53 pages • 1 hour read
Patrick NessA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Despite having recovered his memories, Seth can’t untangle them or make sense of them yet. Regine and Tomasz agree to help him find his brother. They inform him that a blue light has started blinking under the skin of his neck. Tomasz then gets upset about Regine and Seth lying to him and treating him like a child. When Seth goes to comfort him, he accidentally touches the protrusion on Tomasz’s neck, which triggers a dream sequence.
Content Warning: This chapter discusses mass death and Tomasz’s murder.
Seth witnesses the memory of Tomasz’s death from the young boy’s point of view. Tomasz’s last moments are with his mother after they crossed the Polish border, which is suggested to be closed due to political collapse triggered by climate change. Tomasz and his mother wait for someone to unlock the room where they and other smuggled immigrants are waiting. The man who finally opens the door shoots them because they could not pay him more money.
Tomasz is horrified that Seth invaded his privacy. Seth apologizes, and eventually confesses that he died by suicide. Tomasz then shares more of his story, and Seth guesses that he and his mother reached England before they died, which is why the young boy’s coffin was at the prison.
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