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idea that someday you’d be facing down the barrel of a gun. They never told you to expect help; not something you got much of.
    She was letting it happen because she needed to get to Montmartre more than she needed to break free, just now. She had to make it to the apartment without bleeding to death on foreign soil. The IA would have a field day with that.
    Maybe not. The IA might might have ordered it; maybe writing up her untimely end on the soft-focus streets of Paris was just what they were hoping for.
    It was terrifying just to imagine it, but you couldn’t shrink from the truth if it illuminated what needed to be done. It was the IA, or the Americans, or Magnus acting on orders from home.
    (She’d made the list as soon as she registered what was happening. Then she’d thought, I have to get north and warn them, with a twinge like homesickness. Then pain.)
    If it was the Americans or her own country, it would be messy. Her own country she might be able to handle; accusing the Americans would mean some serious diplomatic incidents for not a lot of gain—the Americans had a way of avoiding consequences.
    If the IA had moved against her, she was probably a dead woman, but she fought it. You rose to the need. She took a breath, counted her pulse like Hakan had taught her when she was thirteen and hadn’t even seen the floor of the IA yet.
    (“Some of them are born into this. They’ll see weaknesses—they’re bred on arguments. Think about whether your anger is productive.”
    â€œMy anger’s why you brought me here,” she’d said.
    He’d smiled. He had laugh lines, which surprised her: How could you be happy inside a machine? But he was. “Then make the most of your chances,” he’d said, “so you live long enough to be back home again.”
    It was good advice; advice he hadn’t followed.)
    Suyana had lost the advantage of anonymity to the stranger, which was too bad. Even when it was necessary, it was a shame to give first. But you had to weigh the cost of anything, and it had been more important to take his measure than to feign ignorance. Now she knew two things: what he looked like when he was lying, and what he looked like when he was truly surprised.
    â€œYou all right?” he asked. They were nearing an enormous intersection.
    She glanced toward the pavement at their feet. “How much blood am I trailing?”
    â€œI’m surprised you have any left,” he said. His jaw was set, and he didn’t look down.
    That meant he’d already looked at her and she hadn’t seen it. No good. She needed to stay sharp. She could lay out her options later, when she had any options besides Live or Mistake.
    â€œI just need to make it to the stairs on rue Foyatier,” she said. Her voice was light—she was dizzy—and she didn’t like it. To make it come off more girlish than weak, she gave him half a smile, as if the stairs were a whim in which he’d be kind enough to indulge her, and later they’d go out for coffee and laugh about it. Grace used it sometimes, when she was in front of the full Assembly.
    He flexed his fingers around her shoulder absently, the sort of reflex you had when you remembered a hidden weapon you were planning to use. “So you wanted to jog your way up to the church?”
    It was a false question, just filling space.
    The first time she’d really met Ethan—a party at Terrain—he’d done the same thing, so when he lurched forward with his elbows on his knees and knuckles bumping the table and asked, “So what’s it like to live so close to the rainforest?” she thought he knew more than he should.
    But he was just a diplomat, trained not to leave empty space in a conversation unless he was trying to intimidate. She’d laughed and explained where she was really from, ghosting her fingers on his knuckles as she sketched the mountains with her