Mielikki Neith goes down into the dark alone—although she’s never really alone anymore. In the spaces between her thoughts there’s a kind of susurrus, the friendly chatter from an adjoining room. She wants to call it flash blindness, the imprint on her mind of years of being watched by the System, like the itch in an amputated limb—but no. This is Hunter, and her stories, taking life inside her mind. They are not autonomous. That was never a concern. No: they are aspects of her now, as surely as if she had lived side by side with them in flesh.