She was dead. No, she was deader than dead. Deader than a doornail, deader than Latin, deader than God, and it was all her own fault. She shouldn't have fooled around like she'd done. Not with him.

Marek stopped in the thin corridor he had chosen for the express purpose of murder, then forced his rage aside. The idea of killing June Foley had let him blow off some steam — he wouldn't have actually done it. The mess, the noise, he just wasn't in the mood for that. And the cover-up would've been more trouble than a few moments of quiet were worth. Besides, everyone who knew June felt like killing her now and then. She brought that out in everybody without really trying, and when she did try, nobody had a good day except for her.

He turned around to face her. Didn't spin, didn't whip around, just turned. If he showed any anger, she would have thought she had won whatever game she was playing. She stood about five feet away from him, well out of arm's reach. Always did whenever she pissed him off. Oh, how she had pissed him off. He'd never killed one of his own, but it didn't seem such a bad idea right now.

She took a good look at his face and scooched back a few inches.

"Explain."

"Explain what?" she said, in that kittenish voice of hers. It wasn't an act; she really did sound that godawful. But she wasn't dumb like she pretended to be.

"You know."

"What, you mean I should explain what I did at dinner?" She gave him a sweet smile that no one bought once they'd spent five minutes with her. "That was nothing. I was acting cute just so I could figure out a little something."

Yeah, and he had a sinking feeling as to what that little something might be. Or who. "Well, go on, don't keep me in suspense," he said anyway, motioning impatiently. "What do you think you figured out?"

"You're planning something with that Elise Ellsworth," she said. "Something big. I know you are, so don't lie. C'mon, what is it? Are you gonna scam her for money? Her daddy is rich, so that's got to be it."

He almost laughed. It would have brought it to tears if he had. Planning something big? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that wasn't what he'd expected. Good thing it wasn't. Let June think, hell, let everyone think what they wanted to think. His enemies would assume the worst, and so would his allies. Not a problem. If they thought he had ulterior motives, then they'd miss his real ones. A mistake like that would keep him safe, and if he was safe, Ellsworth was.

"I'm not planning anything with her," he said. "She's my best friend in the whole wide world, because she's never needed anything from me but myself." He pressed a palm against his chest. "And that's the hand-on-heart, one hundred percent, God's honest truth."

Few people were privileged to hear such honesty from him, but June had no idea of that she had been listening to it. She shook her head. "Wow," she said. "How did you manage a straight face during a speech like that? I thought you'd burst into flames."

A smile broke out of his face like a shark breaking through a wave. "You wish."

She probably did. When she strolled off first, he did the same. He didn't catch up with her or passed her by. It never bothered him to play the follower. The key to being an effective leader was to not worry about appearances. Leaders didn't worry — even when they followed, they led. And looking like a nobody had always given him advantages.

* * *

This wasn't Hall Seven, but it was a Hall all the same, one with an ink-colored seal bearing a white number six right above a door of red-lacquered wood. Red covered the walls of the corridor, too, in a pattern of staggered Art Nouveau diamonds outlined in bold black. It was beautiful but sterile, a combination that made Elise's legs burn with the urge to run. She couldn't run, though, and not just because she was in a wheelchair. She had a question about herself that someone here could answer, and so she had let instinct lead her here.

Now she had to find out if her instinct had been right. She touched the door. It didn't open like the door of her Hall would have, so she knocked. Loudly.

A bland-faced boy answered after half a minute. He gave her a long look before saying anything. "Wait," he said.

The shutting of the door echoed around her. She waited, counting the time. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, all the way to ninety-nine one thousand. Then the door opened again, revealing her sister. Curious girls peered around Meliora at Elise. She stepped out, shutting the door firmly behind her.

Meliora crossed her arms. "Why are you here?"

Since rudeness had been the opening gambit, Elise could have comfortably used the same move. She didn't. That would have put her on a level playing field with Meliora, and higher ground was where she wanted to be. "I'd like to ask you something."

"Then ask it."

Bluntness for bluntness, then. "Can I die?" Her sister said nothing, so Elise elaborated. "My power, does it allow me to —"

"Be selfish?" Meliora's hands clamped down on her own arms, digging into them in a way that must have been painful despite the thick fabric of her dress. "Yes, it does." Her eyes burned in her beautiful face like blue fire. "Nothing hurts you for long, nothing makes you sick, and nothing will ever kill you, unlike more deserving people." Her tone grew loud, unsteady, but she kept talking. "You can even keep your youth. Isn't that wonderful for you?" She sneered. "Aren't you glad that you can have that all to yourself forever and ever?"

By God and all His creations, Elise couldn't die. She squeezed her eyes shut in relief and horror. No reason to fear death, but no reason to want life. What an inhuman fate, immortality. To see everyone else wither and fade, to see civilizations rise and fall ... But would that still matter after a while? A hundred years would be a blink compared to the history of the earth, and less than a blink compared to the life of the universe. People rarely lived to be a hundred. Everyone she knew now would be dead in less than a century while she would be endless, eternal, ever-living. Unable to do anything except go on and on and on. She might even outlast the human race.

"How could anyone want that?" she said.

Meliora's lip curled. "Of course you'd snivel over a gift like that. That proves you shouldn't have it."

The cruelty of other people was rapidly losing its ability to surprise Elise, but the absolute hatred in her sister's eyes hit like a kick to the gut. There was something else there, though: jealousy. It hollowed out Meliora's cheeks more than they already were, made her look a corpse that had clambered out of a grave. Something was wrong with this girl.

"You're ill, aren't you?" Elise said.

"Yes!" Meliora fell back against the door, panting with something that wasn't anger. The shadows seemed to have darkened beneath her eyes. "Yes, I'm ill and it's your fault," she spat. "I'd be fine if you could be useful, but you're not." Her chest heaved as she sucked in a giant, wet-sounding breath. "Your blood doesn't heal me, it doesn't heal anyone. You're good for nothing, don't you understand?"

Many questions had their answers now. Why Elise had been left alone in the clinic, why her sister didn't like her, why Willow had got that strange look when Elise had called the Ellsworths kind for taking in an orphan like her. The old clothes, the unsmiling family in the photographs. This was the life she had been leading, the life that she had awoken to.

An unreleased scream ached in her throat. "A doctor with a sick daughter in need of a cure ..." she said. The ache deepened. "That's all I ever was to any of you, wasn't it? A cure for the only child that counted to your family."

Meliora stared at her with a glassy, hostile gaze that confirmed everything, and Elise spun her chair away from it. She was done wasting time on the Ellsworths.

* * *

Personal quarters meant little to Halston Gerver. There had been nothing personal about the many places he had inhabited for over a decade. The best ones had been impersonal quarters, and the worst had disturbed what small snatches of sleep he required — a minute here, a minute there, but long enough for old screams to echo through his memory. His current space was located close to his office. He rarely stay there longer than necessity dictated. It acted as a store cupboard for clothes and things better left in the shadows.

The room had only changed for him once, on the evening that it had been appointed to him. He had settled down for a moment, opening his eyes when the bed had shifted beneath him. What had greeted him had been the most astounding sight, an ostentatious Victorian bedroom that had shrunk into a Spartan room more suitable for barracks than a university. Despite being warned that such a change might occur, it had still brought him straight off the bed. Although it hadn't turned into the room that he feared it might have become, he had inspected every inch, memorized it, and then avoided it as much as possible.

Avoided it, for it was where he allowed himself to think of the past.

It didn't die, the past. Men and their ideals died; places altered, sometimes into the unrecognizable; one era melted into the next, and yet those things lived on for as long as the people who remembered them would live on, tarnished by time and nostalgia.

He came to the narrow, grey door of his narrow, grey room. Hesitation. When had been the last time he'd fallen prey to such a thing? A long time ago, a lifetime ago, when the future had seemed bleak and bright all at once. Holding her face in his hands and hesitating.

His heart gave a single pained beat. He couldn't think of her in the corridor. Too many people passed through corridors without really seeing them, and filled them with indolent gossip and nonsense chatter. Thinking of her required privacy and quiet so complete that it echoed with the sacred solitude of an empty temple. He pressed his hand to the door, and it opened.

Nothing about his quarters had changed. Still small, still dull. The room closed itself once he cleared the threshold, as it had always done. He headed for the metal wardrobe in the far corner, where he stowed his personal items, clothing included. Set deep within, beneath hanging jackets and coats and trousers, was what he sought. A dented metal box. He opened it with a small key that he kept on his person at all times. Only two things sat inside, both protected by tissue paper. He unwrapped them, took them both out, then brought them to his bedside table.

The framed photograph he set face down; he had yet to steel himself for it. He removed his gloves as he sat on the bed, then turned his attention to the flacon of amber-colored Narcisse Noir, one quarter emptied. The stopper released without fuss. He daubed a generous swipe across his wrist, for only on the skin did the scent unfurl and live.

At the first hint of pale flowers, orange, and incense, he found himself standing in a garden filled with moonlight and moths. Their garden, where she waited for him amongst the blossoms. She stood before him still and silent, her eyes demanding that he come forward. He did as he had always done in this perfect memory, striding towards her in confidence, cupping her head in his hands, and hesitating to do anything else.

Then she stood on tiptoes to kiss him, her mouth warm and wet and —

Gerver capped the bottle, her touch and her perfume swirling sickly in his head. Enough time. He glanced at the clock by his shuttered window, one that opened on a field it shouldn't rightfully have faced from this side of the Manor. An hour and a half had fled while he had taken refuge in the past. Yes, more than enough time.

Setting aside the flacon, he took up the silver-framed photograph. The photo had lost a corner and had been creased vertically, but the important subject's face was still clear. God, if he could have truly returned to the past, he would have done many things differently, including tracking down color film. Black-and-white failed to capture the full liveliness of her eyes, or the many shades in them.

But he couldn't stay here lingering over the photo, not when the truth had finally come to light. Everything had changed. He had changed — no, he hadn't done that. Part of him had been reawakened, that was all. Something dead had come back to life after a long, dark slumber.

He left his quarters at a gallop. Anyone that he met in the corridors flattened themselves against the walls at the sight of him.

Wong didn't look up when he flung open the door to her office. She remained behind her heavy desk examining papers. "Most people would consider knocking standard," she said, placing her signature to the bottom of a page, "but those standards are beyond you, aren't they?"

He closed the door as carefully as he could manage to do, then barred it behind him. Unlike many doors in the Manor, it had a conventional lock in addition to its unconventional one.

The click drew her head up. As soon as she saw his undoubtedly grim expression, she stood. "What's happened?"

He threw the photograph her way, which she caught on reflex.

She gave it a cursory glance. "I'm going to ask why you have a photo of a student, and you're going to give me a reasonable answer."

"That's half the image," he said.

Wong made short work of opening the frame. She unfolded the photograph, revealing a double portrait that he had no need to see, for it was permanently etched in his mind:

The woman he had loved — still loved — and the man he had been.

They had taken the photo cleaved together in front of her bedroom mirror, the camera held in both their hands. He had been facing the glass, but she had inclined her head the slightest bit while locating the shutter release. She had looked up at his reflection. He had seen her watching him, then pressed a kiss to her hair just in time for it to be immortalized in film. Her half-smile had been captured perfectly.

"This is you," Wong said, "before ..."

"Before the Nazis, yes."

"Then this can't be Elise Ellsworth." Wong stared down at the photo. "Thank goodness for that."

"It is her."

"This is a nearly identical woman, but it's not her. It can't be." Wong sounded as if she were trying to convince herself rather than him. Had she actually disbelieved him, she wouldn't have said any of that at all. She would have just told him to leave. "That girl was brought to the Valley when she was six years old," she continued, "and this woman looks to be at least in her twenties. Unless Ellsworth traveled back in time to somehow meet you, they're separate people."

He said nothing, because the correct conclusion had been reached.

Wong sighed and threw the photo onto her desk. "You can't be serious."

"She's not nearly anything, that girl," he said. "Her hair, her eyes, her voice, even her power ..." His hands became fists. "All of it is the same, exactly the same, and I know how that sounds, but it's the truth."

The president's face softened, and he knew what that meant. "Halston," she began, softly. That tone of apology and pity that he knew so well.

"She remembers me!" Gerver held back the rest. Yelling further would make him seem as if he were raving. He had to remain calm if he was to convince Wong of his sincerity, if nothing else. "She remembers me," he said, tone low, "and I've never forgotten her, not for a moment. That photograph, it's the only thing that I have of my former life. The only thing." He forced his hands to open, his fingers to relax. "It's been dangled before me by the jailers of one prison or another. But even when they'd refused to show me her, she stayed with me."

His heart thudded within his chest so quickly that the pace of it almost felt human. "I held her within me like an old song, and when I saw her again, every note rang true." Such maudlin words spoken with conviction. More than just his heart had become human again. "But I thought the similarity a coincidence, one unfair and cruel ... until tonight, when Ellsworth remembered something only that woman could have known."

"That can't be possible. No Extraordinary is capable of time travel, and the science —" Wong shook her head. "The science doesn't exist; it's science fiction."

He dropped into one of the chairs before the desk. "I thought myself mad," he confessed. "But I'm as much a madman as Elise Ellsworth is a doppelganger. When she'd spoken with me after dinner, she remembered our garden, she remembered her perfume, she remembered me." He took in a breath. "She can't have done that unless she has traveled through time or risen from the grave. And I believe that she's done both."

Wong fixed him with a sharp stare.

"Yes," he said, "my Eleanor died. My poor, sweet Eleanor who had the power to heal herself." He had never before allowed himself to speak so frankly to Wong, or, indeed, to anyone. Save Eleanor. She had been the exception to many things.

Revealing that side of himself had been the right call, for Wong sank into her own chair. She sat there for several moments without speaking. "I'll need evidence before I can believe any of this," she said. "Officially, I mean."

"The British have it."

Her face had all the softness of a steel blade. "Churchill has it, you mean."

There was no reason to lie, so he didn't. The only allegiances he had left were limited to a few friends and acquaintances. Everything, everyone else had betrayed him. "Yes."

She folded her hands. "You said she had a power. I take it that she was one of his people?"

"Unwillingly," Gerver said. "She was one of yours." Off Wong's frown, he added, "An American, I should say, though not a citizen of the Valley. As far as I'm aware, your government never knew what she was, but the British certainly had known."

Outrage and disbelief openly warred on Wong's face. "You're saying that they held an American citizen captive?"

"No, they had also experimented upon her. Tortured her, if one wishes to use the honest term for it" — the thought almost unmanned him — "though I'd had no idea of that until the Jerries kindly informed me of precisely what my countrymen were up to." His hands dove into his pockets, searching for his cigarette case and lighter, but he didn't take them out. He only wished to feel their weight. "Every government, they're all the same behind closed doors. They take Extraordinaries and use them for their own ends. I know that now."

He traced a finger over his initials engraved in the case. "But she never told me that," he said. "I'd only known that she hated working for us." She had never told him that, not in words. It had been in her eyes.

"I had thought she'd imagined me her escape hatch," he continued, "yet I'd let her fool me ... I would have let her leave, too, if she'd tried." His finger stilled, pressing into the metal until it smarted him. "But then the Jerries told me another thing," he continued, "that'd she'd been killed, and not by them. She had come to save me, you see, and that meant I'd been more than a fool to her." His heart pounded harder. "It had also meant risking her capture by Germany." He pressed harder. The metal threatened to buckle, and he pulled back. "Risking everything we'd worked for. More, if the Nazis could've figured out how to harness her power."

Ah, but he had gone on far too long with his emotions exposed. They needed to be tucked away, so he could pretend they had never showed, like a proper Englishman. He attempted a smile, and Wong looked elsewhere. People learnt to do that quickly when it came to him.

"You took the Krauts word on her death?" Wong said.

"No, not until they'd shown me the photographs of her corpse, and of the British agent who'd blown his brains out after he'd first done the same to her." He had memorized those photographs, too, despite doing his best to forget them. "The Jerries wished to know how her corpse had managed to disappear from their morgue. They'd assumed it was another spy in their ranks, like me."

He had taken beatings for that one. After a fortnight of them, his guards decided he hadn't been lying about his lack of knowledge.

Wong looked thoughtful. "If she really was American, there should be records of her in our country."

Leave it to Wong to find disappearing bodies uninteresting. To be fair, she had seen more inexplicable things, and it wasn't as if he knew how the body had vanished, so there was no reason for either of them to labor over that point. There was also no question of why Eleanor hadn't been mentioned in the Nazis' research. They both knew that experiments and the files on them had been shoved into furnaces as American forces had stormed the facility where he'd been kept. He had watched it happen, waiting for himself to be next.

"Quite the records," he said. "Her family, as I understand it, were — are — the Eastons."

"You can't mean the Eastons. But that would have made her ..." The president seemed unable to articulate the full conclusion she had reached. She left her desk again. "Let me see if I understand this correctly," she said, "assuming any of it's true."

One couldn't blame her for such doubt. He scarcely believed the truth of things himself.

She paced. "The British government held a daughter of the tenth wealthiest family in the world captive." Wong could not quite hide just how incredulous she found that statement. "That woman died without dying, turned years younger, then traveled back in time to become a girl who has been living here for over a decade."

That was the sum of it. "Said aloud, it sounds almost as ridiculous as a town full of people with abilities that border on the magical."

His ill-attempt at humor earned him a foul look. "Is there anything else I should know?" Wong said. "Anything at all?"

"No," he said, "nothing at all comes to mind."

But that hadn't meant he had told her everything. A decent spy always knew when to hold back.