He thought about his own Echoes. About Emil--about Hamel, and how nothing he knew about their situation made any sense. As adults, they traveled together as members of the same team. And as a child, Hamel had brutally murdered his parents and what looked like the entire population of a small town.

Something dark flickered across Russel's face at the memory, a brief shadow of the unpleasantness of remembering someone he loved dying in front of him, but it was gone as quickly as it came.

"The things we remember don't always make a lot of sense," he told her. "I feel like there's a hole in mine too, that would explain a lot of things if I just had that one piece of the puzzle to put into place, you know?" Like why he was traveling with his parents' killer and why he let him treat him so poorly.

"We might never get that piece, though. There's so much in a lifetime to remember, and that pivotal moment is just a single moment in a lifetime of millions for your Echoes to choose from.

"So I guess the question you need to ask yourself is, would it change anything if you knew?" He looked her in the eye with that question, not challenging her, but asking her to challenge herself.

He didn't know the answer to that question for himself, yet.