"Maybe things would've gone on like normal. Or maybe the thing that replaced your niece was just the vanguard, and the rest of your family's still there because you called in help."

One corner of her mouth turns up slightly. It's not a happy expression. "That's the trouble with looking back. We know the outcome of the choices we did make, and what they cost us and the people we love. But everything else is just conjecture. It says more about our own hopes and fears and guilt than about what actually might have happened."

She's quiet for a moment, eyes narrowing slightly as she turns the rest over in her head, weighing her instinctive dislike of ADI against what she knows of infiltration and subversion.

"How many people know about your history?"