Chapter Text
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
The incessant beeping of the monitor they have me shackled to is the first greeting I receive upon waking. The lights are bright enough that I cannot resist the urge to squinch my eyes shut. It takes no time to realize that I am lying in a hospital bed. I am shirtless but covered by a thin sheet, the cheap cotton like tissue paper surrounding me. When I try to sit up, my forehead hits a frayed leather strap—as though they ran out of the polyester seat-belt restraints at my wrists and ankles and someone thought it wise to use an old belt loop. Thwarted, I am forced to stare at the obnoxious fluorescents as I take stock of the sounds and feelings of this room.
I fixate on one fact in particular—that I am not yet dead.
However, considering I do not know where I am or in whose clutches I am cradled, I do not know for how long this will remain true. My lapse in judgement, my foolish reliance on Kishimoto’s suggestions, and my concern for Juliette’s safety have led me to quite the dead end.
Juliette.
I will stay alive as long as it takes to find her.
“He’s awake,” a girl’s voice says. She thinks she’s being quiet.
A voice similar to her own responds. “I’ll get Castle.”
Opposite from the bed I’m harnessed to, a door opens. Shuts again.
“Where am I?” I ask the ceiling, the girl who remains somewhere in this room.
A beat of silence.
“I know you’re still here,” I warn.
She clears her throat. Her voice is meek, like the coo of a dove. “Castle will answer all of your questions.”
I resist the urge to scoff. “Where is Juliette?” I demand. “What have you done with her?”
“She’s—she’s fine.” The girl is panicking now. I can practically hear her shaking even though I cannot see her. The thrum of her anxiety nags at me. “I’m sorry,” she squeaks, “but I really need you to wait for Castle before—”
The door reopens. Two sets of footsteps enter the room.
“Undo his restraints.” A man. He exudes a bewildering mix of confidence and unsurety. He has me strapped to this bed, barely conscious, and yet I still manage to make him nervous.
Good. This will work in my favor.
His assistants’ hesitation hangs in the room. Neither girl moves.
“But sir—” One of them starts to object.
The other picks up where she left off. “We’re not sure that it’s advisable to do that—”
“—before we can be sure whether or not he’s trustworthy.”
“I am not trustworthy,” I tell them, still staring at the fiberglass ceiling tiles.
Their fear is palpable.
“Very well,” the man—Castle, I suppose—says. His single clap echoes. “Allow him to sit up, at the very least. And remove the strap from his temples. I’d like him to be comfortable here.”
I school my features as one of the girls moves into my vision, blocking the light as she blinks down at me. Her hair is pulled back in a long, high ponytail that falls over her shoulder as she undoes the buckle of the belt at the side of my face. She appears almost bird-like, petite and soft-featured. If I were not so focused on figuring out where I am, on escaping and finding Juliette, I might be embarrassed that anyone should see me in such a feeble, overpowered state. Yet, the straps betray their fear of me. I am a wild animal that they cannot set loose in this… This…
“Where are we?” I ask as the strap falls away. My bed folds so that I’m sitting up and, upon getting a clearer view of them, I realize the girls must be twins. Identical. One of them is messing with a remote that controls the incline of the bed. “Where is Juliette?”
Castle smiles at me. The simple gesture makes my nose scrunch. It isn’t a mocking gesture—his dark locks are tied back to reveal an entirely too sincere expression on his otherwise serious face. His demeanor is so gentle as to be naive. So naive as to be ignorant.
“Leave us,” he tells the girls. “I imagine our guest would like to have this conversation privately.”
I stay silent as the helper twins scurry from the room.
“Well”—he pulls a chair and turns it around, sits down as though straddling a horse—“Kenji was so kind as to fill me in on your heroics in shepherding Ms. Ferrars safely away from your father’s machinations. She is very important to us here. And she will be quite the asset to our movement.”
His phrasing does little to comfort me. Another day, another crusader looking to use her for his own purposes. I recall a time when she thought the same of me—it’s only been a few weeks since things have changed.
I want to turn back time and put a bullet through Kishimoto’s head. I’d give anything to have another minute alone with her. To have privacy and security enough to lose myself in her in a way we haven’t yet had a chance to.
“Where is she?” I demand again. This is the only conversation I care to have. “What have you done with her?”
“I assure you she’s safe here,” he tells me. “As are you.”
The second part of his statement is unnecessary. My safety means little to me these days. I only care about finding Juliette. “I want evidence she’s alright. Let me speak with her.”
“All in due time,” Castle says. He’s holding a clipboard. “If you’re seeking reassurance, Ms. Ferrars oversaw your medical care herself. I assured her as I’m assuring you that you will both be well taken care of. We’d like to examine the two of you separately before we determine how to proceed. Tell me, Mr. Warner, what do you remember of the last twenty-four hours?”
“I remember everything perfectly clearly.”
My answer, for some reason, makes him chuckle. “I understand your proclivity for keeping your cards close to your chest but if you are not a threat to us then we are not a threat to you. We only hope to help you and Ms. Ferrars find solace in the community we’ve cultivated here.”
I shut my eyes, breathe through my nose. His words are no more than the insufferable trill of a common loon. “Juliette and I don’t require your help. I beg of you, just tell me where she’s being kept.”
He blinks as though confused. “Kept? You have misinterpreted our motivations entirely. She is no prisoner here, same as yourself. You are both here as our guests and members of our movement if you so wish to be.”
“Really?” I press. My eyes rove over his face—there’s a silver streak in his hair that makes me think he’s older than he otherwise appears. His smile lines indicate a life full of laughter and cheer, a life of someone too woefully optimistic and reliant on the charity of others for his own good. “You’re willing to welcome a Reestablishment official into the headquarters of what I can only assume is some misguided rebel operation? Are you so oblivious to the basic principle of self preservation?”
He tilts his head at me. “I’ve been told that you renounced your title in favor of assisting Ms. Ferrars in finding a safe haven,” he says. “This can be that safe haven. You and your father have been unable to pinpoint our location or intercept any of our members for many years now. We’ve been undetected this entire time.”
My eye twitches. Oh, how casually he insults my competence without even intending to. “You cannot be serious. You don’t expect me to believe you’ve been operating here, under my nose, this entire time?”
“Were you aware of our existence before waking up here?” He motions to the room at large. “Seemingly not.”
How I overlooked something so painfully obvious is beyond me—but this isn’t the time for petty issues of pride and regret. If my father has any suspicions that these people are harboring us, he will find them and snuff them out with no more effort than it takes to blow out a candle. “I want to see her,” I say in lieu of humoring him. “I need proof of life.”
His smile belittles me. His kind eyes pity me. My blood boils though I force myself to maintain my composure.
“We healed you, did we not?” He motions at where, indeed, there is no evidence of the injuries my father inflicted. He gives me little time to register the unblemished, smooth skin of my stomach and its curious lack of stitches or bruising before he continues. “What makes you believe that we would harm Ms. Ferrars?”
I don’t respond.
“I’d like to have a conversation with you,” he tells me. “Just the two of us.”
“Go on, then.” I gesture with one hand despite the strap at my wrist. “It appears I have no choice.”
He takes a long time to examine my face before he begins. So long, in fact, that I imagine I could fall asleep in the time it takes him to open his mouth.
“You are aware that if I allowed you free range among the members of our movement that I would have mass discontent to manage, are you not?”
They are afraid of me, of course. I am a monster that might decimate their ranks in a matter of days if they aren’t careful. This man, Castle, is trying to portray honesty, trust, yet I feel as though I am a beast being placated by the deception of a live feeding. He fans my ego with a rat scurrying through my cage and expects me to chase after it. He expects me to heel to the illusion of freedom he creates.
I will do no such thing.
“Please, kill me or let me go, but I beg you—do not waste my time.”
He exhales, finally letting some of his true exasperation show. “I respect your intellect, your leadership, even if our objectives have not been aligned in the past. You and I both know that you are not an easy person to fool,” he tells me. “The people here have reasons not to trust you. On the other hand,” he continues, “I would like to try. I want you to give me a reason to believe you won’t hurt my people or disrupt the important work we’re doing here.”
“Then I will only disappoint you.”
He ignores me. “You know at least some of the truth of the Reestablishment’s modus operandi, as it were. You know that so much of what we’re seeing now—in the compounds, in our environment—is artificial agony. This world is not as far gone as they would have us believe. You have come here with far more awareness of our current world than the vast majority of our new arrivals and I wish to recognize your savvy and your talents.”
He pauses a moment before adding,
“Your knowledge of the inner workings of the Reestablishment could be invaluable to us.”
This time, I fail to hold back my scoff. “No, thank you.”
He frowns. “And why is that?”
“My loyalties lie with those who know how to survive.”
He drops his voice to a whisper. “And you think we don’t?”
I register footsteps approaching from the hall. “I think this is an ill-fated wager.”
“How about this,” Kishimoto interrupts from the doorway, “if you want to see Juliette, you’ll have to learn to get along.” He saunters over to the wall closest to this bed and sags against it. Shoves his hands in his pockets. “That means all your usual murder and violence is totally off the table. Think you can do that, Blondie?”
“And what authority do you—any of you—have to keep us apart?”
The pair of men in front of me turns silent. When they take too long to answer, I continue.
“You believe that you are doing something good for her by keeping her away from the likes of me. You think that I am an agent of the Reestablishment who has held her hostage and tormented her for months on end with no reprieve. You think I’ve damaged her. You think I’ve tricked her. Whatever you believe about me, I regret to inform you that you are and will always be wrong.”
“We only want the two of you to be able to form real, lasting connections with the others here at Omega Point,” Castle informs me.
“I have no desire to connect with anyone here aside from Juliette.”
“Well, that might be difficult,” Kenji says. “Because you and I are going to be roomies.”
He’s lucky they have me restrained. “What?” I snap.
“Yeah,” he continues. “And you should be grateful. There’s not another person here that would be willing to room with your sorry ass. I’m putting my life on the line here. I’m sleeping with one eye open from now on."
“What about Juliette?”
Castle holds up a hand. “Our dorms and bathrooms are strictly gender segregated for the comfort of our members. We make few exceptions except for long-established couples.”
“Juliette’s rooming with the twins,” Kenji adds. I’m minorly relieved by the knowledge that she’ll be rooming with other girls who seem to be only slightly older than her. “And they already saved you from certain death, so I don’t want to hear any bullshit about not trusting them around J.”
I drop my head back against the pillow. Hope to die.
“You defected,” Kenji bursts out. “Aren’t you supposed to be, like, not working for them anymore? If that’s the case, why are you acting like we’re still your enemies? We’re trying to help you. What do we have to do to convince you?” When I don’t answer, he drags a hand down his face before continuing to torment me with his blabbing. “How about this? That antidote you asked for? Hydroxocoba-whatever? We had it.”
At that, I perk up a bit.
He’s inordinately encouraged. “I didn’t need to relay that information, now, did I? I could have let the poison work its course and washed my hands of you.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “But I didn’t.”
For a moment too long, we hold each other’s gaze and—though I hate to admit my worries are assuaged even the slightest bit—Kishimoto actually looks hopeful that I will change my tune. Determination emanates from him.
It’s this detail that annoys me most. “Juliette never would have allowed that to happen.”
“She was in hysterics, bro. You didn’t see her after you passed out. She could barely remember how to speak English, let alone recall the word hydro-co… Hydrothyl…”
“Hydroxocobalamin,” I finish for him.
“Yeah, that. I remembered all of those syllables for you, man. And I don’t even get a ‘thank you’?”
I’m about to berate him once more when a honey-sweet voice takes me by surprise. “And why can’t I see him?” she complains from just outside the door.
“Castle hasn’t cleared him for visitors,” someone argues. Then, that same excuse I’ve already grown bored of. “We wanted to examine the two of you separately before any further contact.”
“But why?” she complains, and I envy her humanity, the way that she wants to believe the best in everyone. “Can’t you just let me see him? I want to know he’s alright.”
“He’s… Recovering.” The other man says.
“That’s all the more reason why he needs me right now, Winston.”
If my arms weren’t tied down, I’d rip that door off its hinges myself.
“Ms. Ferrars.” Castle meets her at the door. I slump into the mattress, pressing my eyes shut as I lament this tiresome turn my life has taken. “How are you settling in so far? Was lunch everything you hoped it would be?”
A pause. “The food was… Really nice.”
What a terrible liar she is.
“And the girls? Have they helped you settle in?” He shifts from foot to foot as though he can sense my stare on the back of his neck. There’s something different about him, an energy to him that I can’t quite put my finger on.
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to them any more,” she says, “but I’d really like to know what’s going on with…” That hesitation. She doesn’t know whatto call me around other people. An involuntary smile takes over my face. However she ends her sentence, my heart sings just to hear her say any variation of my name. “Warner. David came to tell us he was awake but Kenji told me I had to wait at the entrance to the medical wing. Then Winston showed up and I thought maybe—”
“Mr. Warner is perfectly fine,” Castle tells her in a voice that’s almost parental. Still, he offers her no additional information about me. Their constant gatekeeping has already become stale in the few minutes since I woke up.
Several beats of silence pass between them.
“Can I… see him?” she finally asks.
Kishimoto hangs his head where he still leans against the wall.
“I suppose a moment wouldn’t hurt,” Castle tells her. “It would have to be supervised, of course.” Supervised? As though I’m some degenerate criminal. Like I’m an oversexed soldier like Kent or the others, looking to use her for my pleasure. The insult makes me forget myself. “Perhaps, Kenji or someone your own age would be willing to—”
“Juliette.” I say, loud enough to stop the conversation in its tracks.
“Please?” I hear her plead.
The door opens and Juliette—my love—rushes into the room only for her face to crinkle at the sight of me. She glances at Kishimoto before focusing back on me. Her eyes are taking in every ounce of my skin, a blush coming to her cheeks even as her features pass through confusion, sadness, and then… Anger.
She’s still standing between me and the door, torturing me where I lay confined to this bed, unable to reach for her, unable to hold her in my arms. I’d normally be ashamed for her to see me in such a defenseless position but the relief that swells in my chest chases away that impulse. Her hair is loose, in waves pooling around her that I long to bury my face in. She’s wearing a sweater and jeans from one of our duffel bags that appear freshly cleaned. Her bad arm is still in a sling despite the fact that I woke up whole and hale—which means whatever healing technology they used to fix my wounds clearly cannot bypass her skin’s defenses.
She gifts me only a moment of eye contact before she turns on her heel. “Why is he tied to the bed?”
Castle’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. Winston, as Juliette called the blond man with the glasses before the door was open, shirks away from her, from the ire in her voice.
“We didn’t know if he’d be hostile towards us,” Castle tells her. “Forgive me, but Mr. Warner has been a member of the Reestablishment nearly since birth. It’s difficult, you see, to be sure if we can take your word for it.”
“Untie him,” she demands. And I find myself laughing at the ceiling. “He doesn’t need them.”
“I assure you, love,” I tell her, fists clenching. “In this moment, I do.”
At the sound of my voice, she forgets the men at the door and comes to stand by my side. Her good hand rises to my hair and, though there’s an audience at our door, she doesn’t hesitate to run her fingers through it. I’ve never been touched so softly, with such care, in my entire life. She lets it fall to my chest, where she lays it flat against my skin.
“So,” Castle says, “you’re both aware that Juliette can touch you? This is something that you’ve experimented with before?”
He gawks at where Juliette’s hand rests on my bare chest. I feel a swell of pride despite the unease etched into her features. She doesn’t turn toward him, just takes a deep breath as she shuts her eyes.
“Yes,” I tell no one in particular, “I can touch her. Though, not presently.” I strain against my bindings to emphasize my point.
Castle scratches his chin. “But you are functionally immune to her power, no?”
I glance between them and Juliette’s hand against my skin. It’s killing me not to be able to reach for her. After all we’ve been through these last couple of days, I want nothing more than to feel her skin on my own. I want all of these pests out and I want to wrap her around me. More than anything, I just want to hold her. “Evidently,” I grit out.
“Can we have a moment alone?” Juliette asks them, her eyes wide and hopeful. “Please?”
I stare down my nose at the men.
“We’ll wait just outside,” Castle tells her. His smile doesn’t reach his sad eyes. He looks from my face to Juliette’s hand and then meets her eye once more. Winston takes off his glasses and cleans them on his shirt, shifting uncomfortably. “Holler if you need us.” He offers me a smile as he turns to leave, ushering Winston out when he hesitates for a moment too long.
“They’re afraid of me,” I mutter when they’re out of earshot. They don’t shut the door. It hangs open a sliver, only offering us so much privacy.
She sits beside me on the bed. “They think you did something,” she tells me. Her voice is oh-so quiet, as though she’s scared to even voice the ludicrous accusation. “To control me. To make me like you.”
I shake my head. “Of course they do.” Of course, in their eyes, I am an abominable creature unworthy of even basic courtesy let alone the affections of someone as tenderhearted and exquisite as Juliette. On that point, we might all agree.
“I know you didn’t,” she tells me. She looks over her shoulder at the cracked door before one of her hands goes to my wrist restraints, undoing the first buckle. “It doesn’t matter what they think. I know how I feel.”
My hand falls free. I flex my fingers. “And how do you feel?”
“Right now?” she asks, not meeting my eye. “Or about you?”
I consider this. “Both,” I answer after a second.
“I feel okay. A bit”—she bites her lip before continuing—“cautious, I think, but okay.”
“Cautious about me?”
Now, she snaps her head up. Her eyes are wide, locked onto mine as she shakes her head and laughs weakly. “No,” she says. Then again, her voice trailing off a bit. “No, not about you…”
We’re both quiet as she releases the restraint on my other wrist, and another at my ankle. Even with my hands freed, I don’t move. The last buckle slips off my leg and I wonder if any of the eavesdroppers in the hall realize I’m unbound.
“I heard what you said,” she tells me. “In your bedroom. About wanting to find that peaceful place. About wanting time to know each other. About wanting to explore”—she swallows—“those parts of each other that no one else knows.”
“And?” The word escapes my lips unbidden.
“I want those things too.” She looks towards the door. There’s something she isn’t saying.
“Juliette? Is everything alright?”
She exhales. It’s a heavy, exhausted sound. “There’s something I think you should know,” she says, “but I’m not sure you’ll want to stay here if I tell you.”
“I assure you there will be no love lost between me and this institution.”
“Aaron,” she scolds. “Where else would we go? Our only other option would be unregulated territory. And even then, we’d have to figure out how to get food and water and clothes and—”
“What do you need to tell me, love?”
“There’s someone here that I don’t think you’ll be very happy to see.”
“Who?” I ask. “I’ve put up with Kishimoto enough for the last few days. I believe I’m beginning to develop a tolerance.”
“Not Kenji,” she says, taking my hand. “You really… really won’t be happy.”
My temper is already rising. Not at her—but at who I suspect she’s talking about. “Who are you referring to?” I bristle. “Who’s here?”
She says the name so quietly I could mistake it for the chirp of a bird if we weren’t many meters underground—“Adam.”
Hot rage blasts through me. “Kent?”
When she nods, I sit up. I grab her uninjured hand and use it to pull her closer to me, overcome by some animal instinct to prove that I’m better than him—that he could never deserve her, not in a thousand years. She doesn’t resist and my anger tapers off. That she still wants to be with me, that she hasn’t changed her mind about wanting me… It’s a simple triumph over that idiot to know that she prefers my affections over his. She prefers me.
“He said some things,” she tells me, “about you and me.”
“You’ve been to see him.”
She squeezes my hand. “They let him into my hospital room this morning. And then he sat at the same table as us at lunch. I didn’t ask for him.”
“I see.”
“I asked for you.”
I tug her against me, wrapping her in my arms and pressing one hand to the back of her head as I bury my face in her hair. I press a kiss to her temple. The tension leaves her muscles all at once.
“I love you,” I murmur. I’m not certain she’s heard me. I said it to her once before—just before my father interrupted us in my childhood bedroom—but she never had the chance to respond. “I love you,” I say, a little louder this time.
Her mouth opens at the exact moment that someone knocks on the door. A musical rapping in a rhythm most children could replicate.
“Okay, kids,” Kishimoto announces from the door. “Playtime’s over. I’m here to supervise.”
I groan, falling back as I cover my head with a single pillow.
“Kenji,” Juliette whines. I stare at the ceiling, waiting for this nightmare to be over. “You know there’s nothing wrong.”
“Look, J, I get it.” My hair stands on end at the sound of one of the many annoying nicknames he’s given her in the few days he’s known her. “I really do. But the people here need to protect themselves.” His voice is filled with a mix of suspicion and pity that irks me deep in my core. My hands twitch as I resist the urge to strangle him. “They have good reason to be wary of your boy toy here.”
I clench my fists.
“I told you not to call him that,” she warns him.
“My bad.” A pause. Then, to me, “Hey, wait, aren’t you supposed to be restrained?”
I toss the pillow off my head and sit up. Stand up for the first time since I awoke. “Lucky for me, Juliette knows she doesn’t need to protect herself from me. Unlike the rest of you.”
“Come on, man, I’m not the one making these decisions—”
“Frankly, I do not care.” I lean into his face. Before, I believed him to be a simple nuisance. Now, I’ve seen that it was all a ruse to coddle me into non-suspicion. He has been orchestrating this since before I even brought Juliette on base, surely, and yet these underground rebels likely view my own actions as kidnapping her, as detaining her. Their own hypocrisy is lost on them. “I have sat by while you slander me with accusations of brainwashing. You’ve suggested that I am somehow controlling Juliette’s actions. You’ve suggested that she has some sort of traumatic bond from her time with me after Kent left, yet you fail to do the one thing that might confirm or deny your assumptions for fear you might be wrong.”
“Oh yeah?” He narrows his eyes at me, hands on his hips. Even in my anger, I respect that he isn’t backing down to me. “And what would that be?”
“Let her decide,” I hiss. “Juliette is perfectly capable of knowing what she wants without my assistance and without yours, as well. Your entire team is treating her like a child. I cannot imagine a more infantilizing or infuriating fate than being told I am brainwashed for simply deciding against the consensus of a virtual hive mind.”
The tension leaves his face. He actually appears guilty for a moment. It seems to take all of his effort to swallow before he nods and says, “Excuse me, but there’s someone I need to talk to. I’ll be back in just a second so don’t get up to anything too freaky—”
I scowl.
“Okay, okay! Just wait here.” He gives a mocking salute as he backs out of the room. This time, the door shuts behind him.
I’m still staring after him when I feel her gentle hand running along my abdomen. The feel of it electrifies me in a way I don’t understand. Her every touch is charged, intoxicating me with new emotions every time I get a tiny taste of it.
“You’re not hurt anymore,” she says, awe clear in her tone. “I watched the girls heal you but… They told me they have to touch you to help.”
“And why is that? Do they not possess gloves?”
She laughs a little. “They have these powers,” she says, her voice full of disappointment behind a thin veneer of astonishment.
“Powers like yours?”
“Kind of. A lot of the people here do. The girls can regenerate skin and tissue,” she explains. “There are some things they still need medicine for, like the poison your dad used, but they can heal normal injuries within seconds.”
“Seconds? Really?”
She nods. In the momentary hesitation that follows, the dam breaks and she allows me to see the hurt she’s tried so hard to hold back. For the first time, I realize there are gloves sticking out of her pocket. She frowns. “But they can only do that if they can touch you. Like when Kenji had to hold our hands to make us invisible, but it won’t work through fabric or gloves like his power did.”
It seems we have a lot to discuss.
My eyes brush over her arm, still in its sling, as I lower myself to the bed behind me, sitting in front of her. She comes to meet me there, stepping between my legs. I use the opportunity to reach into her pocket and toss the gloves onto the floor, not bothering to note where they land. Her fingers trail over my shoulder and my responding inhale doesn’t reach my lungs. Moments from the last few days come back to me in flashes, in feelings so acute that even remembering them feels like being electrocuted from the inside out.
“Juliette,” I beg, knowing this might be our only opportunity to have this conversation. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Her gaze goes wide with worry before her brow knits together. “About something serious?”
I chew on nothing. “I believe I might have a solution to your little dilemma,” I tell her. “I might know how we can fix your arm.”
“You…” Her hand flinches away from my shoulder. “What? How?”
I grab her wrist before she can get too far and press a kiss to the inside of it. I wait to continue until she settles between my knees once more. “Remember when you used your power on that soldier? Just before my father intercepted us?”
“How could I forget?” she quips. “But what does that have to do with my arm?”
“Do you remember harming the other two men?”
She tilts her head at me. Her shoulders raise nearly to her ears as she tenses. “No. I only touched the one.”
“But the others were incapacitated anyway.”
“Yeah, why?”
I rip the bandaid off. “I used your power.”
“What?” she asks, looking everywhere but my face. I wrap my arms around her waist, keeping her close. The red flush on her face is worth every bad memory I’ve been forced to endure. “What do you mean?”
“Allow me to show you.”