The booze, though. Holy Merlin. A pull of the cider chucked a cherry bomb of bliss that fizzled as soon as the liquid left my tongue. I know I can spin excuses about how I use weed to expand my mind for work or to help me sleep, and that I can drink a little, but alcohol isn’t really my jam because it makes me too sick. If I lived here and could order a frosty pint of chemically induced euphoria at every bar on every street corner, I don’t know whether I’d have enough self-control not to drown.

One of the drones that buzzed behind Yusuf faltered, flickering to reveal a hint of gray concrete wall before another drone swooped in to pick up the slack.

“So do we stay here?” I asked, brain singing from my latest pull of cider.

“Yeah,” Yusuf said through a mouthful of mush that was supposed to be roasted mutton, according to Gwenhwyfar. “I think there’s a joust later.”

“No, I mean here here. Like, this Earth.”

“We’re safe. And look at this place. It’s incredible. I’ll see if Hassan will let me help with his research, and you can—”

“Become a traveling bard.”

“Sure. You’ve got the pipes for it.”

“And you’re fine with that?”

“Fine with us not going back home and Kaori dissecting you like some lab rat? Very fine.”

I kept a glug of cider on my tongue to give me something to do with my mouth as I tried to figure out what to say next. Because I’d maybe let him think that we fled from Kaori so she wouldn’t treat me as some test subject, instead of really leaving so she wouldn’t kill him to avoid some apocalypse.

SCENE: FIGUEIREDO’S OFFICE – MORNING

FIGUEIREDO (sitting at his desk, wearing NAREK’S therapist glasses)

See, a lie of omission is worse because you make the other person complicit in the deceit.

He’s right. I know in some not-insignificant way, I’m guilty of shattering Yusuf’s idea of his hero, which I didn’t let myself think about until then. Letting him think that she didn’t care about him at all, when really all she’s guilty of is not valuing his life over the entire human race. Like I do.

The cider fireworks fizzled out too soon, its bubbles souring my stomach. That, or the guilt. Yusuf didn’t lie, I tried to tell myself. Couldn’t lie, really, since he even said his brain didn’t work like that. But I wasn’t sure if he was letting himself think through the idea of staying here.

At least he was right about the joust.