I gasp, but I can breathe this ocean like I breathe the air.

“You once called me friend,” says the whisper.

“You—you were there.” A thousand memories come flooding back to me. “In November—with me.”

The vision of the ocean fades, the fish becoming ghosts of themselves, still swimming toward something in the moment they vanish. But the memory remains, and with it, the memory of a dream, long ago forgotten and buried beneath my grief. But no less real.

“I have wronged you,” the whisper says quietly, and though his expression shows no shame, he speaks slowly, each word heavy with regret. “Mine are not the actions of a friend. I stole from you.”

“My dreams.” I’m still clinging to the ocean, the memory of the dream enveloping me, something I haven’t experienced since before my parents were killed.

“I thought I was helping you, sparing you from reliving the pain of your parents’ deaths in your dreams. I thought I was easing your pain. But even your painful dreams are beautiful, Jubilee Chase, and I had no right to take them from you. They changed, as you grew, and there was healing in them. You needed them, and I took them from you.”

“All these years, you’ve been—intercepting my dreams? Taking them for your own? Why?”

“Because through them I could feel less alone.” Flynn sighs, tilting his head back and looking up at the dome of the whisper’s prison. “The others believe there is no hope for your kind, that the bursts of violence they cause, your Fury, it means nothing. But I’ve felt your grief, your loss. And though your species is capable of horrors, it’s capable of beauty, too. To end it now would be no better than taking your dreams away; to bring death robs your species of the chance to heal.”

I reach up to dash my hand angrily over my cheeks, hating that I feel for this wretched creature wearing Flynn’s face, hating that I can no longer fight without feeling. Hating that now I wonder if I ever did. “I want Flynn back,” I say, voice cracking. “If you can see my heart, then you know I need him.”

“Your bond with this vessel is why I chose him.”

“Stop calling him a vessel,” I burst out, anger sparking tears in my eyes all over again. “He’s a person. He’s smart, and kind, and braver than you could ever understand, and you’ve gone in and taken him away like it’s nothing.”

“Are you in love with this vess—this person?”

I gape at him, caught off guard. The absurdity of the question here, in the bowels of a secret research facility, conversing with a creature from another universe, is so striking that I have to fight the hysterical impulse to laugh. But his eyes are so grave, so serious, that the urge fades and I’m left looking at him, my heart tight and painful.

“I—I don’t know,” I whisper. I remember the shape of his heart and mine, and his kiss at the water’s edge. “But I wanted the chance to find out.”

Flynn’s eyes flicker. He’s here now, the creature had said. I swallow, wishing I could shout at him, wanting to beg him to come back to me.

“I do not know how to leave him without destroying his mind. But if you destroyed my connection, our connection, with him…perhaps then he would be left whole.”

“Destroyed,” I echo stupidly. “You mean—”

“I want you to kill us, Jubilee Chase.”

The words knock the air from my lungs, leaving me unable to reply until I’ve gasped a few breaths.

The creature inside Flynn watches me, searching for a sign of my reaction. “I do not wish to become like the others, to fall into violence and despair, into pain. We aren’t built for it. We can’t stand it.”

“And you think we can?” I choke back a sob. “Life is pain. We’re all in pain, all the time.”

“There are other things this universe has to offer,” says the creature. “Light. Life. Touch. Sensation. The way you are all made of the same pieces, the same fragments of stardust, and yet you are all so different, all so alone.”

“You think being alone is a good thing?”

“For us it’s agony,” he says simply. “For you, there is strength in individuality. We admire it. But we were not made to emulate it.”

I gaze back at him, trying to see traces of the creature inside Flynn as he bows his head. But all I can see are Flynn’s cheekbones, his mouth, his hair tumbling over his brow. There’s nothing about him that speaks of the passenger inside him except for the emptiness in his eyes. I bite my lip, mind turning over. “Are you sure?” I say softly. “Maybe there’s some way to set you free, to let you go so you can…” But my voice gives out. I can see the creature’s answer in Flynn’s features.

“Our keeper’s mistake was in creating a prison powered by our own energy. We are a part of it.” Flynn takes a step toward me. “Destroy the machinery holding this place together and you will destroy us with it. And without our interference, forced to keep this world secret, always hidden, you can broadcast your story to the stars. Begin your healing, perhaps. Prove your species deserves life.”

“But all those things you said were good about this universe. The things you could experience. Light and—and touch…” My voice gives out.

Flynn’s shaking his head slowly. “We have no desire to live without hope of returning home. I wish…to rest.”

“All right,” I whisper. “I’ll help you.”

Flynn beckons me closer and we kneel together on the blinding white floor. He shows me the nearly invisible seam in the floor and the faint outline of a human hand—a scanner, meant to unlock the control panel beneath.

“It merely requires a hand,” he tells me. “Anyone’s hand; a deft way of keeping us, we who cannot touch anything. We’ve tried to lead others here before, but our keeper seems to take pleasure in our failures.”

“Lead others…” But before I can ask, realization courses through me. “The will-o’-the-wisps.” The locals were right. The wisps were leading them somewhere.

“The others tried for years,” the whisper continues. “But when I realized that what I wanted was different, I—I was afraid.”

I search the lax features for some sign of that fear and find none, from this creature with no way to express itself. “Afraid of what?”