“Don’t say that,” said Frankenstein. “He was still your father. He raised you, and he loved you, and you loved him back. I know you did.”

“I don’t care!” Jamie cried. “I don’t care about any of that! I didn’t even know him; the man who raised me wasn’t even real! The man who raised me was a case officer at the Ministry of Defense, who went on golf weekends with his friends and complained about the price of gasoline. He didn’t exist!” He leapt to his feet and kicked his fallen chair across the room. It skidded across the tiled floor and slammed into the wall. “I won’t waste another second thinking about him,” he said, his pale blue eyes fixing on Frankenstein’s. “He’s dead, my mother is still alive, for now at least, and we need to find her. I’m going to talk to Larissa again.”

The monster stiffened in his seat. “What good do you think will come of that?” he said.

“I don’t know. But I think she wants to help me. I can’t explain why.”

Frankenstein stared at the teenager. He was about to reply when the radio on Jamie’s belt crackled into life.

Jamie pulled it from its loop and looked at the screen. “Channel 7,” he said.

“That’s the live operation channel,” said Frankenstein. “No one should be using it.”

Jamie keyed the CONNECT button on the handset, and then almost dropped it as a terrible scream of agony burst from the plastic speaker. Frankenstein stood bolt upright, staring at the radio in the teenager’s hand.

A low voice whispered something inaudible, and then a man’s voice, trembling and shaking, spoke through the radio.

“. . . Hello? Who i-is this?”

“This is Jamie Carpe—”

There was a tearing noise, horribly wet, and the scream came again, a high-pitched wail of pain and terror.

“Oh God, please!” shrieked the man. “Please, please, don’t! Oh God, please don’t hurt me anymore!”

Jamie looked helplessly at Frankenstein. The monster’s face had turned slate gray, and his misshapen eyes were wide. He was staring at the radio as though it were a direct line to hell.

Something whispered again, and then the voice was back, hitching and rolling as the man who was speaking fought back tears.

“You have to come,” the voice said between enormous sobs of pain. “H-he says you h-have to come to him. He s-says if you d-don’t then you’ll n-never see your m-mother again.”

Rage exploded through Jamie. “Alexandru,” he growled, his voice unrecognizable. “Where are y—”

The man screamed again, so long and loud that the scream descended to a high-pitched croak. Something laughed quietly in the background, as the man spoke two final, gasping words. “Help me.”

Then the line went dead.

Jamie stared at the radio for a long moment, then dropped it on the table, a look of utter revulsion on his face. Frankenstein slowly lowered himself back into his chair and looked at the teenager with wide, horrified eyes.

“How would he have that frequency?” Jamie asked, his voice trembling. “How could he possibly have it?”

“I don’t know,” replied Frankenstein. “It’s changed every forty-eight hours.”

“So someone must have given it to him in the last two days?”

Frankenstein’s eyes widened as the realization of Jamie’s point sank in. He pulled his own radio from his belt, twisted the channel selector switch, then spoke into the receiver.

“Thomas Morris to Level 0, room 24B, immediately,” he said, and then Jamie gasped as the monster’s voice boomed out of the speakers that stood in the high corners of every room in the base.

“You’ll wake the entire Department,” he protested. “What are you doing?”

“Getting some answers,” replied Frankenstein.

Barely a minute later, Thomas Morris pushed open the door to the office and staggered inside. His face was puffy and his eyes were narrow slits, and he was yawning even as he asked them what the emergency was.

“You’re security officer, Tom. So you can search the network access logs, correct?” asked Frankenstein.

Morris rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I can do that,” he replied.

“Good. I need you to search for anyone who has accessed the frequency database in the last forty-eight hours.”

Morris groaned. “This couldn’t have waited until—”

“I need you to do it now, please,” interrupted Frankenstein.

Morris shot the monster a look of mild annoyance, then pulled his portable console from the pouch on his belt. He placed it on the desk, coded in, and ran the search, as Jamie and Frankenstein watched over his shoulder.

Beep.

The three men looked at the words that had appeared on the console’s screen.

NO RESULTS FOUND.

“There you go,” said Morris. “No one’s accessed the frequency database in the last forty-eight hours. Can I go back to bed now?”

Frankenstein stared at the screen, then looked at Morris. “Yes,” he said, his voice low. “Sorry to have disturbed you.”

“It’s all right,” said Morris, a weary smile on his face. “Good night, gentlemen.”

“Good night, Tom,” said Jamie.

Morris closed the office door behind him, leaving Jamie and Frankenstein alone again.

“So,” said Jamie, in a tired voice. “I think you’re going to struggle to blame my dad for this, don’t you?”

“Jamie—” Frankenstein began, but the teenager cut him off.

“Not now. I can’t even think about who gave Alexandru the frequency now. We have to find him, and we have to do it before he hurts anyone else. I’m going to get some sleep, and then I’m going down to the cellblock, and we’re going to do whatever she says we should do.”

Jamie walked toward the door and was about to turn the handle when the monster called to him.

“Do you really think you can trust her?”

He turned, and looked at Frankenstein with sadness in his eyes. “As much as I can anyone else around here,” he replied.

Jamie had lied to the monster.

He was tired, that was certainly true, but he wasn’t going straight to the dormitory. Instead he pushed open the door to the infirmary, walked quickly across the white floor and into the room marked THEATER.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said, flopping gracelessly into the chair beside Matt’s bed. The teenage boy was still as pale as a ghost, and the rhythmic beeping of the machines still filled the room.

“I don’t know what to believe, or who to believe, or anything. I feel like I’m completely lost.”

Jamie looked at the peaceful expression on Matt’s face, and found himself envying it. He didn’t know what he was doing in the infirmary, but he had been filled with a powerful compulsion to see the injured teenager. He wondered if it was because this boy was the one person in the Loop who would not tell him something new, who didn’t know who he was or what his father had done, and who he could talk to without worrying how he sounded.

“Frankenstein was my dad’s closest friend, and even he thinks he betrayed the Department. And if he thinks it’s true, then it probably is. But then who gave Alexandru the operational frequency so he could call me on it? It’s been changed a thousand times since Dad died. Larissa knows more than she’s telling me, and the Chemist definitely did, and I’m pretty sure Frankenstein does as well. Why doesn’t anyone want me to know the truth about anything? It’s like no one cares if I find Mom or not.”

His hand went involuntarily to his neck, and he felt the wad of bandages that had been stuck to his skin. “I got hurt today. Not as badly as you, I know, but I got burned. And it made me realize something, you know? It made me realize that this isn’t a game, or a film, where the good guys win in the end and the bad guys get what’s coming to them. It’s real life, and it’s messy, and it’s complicated, and I’m scared, and I just don’t know what to—”

Jamie lowered his head into his hands and wept. The machines beeped steadily, and Matt’s eyes remained closed.