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His words told me that I had been untraceable in the Valley. Then, when we’d gone away for our honeymoon, I’d unwittingly moved in range of the Delta’s tracking system. Likely, I’d been in range before that—especially on trips to the Post—but they hadn’t thought to look for me. Not until Asha’s call, broadcasting my presence for anyone to hear.

I took a deep breath, trying hard not to show any reaction to the information that my friend’s betrayal hadn’t just gotten me attacked by the Order…it had cost me everything. My husband. My newfound family. A home I was only just beginning to build with them. For the second time in my life, everything I knew was gone, and the loss was even more painful this time around because I’d loved this life far more.

“I see,” was all I could manage.

“Your lucky day,” Julius added with a cold, impersonal sort of smile. “You must be relieved to return to the safety and comfort of the civilized world.”

Disgust, despair, and a horrible, impotent rage were fighting for dominance inside me, but none would help me in my current situation, so I swallowed them down.

“Yes,” I said, the word feeling like bile on my tongue.

Julius studied me as he leaned back in his wingback chair. “The only thing I don’t know is where you’ve been all this time. Care to enlighten me?”

“No,” I answered honestly, and his too-blue eyes glittered with dark amusement.

“Yes, I imagine whatever you did to survive out there was probably rather degrading. I hear that Wastelander women are often sold as sex slaves, in chains. How barbaric.”

I didn’t like the way his lip curled, as though he enjoyed thinking of me in those chains. For all his talk of barbarism, nothing struck me as more feral than the look in his eyes at that moment. I couldn’t help averting my gaze and shifting uncomfortably in my seat.

“But no matter,” he continued, his expression becoming neutral again. “Your time in the Wasteland is over now. I’m far more interested in what your time at the Delta will be like.”

I tried not to show my rising dread. Your time in the Wasteland is over. I never thought there’d come a time when that statement would turn my heart to ice. The Wasteland had become the only place I’d ever really felt I belonged.

I forced myself to speak. “Even with the radio call, why would my name be of any interest to you?”

His icy eyes considered me carefully, and I kept my back ramrod straight. Then, at last, he murmured, “I’ll show you. Sit over there.”

Julius gestured at the overstuffed sofa in the sitting area. I hesitated, but then went to take a seat. He opened his desk drawer and withdrew a small, silver remote control. When he pressed a button at the top, a projector screen descended from a hidden compartment in the ceiling, across from where I sat. I hadn’t noticed a discreet projector mounted on the ceiling overhead, but with another click of a button, the lights dimmed, and the screen lit up.

Footage of some sort of event began to play. There was an enormous crowd gathered around a raised platform, where a lectern and microphone were present. Julius stood there in a perfectly pressed suit, giving a generic speech thanking people for attending. But next to him was a woman wearing an ostentatious ballgown in deep green. Her red hair was swept up into an elegant French twist, and her makeup was impeccable. And when she spoke…

“That’s…” I paused, wide-eyed, initially unwilling to say it because it didn’t seem possible. “That’s me.”

I barely recognized myself with all the layers of airbrushed makeup and the ridiculous dress and the strange way she moved. It was almost too smooth, too easy, but I knew I’d only noticed because I didn’t move anything like this version of me did.

“What is this?” I demanded, whirling to face Julius, who remained seated at his desk. “This…this can’t be me.”

“Oh, but it is,” he purred, and I got the sick sense that he enjoyed my reaction. “Very lifelike, aren’t you?”

I looked back at the screen, where my heavily made-up face smiled out at the crowd. They applauded as I stepped up to the lectern, as if about to speak, when Julius paused the video.

“But this never happened,” I insisted, shooting a glare at him. “I know it didn’t.”

He shrugged. “You’ll find that it hardly matters, Ms. Ainsley. What matters is that people believe it happened. They believe you were there.”

Something clicked at his words. “So, this isn’t real. You created this, somehow, with my image.”

He inclined his head in a brief nod. “It’s a curious Old World artefact, isn’t it? The ability to generate lifelike images that mimic reality, to create times and places and people that never were and may never be. To resurrect the dead, even, to hear the voices of those long lost once again. Or to give a new life, new purpose, to an utterly unremarkable person made relevant only through the efforts of others.”

My heart was pounding hideously in my ears. I still had no idea what was going on, but the more I learned, the more panic pulled at the edges of me, stealing my focus and my placid demeanour.

“Tell me, what do you know about the Order of Odessa?”

A shiver ran down my spine. Nonetheless, I lied. “Not much.”

Julius smiled tightly, without mirth. “If you’re going to lie to me, at least make it a challenge to detect. You know they’ve taken a special interest in you.”

“But why?” I asked before I could stop myself, wondering if he knew the answer to a question that’d plagued me ever since the Order had attacked John and Kimmy’s camp nearly a year ago.