earn different DesCoin amounts? Your parents could have bettered their scores considerably if they had chosen something less Russian and more common.” She points at Alexander with her thumb. “Like that one over there. Alexander.”

  Sonya thinks of her parents arguing about tampons in the kitchen. Some things, her father had insisted, were just arbitrary, the result of little forethought on the part of the Delegation.

  “I don’t understand,” Sonya says finally.

  “Of course you don’t.” Knox rolls her eyes. “A name suggests an origin. The Delegation wanted all those origins to be disguised by homogeneity. Which means that the most highly rewarded names were common ones . . . for a particular subset of the population, anyway.” She smirks. “Which is why your brown-skinned friend over there has his mother’s name, Price, instead of his father’s, which was Mishra, and why I”—she waves a hand over her face to indicate the epicanthic fold of her eyes—“am walking around with a name like Emily Knox.”

  Knox had told Alexander he had his father’s face and his mother’s name. Nora Price had been a diminutive woman with thick red hair worn in a braid that trailed over one shoulder; she had played with the end of it when she was daydreaming, which was often. Alexander looked more like her than Aaron had, though both of her sons resembled their father more: light brown skin, black hair, dark eyes.

  Sonya remembers something she overheard at a dinner party once, about Nikhil taking his wife’s name when they got married. A good choice, their neighbor, Ms. Perez, said. It’ll save him a lot of trouble.