I lurched awake at the conclusion of the dream, sitting up on the sofa reflexively. My gut boiled with the need to let out a remorseful sob, so impacted I had been by the imagery my subconscious had produced.

Impossibilia – the poor girl – had been standing over me, on the verge of prodding me awake. She jumped back with a yelp and tumbled to the floor, landing hard. She held her stomach and looked as if she might be about to cry. I stammered out a weak and rambling apology and attempted to disentangle myself from the blankets so that I could rise to help her up, but before I could do so, she had regained her composure and let out a quiet laugh. “We can’t keep start’lin each other like this,” she said, her faint smile conspicuous in the way she shaped her words. But then her smile faded away again, first from how it subtly sharpened and elongated the contours of her eyes, then becoming evident in the waning curve of her lips caused by the relaxed pull in the muscles of her cheeks.

For the briefest of moments I began to internally praise myself, proud of my efforts to continue seeing the mathematics of her features without losing sight of the biology that they represented… and then that pride crumbled to dust as I remembered, later than I should have, that a change in expression wasn’t just about biology – it was indicative of emotion. And the emotion that she was expressing was not a positive one.

Perhaps my sight had come back too quickly. I was faltering about at keeping everything in mind all at once. It was dizzying.

Henrietta cleared her throat – she had been there all along, standing not too far away, her arms crossed over the front of her uniform and her dark hair tied indifferently behind her head. The tone of her words announced that she clearly was not in the mood for the ceremony of pleasantries. “We need you to break into Mr. Purvis’s rooms,” She stated.

I was taken aback, but after a moment found myself able to respond, “Don’t you think a breach of privacy like that might upset Mr. Purvis a little bit?”

“Probably not,” she responded, her voice impassive, “We’re pretty sure that he’s dead.”