The latest subject was brought in the testing chamber. A man, American, not older than 30. He had expected a hole. The chamber smelled faintly of detergent and old paper. The men who’d carried the thing in had called it “a shadow,” but Etta wanted language she could test. She sat in the chair and clipped the pulse monitor on his finger, then sat opposite the open space where the sphere should have been. He stared, shoulders trembling. At thirty seconds his breath hitched. “It’s looking at me,” he whispered. Etta wrote: Subject 3 — describes agency. She felt, briefly, the same prickle: an animal’s certainty in her bones that looked dangerously like truth.