Sherman has finally proven himself to be my son in truth as well as by circumstance of birth: He has taken us all. His people killed several of mine, and I will not forget that fact, no matter how hard he may try to convince me that it was an accident, no matter how much effort he may be willing to put into the idea that somehow, he can convince me to become a convert to his cause. He would have me become the monster that they have made of me, and he doesn’t understand why I wouldn’t want that.

I know you’re going to read this, Sherman. I know I have no hope of privacy, and that you’ll kill me before you let me go free. I also know that you will read what I have written in hopes of uncovering my secrets, while you would never listen as I said these things to you. My beautiful, clever, flawed boy.

You are my son, in every way that matters. I bought the body you now wear from its human wife, who couldn’t afford the medical bills. I cultivated the core of you in petri dish and agar, choosing the best genes, the best chances for survival. And maybe, in the end, I put too much of myself in you.

Sherman, my weakness has always been a lack of empathy. Whatever guides the mentality and emotions of normal humans was left out in making me, and I have had to live my entire life measuring myself against the people around me, which is why I have striven to be surrounded by those of high empathy and higher morals.

If I am surrounded only by you, what horrors will I unleash? Please, son, if you don’t care about the human world, care about me. Don’t make me into what you need me to be.

Let me go. Let your brothers go.

Live.

—FROM THE NOTES OF DR. SHANTI CALE, JANUARY 2028

I did nothing to deserve this. I was a good wife. I was a better mother. I raised my girls with a sense of right and wrong, and if Sally was a little wild and Joyce was a daddy’s girl, well, that was all right. They were still my children, and I loved them more than anything. Loving them was all that I was meant to do. Being a mother was everything I had ever wanted in my life. I could have been a mother forever.

I am still a mother. My body remembers the little girls it made, shaping them one bone at a time in the safe haven of my womb. My arms remember the babies that they held. I will always, always be a mother. But now my babies are dead, and I don’t know what I’m going to do without them. Alfred tries to tell me that there’s a chance for Joyce, but I’m too smart for that lie. I wish I weren’t. It would be easier on both of us if I could make myself believe him. But I can’t.

What is a mother who has buried both her daughters? What, if not alive too long?

—FROM THE DIARY OF GAIL MITCHELL, JANUARY 2028