in another few commands and the girl’s face shifted slightly. Her hair was shorter; her limbs were too.
“Hey!” Nok sat up in alarm, jostling the equipment, making the image flicker. “What did you do to her?”
Serassi gave her a slow, annoyed-looking blink. “I am running a variety of programs to see what effects various diets and outside factors will have on the child’s development.”
“Well, don’t. It’s creepy to see her change like that.”
“They are all possibilities for how the baby will grow depending on what external factors I expose her to.”
“We,” Nok said tensely. “What we expose her to.”
Serassi leveled her a black-eyed stare, then turned back to the screen. “This is if she receives a protein-rich diet, and if I mimic her environment to be that of a high altitude.” A few more buttons, and the girl shifted again, her hair slightly lighter. “This is if she receives a primarily vegetarian diet, at a low altitude, in an area with strenuous terrain.”
“And if she grows up on an alien space station, eating replicated food that all tastes like chalk?”
“As far as the child is concerned, she will not even know what Earth is.” Serassi’s face was perfectly emotionless. “Or rather, was.”
Before Serassi had taken Nok away for this round of examinations in the laboratory, Rolf had whispered in her ear: Cooperate with her. Don’t give her any reason to be unhappy with us. But Nok had never been good at controlling her temper. “Yeah,” she muttered, “because it’ll be totally normal to have a dozen Kindred observers watching through a missing wall of our house.”
Serassi’s eyes narrowed slightly. “It is not up to you to decide how the child will be raised.” The image of the girl sat cross-legged, playing a game on her hand that Nok used to play, too.
“Sparrow,” Nok said.
Serassi cocked her head. “What did you say?”
“Her name is Sparrow.”
She was pushing it, she knew. And yet she detested that possessive look on Serassi’s face. It was the same look Miss Delphine, her talent manager, had worn when she sent Nok to fashion shoots in dirty warehouses. As if her life wasn’t her own.
The blue sensor above the door suddenly flickered, and Cassian entered.
Nok sat straighter—it was the first time she’d seen him since the cage. He was cloaked, and just as robotic as always, except his eyes shifted to the black panel anxiously. If Cassian noticed the projected four-year-old girl playing hand games on the glowing surface, he didn’t say anything. He exchanged a few words with Serassi and then turned to the door.
“There are no observers,” he said in English. “It is safe for you to enter.”
Cora hobbled in, favoring one leg. Nok leaned forward so abruptly that it screwed with all the sensors and the image of Sparrow flickered wildly. Cora’s hair was dirty and streaked with sweat; she was wearing a torn gold ball gown; dried blood was crusted on her left shin.
“Cora?” Nok asked incredulously.
Cora’s eyes went wide. “Nok!”
Nok kicked her legs off the examination table and threw her arms around Cora. “What happened?”
Cora shook her head. “It’s a lot to explain, but I’m okay. And you? You’re okay?” She looked around at the lab’s medical equipment.
“It’s just . . . baby stuff,” Nok said, glancing at Serassi. “There’s this projection and . . .” But Serassi was watching her keenly, and she stopped. She wanted to tell Cora about the dollhouse, about the lies she and Rolf had made up, about Serassi’s increasingly possessive behavior.
But Cassian interrupted their reunion. “Cora, sit on the table. Serassi will repair your wound.”
Serassi gave him a look that said she had no intention of doing anything of the sort, and they spoke in flat Kindred words for a moment. Serassi’s voice went extra tight—the closest thing to an argument two cloaked Kindred could reach.
Nok pinched herself so that they wouldn’t be able to read her mind and stepped out of their earshot. “Please tell me you’re getting us to that safe room soon,” she whispered to Cora. “Serassi’s got this weird obsession with Sparrow, like Rolf and I don’t even exist. She’s going to cut Sparrow out of me and lock us away in cages any minute, I swear.”
“I did have a plan, but . . .” Cora looked down at her bloodstained hands, and Nok wasn’t sure she wanted to know what had happened. “But Cassian might suspect too much now. If anything happens to me, Leon will get you to the safe