I plucked the rings off the tray and tossed the empty thing into the sand. The tide would rise, soon enough, and pull it out to sea. In the moonlight, the rings in my hand glinted like stars.

When I padded through the sand and back to our campsite, Yusuf looked up from the book he was reading by the light of the fire and a nearby lantern. His eyes landed on the backpack full of my latest haul.

“Are those things we need?” he asked.

“All we need is each other.” I plopped down onto the air mattress and flashed him a goofy smile, still sizzling from all the gateways I’d opened. I’d be up all night, now. “Everything else is icing on the cake, right?”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“What? I just got some stuff to make this place a little more homey. No big deal.”

He pressed his lips into a hard line. “You’re being an asshole and that’s not you.”

His words doused cold water over me. His eyes yanked some plug deep in my gut, sending my insides spinning into a deep drain. I would’ve snapped at Narek about this, or Genesis. I would’ve cocked my how dare you and do you know what I’ve been through guns. But we both knew that Yusuf was right, because while he loved me he could also slip into his white lab coat and observe what I was really doing. And he must’ve known that he was the only thing keeping me from leaning into the pull of the machine and whatever it was that I was becoming.

“Huh,” I said, just a puff of air. “I’m sorry. And I appreciate you being no-bullshit with me.”

He tried to smile. I couldn’t sleep that night. I rolled off the air mattress and hid my pocketful of gold rings under a log in the fern forest. Because what the hell was I thinking? What, was I gonna ask him: Will you take this stolen ring and be my Subject B?

I thought that Yusuf yanking me back to myself fixed things, until he started going off on his own some mornings, beyond the quick trips to grab us coffee. Just to wander, alone, and I’d wait at home, holding my breath. When he came back it was like he shrank further into himself. Finally, we dropped back to the beach one day, and he walked off without a word. He ignored me as I called out to his back. I couldn’t run after him because I didn’t want to fight and wanted to give him space. And honestly, this had been coming for weeks.

He shrank to a speck, far down the pink sand. I made a fire at our camp and only started to worry come nightfall. At least the fire would draw him back here.

Hopefully.