Moments later, a three-dimensional representation of a timeline that I had been working on earlier was projected into the air, marking what I thought were the most mission-critical events.

“Whoa,” Zoe said, taking a step closer to the table and leaning her hands against it. She studied the lines and my handwritten notes, and then her eyes narrowed. “Why’d you start the timeline twenty-five years ago?” she asked, her head swiveling around to look at me.

“Two reasons,” I said. “First of all, because of something Alex told me before we first met Cali and everyone: that the number of accidental deaths in the Tower showed a five percent increase around that time period, and that it’s been steadily increasing since then. I know it seems strange, but I think it has something to do with the alien girl Roark’s wife met.”

“In what way?” Maddox asked, leaning forward. “I mean, someone popping by the Tower for a visit doesn’t immediately equal a higher death rate.”

“Except I think it does,” I said hurriedly. I had given this a lot of thought, and I was convinced that the visitor to the Tower had, for some reason, kicked things into overdrive for our mysterious legacy group. The timing was just too perfect for it to be unconnected. There was every possibility that I was wrong, but something about the way Roark talked about what had happened afterward—his wife disappearing, council members dying—made me suspect that a cover-up had been implemented. “Cornelius, can you add Head Farmer Raevyn Hart’s death to this timeline?” I asked.

“Searching,” he replied a moment later. I looked over my shoulder to where Quess and Leo were still hunched over my terminal, presumably going over Cornelius’s code with a fine-toothed comb, and was pleased that they hadn’t taken him offline to do it. I didn’t want to delay this conversation while we waited for him to come back online.

“What does the death of my department’s previous leader have to do with anything?” asked Eric, his dark eyes meeting my own.

“She was one of two councilors who reportedly met with the alien girl that day, along with two Knights,” I explained. “The other was Devon Alexander. They wound up taking the girl to a Medic station where Roark’s wife, Selka, was working. Selka was taken from their home some time later, when they were trying to plan their escape, and was never heard from again. Roark assumed she was dead, and I think he was right.”

It seemed so obvious to me now—they must have killed her to keep the alien girl’s existence a secret. They couldn’t risk the citizens of the Tower learning that there was life beyond the Wastes. They might want to leave.

“Head Farmer Raevyn Hart’s death, ma’am,” Cornelius interrupted while I was taking a breath. “Will there be anything else?”

I paused when I saw Raevyn’s name added to the timeline, the date marked right at the start of it, just past where I had written “visitor”. I looked at it, and then took a shot in the dark. “Yes, I’m also looking for the recorded death of a Medic by the name of Selka, married to another Medic named Roark—last names unknown to me, but it would have been within weeks or months of Raevyn’s.”

“Searching.”

“That seems like a bit of a leap, Liana,” Maddox said doubtfully. “I still don’t see the connection. Are you sure you’re not just… trying to manufacture something?”

I stared at her for a long moment and then sighed. I knew it seemed half baked, but I was following my gut on this and trying to piece together an explanation for what was going on. She had a point, but in my mind, Raevyn’s death had happened too early—too close to when this all started—for it to be coincidence. I wasn’t sure what had made her a target, but whatever it was, I was going to figure it out.

“You may be right, but just hear me out. I think that all these things are actually related, once you consider who is behind them.”

Her black eyebrows drew together, forming a tight line over the bridge of her nose, and she wore a pensive expression for a moment or two. “Okay,” she said, drawing it out. “I’m gonna need more than that.”

“Then give me a second to explain,” I said, trying not to let my exasperation show. “Cornelius, any luck?”

“There’s no death record for anyone matching the first name Selka,” Cornelius replied. “Perhaps the individual is still alive?”

“Or Liana’s right and they didn’t want a death record for her,” Leo said casually from behind me. “Maybe you could use her personnel records? Are you sure you don’t remember her surname?”

I considered his question for a second, and realized that I did have the date of Roark’s death. I quickly asked Cornelius to run another search, hoping it would lead to his surname, but was unsurprised when Cornelius replied with a, “No searches match your query.”

Even though I wasn’t surprised by his response as it had been a long shot to assume that Devon had even reported him dead, I was still aggravated that I had never asked Roark’s surname—not once in the entire time I had spent with him and Grey. I crossed my arms and rocked back on my heels. Grey would know it, but he wasn’t in a position to remember much at the moment.

“No,” I said with a weary sigh. “Roark never told me. Only Grey knows.”

I swiveled around to look at Leo, and saw him wearing a small, pensive frown. “I’ve only just started repairing Grey’s memories, but what I’m working on is mostly his childhood. Those neural pathways are the most important to restoring his personality as you knew it. If you want to know the name of the piglet he grew attached to when he was young, I can help you. But anything from his older years is beyond his or my abilities at this time.”

“Grey was attached to a piglet?” Tian asked, leaning forward. “That’s so cute!”

Leo gave her a sad smile, but when he met my gaze, I saw darkness there, and I knew that at some point or another, Grey’s parents had likely forced him to kill the poor creature. The idea was to indoctrinate children to the harsh realities of the Tower, but my heart broke for him a little bit right there.

For him and for Leo both.

“The piglet was indeed very cute,” Leo informed Tian softly. “The fact remains that I cannot rush this process. I don’t know Roark’s last name.”

That sucked, but it was okay. I had other things that would add to the timeline. I was resolved to find out what had happened to Selka and Raevyn, somehow—but now wasn’t the time.

“Don’t worry about it right now,” I said. “There are other things that factor in. Like the date when Scipio passed the law that condemned anyone who fell to a rank of one to the expulsion chambers. Cornelius, can you show the date when that law passed?”

It came up, and I felt a grim sense of satisfaction. It had happened almost exactly a week after Raevyn’s death, when Head Farmer Plancett had been elected. “That’s not a coincidence,” I said, already wondering if that election had been tampered with like the Tourney had been. If that were the case, there was every chance that Plancett had been working with the enemy and was still doing so now—he was still the current leader of the Hands. I opened my mouth to add that speculation, but decided to hold it back, worried that it might be too much for them to swallow.

It was already a lot.

“But that’s not evidence, either,” Zoe replied carefully. I looked over at her, surprised by the fact that she couldn’t see the connections like I could. The people we were up against had more than proven that they were capable of a cover-up, given that they’d never even been caught. The connections existed purely in the events themselves, the things they had changed, the ways events had happened. “It is suspicious,” she added as soon as my eyes hit hers. “But there’s no evidence, and her death is attributed to... Cornelius, help me out?”

“A heart attack,” he replied a moment later, and she gave me a look with a raised eyebrow that said “beat that”.

I stared at her and then shrugged. “Look, you and I both know that a heart attack can be medically induced and easily covered up, and the legacy group we’re after is good at that! They certainly proved it with the Tourney. But I’m certain about this—I think they escalated their plans for the Tower after the visitor came.”

And I thought they did it because they wanted to get as much control as possible to make sure that no one else left. Why, I didn’t know—but I was going to find out.

“Escalated?” Zoe asked, looking up at me. “You mean they didn’t just start getting control a few years ago—that they’ve been working on it for centuries? I thought Lionel said that it would take centuries for them to even get into the Core in that vid we watched!”

She was talking about the vid where Ezekial Pine had murdered Lionel, and they’d been talking about a terrorist cell called Prometheus—the progenitors of the legacies—who didn’t believe an AI should control humanity’s destiny. During the conversation leading up to the attack, Lionel had admitted that it would take centuries for Prometheus to hack into Scipio, but I figured he’d been wrong. It hadn’t taken the legacies all that time to break in—it had taken them that long to break apart what he had created so they could slowly tighten up the reins of control. They didn’t have it completely yet, but I felt certain that they would, soon, if we didn’t do anything.

“I think they were slowly gaining control in the background long before that point,” I replied. “Remember what Leo said about the ranking systems never being meant to last? That they were only supposed to monitor the people who survived the End, and a few generations afterward, for depression or suicide?”

“Yeah, Lionel didn’t want people hurting themselves because they couldn’t cope with what they had lost,” Zoe shot back, a slight irritation in her voice. “But what does that have to do with this?”

I realized that I was frustrating her with all of this supposition. I could only imagine what I looked like: a girl in the depths of sorrow trying to make connections between things without any evidence.

And the problem was that there probably wouldn’t be any evidence. The lack of Selka’s death record proved that. The people who were behind this knew how to cover their tracks. They’d been doing so for who knew how many decades, if not centuries. So there wouldn’t be evidence, not like Zoe wanted.

But half of what I was extrapolating was based on what I believed their goal to be: absolute mastery over Scipio and the citizens of the Tower so that they could run things as they saw fit, and not based on Scipio’s advice. If that were the case, they would need ways to exert their control, and the ranking system fit into that perfectly. They’d done it intelligently as well, first by making the rankings visible through the indicators around our wrists, and then by spreading fear by villainizing those who dropped too low on the spectrum, accusing them of shirking their duties to Scipio.

Every step was a slow tightening of the noose that had become an ingrained part of our society. We’d become accustomed to it. Started to accept it. Even play into it. And it had made us their puppets, giving them absolute control of our lives.

“There’s an easy way to check to see if Liana’s right,” Leo said, and I turned to see him coming down the stairs toward us, Quess right behind him.

I arched an eyebrow at Quess, and he gave me a nod and a thumbs up, indicating that Cornelius was clean. Relieved that I could cross at least one thing off my worry list, I turned back to Leo, who was moving to stand next to me. “How do you propose we do that?”

“We check the council records for the incident in question. If you’re right, Liana, then the two Knights who were there would also have died, probably in some sort of accident.”

I closed my eyes, feeling like an idiot for not having figured that out sooner. I was a councilor now, which meant I had access to those records. “Cornelius, run a search on any instance of a person coming to the Tower involving Raevyn Hart, Devon Alexander, and a Medic named Selka twenty-five years ago.”

“Searching.”

I waited, my breath caught in my throat, hopeful. I knew this was a leap, but anything I could find out about that day could go a long way toward explaining why things had suddenly seemed to escalate. If I could figure that out, then it would be a piece—something that I could maybe use to find out who was behind it.

“There are no records that match your inquiry,” he said a moment later, and I frowned.

Was it possible that Roark had been wrong this entire time? Could it have all been a story? If that was the case, then my entire assumption that the visitor changed something for the legacy group fell apart, and I had just wasted everyone’s time.

“Cornelius, is it possible that there are sealed records that Liana cannot access?” Leo asked, and I looked back up, hope rekindled. It was a good question, one that I hadn’t thought of but which made total sense. Of course the record of a visitor would be sealed. The council would never want that information getting out, no matter what side of the legacy war they were on.

“Yes. There have been times when the council records have been sealed to prevent later councilors from accessing them, classified as need to know.”

“How would I go about getting them?” I asked, excited all over again. There had to be a way, a precedent that would allow access to them after the fact.

“You would have to petition the council and give adequate reason regarding what you hope to achieve or prove with such information. Scipio will make his recommendation, and they will vote accordingly based on that.”

Well, that was not going to work. Whoever our enemy was had direct access to the council, whether it was because they were on it, or were working with someone who was on it, I did not know. But if I began poking around that incident, it would draw attention—something I was trying to avoid.

“I’ll look into it,” Leo said, offering me a little smile that softened the serious lines of his face.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely. I looked back at the timeline and sighed. On to the next matter at hand. “Astrid is sending over her notes—”

“Has sent, ma’am,” Cornelius interjected, and I took a second to absorb that before continuing. She had gotten those to me fast, which I really appreciated, and I made a mental note to thank her for that.

“And findings about Ambrose’s investigation,” I concluded. “But I think it might be a good idea to go even farther back than that to try to find these individuals. Quess, do you remember when we broke into the Medica to get Maddox out?”

“You mean the day we killed Devon Alexander?” Quess asked, stepping closer to the table. “Yeah. Literally one of the most terrifying moments of my life. Who can forget it. Why?”

“Remember that he was meeting with those Inquisition agents?” I asked. I hoped he did, because I was fairly certain those two were the ones we needed to focus on. Given the conversation they had been having with Devon at the time, they were legacies, and clearly had intimate knowledge of who was in charge. They—Baldy and Plain-Face, as I had named them—had been in the room and fought with us, meaning that they probably went into hiding shortly after to keep from being questioned too closely, but enough time had passed without anyone coming for them that they had to think the coast was clear. We had a better chance of finding them than the people who murdered Ambrose, because odds were they were still in hiding, and would be for a while.

But if we could find Baldy or Plain-Face, well, then that would be a step toward something. The only problem was how to do it. The legacy group had proven to be adept at creating fake nets that allowed them to avoid detection by the scanners. They had to have nets, or the thermal sensors would pick their body heat up and send out an undoc alert, but if the nets had been fabricated…

The only method we had left for tracking them was through facial recognition software. They had to be somewhere, and we knew for a fact they were working for the legacy group with which Devon was allied, which might be the same group that had infiltrated the Tourney.

If we could locate them, and they could tell us where the infiltrators were hiding, we could turn them over to Lacey—and then I could get the name of the person in charge, and finally put an end to all of this.

“Yeah, sure,” Quess said. “Why?”

“I think we should run a facial recognition search on them,” I said. “They would’ve been lying low since the Medica, but with everything that’s happened with the Tourney, they might assume that people have forgotten about what happened there. Maybe they’ll be moving around freely. We’ve got to try. We should also pass their pictures on to Dinah, to see if she can find out who they are.”

“We’d need the video of the attack, Liana,” Maddox said, folding her arms across her chest. “Do you have that?”

“We should,” I replied. “It would’ve been part of the investigation for my trial. Cornelius, pull up the vid file from the Medica that shows the death of Devon Alexander.”

“Searching.” Another long pause, followed by, “There are no records that match your inquiry.”

“What?” I said, frowning. “How is that possible?”

“No formal request was ever made to the Medica to turn over the vid files, and they did not voluntarily submit them,” Cornelius replied. “If you wish, I can submit a request on your behalf to Chief Surgeon Sage.”

I considered the question. We needed that vid file if we were going to track down Baldy and Plain-Face, but asking for it might have the same repercussions as trying to get the council to unseal the record of the alien girl in the Tower. Going to Sage was risky, especially now that I knew he was upset about me having the shockers in the final challenge of the Tourney. But then again, I might not have any choice.

“Ma’am, I would also like to remind you that your appointment in the Medica is in fifteen minutes. Would you like me to reschedule?”

“Yes,” I said reluctantly. I really wanted to get the neural transmitter installed, but we had more left to talk about here. “Let’s just set it up for tomorrow after the council meeting.”

“I will send them an update.”

“You’re going to the Medica?” Zoe asked curiously. “What for?”

“To get the special mouth-free talking device,” I said tiredly.

“Oh,” she said, looking vaguely disappointed. “That’s too bad… I was kind of hoping you were going to maybe talk to someone about what happened.”

My forehead wrinkled in surprise, and suddenly I felt very defensive. But I pushed it aside, recognizing it as a knee-jerk response to my childish behavior. “I’m not ready yet,” I told her. “But I’m coping.”

Zoe gave me a doubtful look. “I’m not sure I believe that, Liana. You haven’t exactly been ‘coping’ the last few days. We were barely able to get a word out of you, or food into you. You were positively lifeless. So yeah… was kinda hoping that if you weren’t talking to us, you were at least talking to someone else.”

I shifted my shoulders and looked away. She had a point, and I could understand why she didn’t believe me. I hadn’t exactly kept it together over the last few days, and she just wanted to make sure I was taking care of myself. Still, her implication that I would go to the Medica for this was a bit comical. The doctors there would barely care about someone who came in grieving, would prescribe a fistful of drugs, and call it a day. Talking things out was only reserved for special cases, where they’d almost died. I hadn’t, so I was expected to just be all right.

I was suddenly reminded of Dr. Bordeaux, the man my parents had sent me to after my rank had dropped to three. He had given me pills to help my rank improve, but they’d sucked everything about my individuality right out, leaving some sort of mindless automaton blindly devoted to the Tower. I had hated it. Just like I had hated the appointment with Dr. Bordeaux.

The only good thing to come out of that was meeting Jasper, and that had been…

I stopped myself mid-thought and played it back in my head, making sure I had gotten it right. As soon as I confirmed it, I felt the urge to smile coming across my lips. If I could just get an appointment with Dr. Bordeaux, then maybe I could ask him a few questions about Jasper and see what he knew. Maybe he’d let something slip about why the council had put Jasper in the Medica in the first place, and who the driving force had been. I had dozens of questions, and this could be a way of getting them answered.

“All right,” I said. “Cornelius, contact the Medica and make a special request for Dr. Bordeaux to be my physician.”

Zoe wrinkled her nose. “Isn’t that the guy who gave you the drugs that turned you into a rank-obsessed idiot?”

“He is,” I said. “Now, not to rush things, but we have other things we need to hash out.”

“I agree,” said Maddox. “Because what I really want to know is what we’re doing about getting the heck out of here. That is still the plan, right?”

“Of course it is,” Zoe said before I could formulate a response. “But you know Lacey wants us to find Ambrose’s murderers, and if we aren’t working toward that, she’s going to find out and have Liana and Leo arrested!”

Sullen silence met her remark, telling us that it had hit home, but I ignored it, pressing onward. “The way I see it is we have two ultimate goals,” I said carefully. “Both of them equally important. One is getting Jasper out of Sadie’s hands. I have no idea where Sadie stands, but if she is with the legacies, then we have to get him out, or else risk him winding up like Jang-Mi. He’s a priority.” I paused and let that sink in for a second, and then continued. “We also need to track down the people who killed Ambrose and my mother. To that end, I suggest we divide and conquer. Maddox, I’m putting you in charge of hunting down the legacies. Work on finding the legacies we know, like Baldy and Plain-Face. Quess, you’re going to be helping both of us out where we need you.”

“Does that mean I’m getting a special promotion?” Quess asked, his eyebrows waggling. “Because I would just like to point out that as a lowly Squire, I have no authority whatsoever.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’ve got to finish the tests, but yes, you’ll be promoted. We’ll talk official titles later.”

“We’ll do it now because it’s simple,” Quess said with a cocky smile. “I’m your new head of the Citadel’s internal server police.”

I thought about it for a second, and then nodded. It was the perfect position for him, even if it was one he had just made up, because it was something the department desperately needed, given how easily our security systems had been overcome by the infiltrators. With him in charge of the few tech-savvy Knights we had, we’d be able to beef up our cyber-security. He could also help us in other ways, like developing algorithms that would help the Knights locate people faster, while secretly searching for our own mysterious enemies. It was a double win.

“What about me?” Maddox asked. “How exactly am I supposed to hunt the legacies down without any resources?”

I smiled for what felt like the first time, pleased to share this particular decision with her. “I already informed Astrid that you’re my new Lieutenant,” I told her.

Her green eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “You want me?” she asked, incredulous. “After everything from before?”

“Absolutely,” I told her in all seriousness. “You’re perfect for the position. It’s kind of in your blood.”

She flushed with pleasure as I compared her with her mother, Camilla Kerrin, who had been Devon Alexander’s Lieutenant before Zale.

“I don’t know what to say,” she managed thickly. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” I said. “You earned it.”

She continued to smile, clearly happy at my decision, and I felt a shadow of warmth slide through my ever-present grief. Fleeting though it was, it was a victory that proved that the tattered remains of my heart wouldn’t always be broken. I’d heal.

It would just take time.

Leo cleared his throat softly, and I looked at him. “Does that mean I’m going to be looking into recovering Jasper?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, remembering that I hadn’t finished handing out orders. I took a moment or two to ground myself, and then continued. “You and Zoe both. I want you looking for a way to hack into Sadie’s terminal remotely. I’d like to avoid entering if possible, but if we can’t avoid it, then Zoe will need to get hold of some blueprints of the Core to see if we can figure out where her quarters are. I don’t expect them to be obvious, but hopefully Zoe can figure out where they are in spite of that.”

“Zoe hopes she can, too,” she said. “But yeah, I’ll get on the Cog server and see what I can find.”

“Actually, you might not have to do that,” Leo said lightly. “I’m already quite confident I can breach their defenses.”

“Really? How?” I asked, unable to stop myself.

“By sending an AI to do it,” he said excitedly. “The terminal in which Cornelius is housed is the same size as the one in Lionel’s office, which means it has plenty of room for an AI to fit inside comfortably.”

“You want to download yourself into my terminal?” I asked, unable to help myself. The idea seemed shocking for multiple reasons, but mostly because he was talking about leaving Grey before he was finished healing. Would that hurt him?

“Not exactly,” he replied carefully. “If you’ll permit me to, I’ll download Jang-Mi from the hard drive onto the—”

“No,” I said, a hot flash of blinding anger followed by a cold chill of fear pouring over me like a waterfall. I didn’t want Jang-Mi anywhere but in her own hard drive. She was crazy, and… oh yeah… she killed my mother. She may not have wanted to, but she had, and I hated her for it. I didn’t want her presence in my new home. I didn’t even want her alive.

I tried to swallow it back, fumbling to remind myself that it wasn’t her fault. There were people who had turned her into what she was and then pointed her toward us.

But it didn’t matter. The fact that she had personally robbed us of any chance for further reconciliation boiled inside of me, and I couldn’t seem to stop hating her for it.

Leo looked at me expectantly, and I realized he was waiting for some sort of explanation as to why, and quickly found one. “There are automated defenses and weapons in here that she could hypothetically access if you put her in that terminal.”

I was surprised at how reasonable that all sounded considering my heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I was certain I could taste blood in my mouth… but then looked at Leo to see what his reaction would be.

“I can create a firewall that will prevent that from happening,” he said simply. “But getting her into the terminal is necessary. If I can get her to help me, then she can just go in and get Jasper for us.”

I pressed my lips together. I recognized he was making a good point, and one that was far safer than the idea of actually going to Sadie Monroe’s office to get the other AI, but I couldn’t seem to make myself say that. All I knew was that Jang-Mi had to stay in that hard drive. She was too unstable, and I wasn’t about to risk my friends against the defenses in my new home if Jang-Mi up and decided to murder everyone.

I convinced myself that was the one and only reason that I was refusing, even though I knew it was a lie. Knew that a small, twisted part of me was supremely gleeful at the prospect of keeping her trapped on the hard drive forever as a punishment for what she had taken from me. And that I was letting that feeling win.

“I’m not risking it,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. I’m not losing anyone else to that thing.”

“Liana!” Tian gasped, sitting forward. “Jang-Mi’s not a thing!”

I almost said something snarky, but caught myself just in time. Tian was attached to Jang-Mi, thanks to her time as a prisoner of the deranged AI fragment, and way more forgiving than I could be at this moment. “You’re right, Tian,” I said, the words leaving an acrid taste on my tongue. “I’m sorry, but the fact remains that you’ll have to find somewhere else to put Jang-Mi. She’s not going in the terminal.” The last part I directed at Leo, and hated myself for doing it. But I also couldn’t seem to stop or change my feelings about this, at all.

His brown eyes grew hard, and his jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything. He just nodded. I looked around the room and sighed. It seemed I still had a long way to go before I was all right, but I could work on this Jang-Mi thing. I just needed more time to get comfortable with the idea that she wasn’t to blame.

“All right, gang, let’s go ahead and get settled in. Feel free to use anything you want in here—I’m giving you full permissions—and I’ll see you guys in the morning.”

“The morning?” Zoe asked, looking up. “Where will you be?”

“Well, before she goes anywhere,” Quess interjected before I could formulate my response, “she’s going to sit down and let me change out her net with Lacey’s legacy net.” At my surprised look, he smiled sadly. “I had some time to work on it, and with Leo’s help, we figured out how she was preventing you from retaining certain memories. It should be fixed now, but the only way to know is to put it back in and see how it works. I can do it now.”

I realized he was talking about the time after my mother had died, and had a moment of sadness of my own, but pushed it aside, focusing on what he was saying. Of course I wanted him to, but I worried about someone discovering it when I went in tomorrow. “I have to go to the Medica for the transmitter,” I said. “Won’t they notice?”

He frowned. “Hey, Cornelius. Where does a neural transmitter get placed?”

“In the temple,” the computer replied a heartbeat later.

Quess grinned. “Then you should be fine. They’d have to cut it out to notice that it was different. So… do you want it now, or would you rather wait?”

I smiled—I definitely wanted him to do it now. There was important information about this legacy war on it, and I needed every bit of information I could get. Lacey was hiding something, and I was betting something on here revealed what that was. “Absolutely,” I told him, turning around and moving my hair away from my neck. “I’m ready.”

Quess chuckled, and I heard him rustle around behind me, while Zoe came around to face me. “Okay… but what about after that?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. “What are you going to do all day?”

“I’ll be in my room,” I replied, my elation quickly transforming into exhaustion at the fact that I still wasn’t done, yet I felt good that I could at least distract myself with something germane. “I have to get ready for my council meeting tomorrow.”