I picked up the tray and started for Sophia's room.
That boy is going to be a problem.
Monica's thoughts, clear and close, sliding through the wood of her closed door behind me.
He's going to be an actual problem if we stay this close.
I stopped in the corridor with the tray in my hands. Two minutes ago she'd been face down on that small mattress letting a stranger work her spine, and now she was lying in there deciding what I was. The first move had landed and it had landed harder than I'd aimed it.
You need to tell me everything.
I put it to the system directly, because something in this cell wasn't sitting right.
The sealed door at the far end had closed at dawn. The light through the hole in the ceiling had shifted from pale grey to the flat, colourless tone of evening. In all those hours neither Sophia nor Monica had stepped out of a room. Not once. Not to eat. Not to wash. Not to stand under the hole the way I had done four separate times.
