“It’s crass, is what it is,” the lone woman in the group finished for him. Of the three people on the panel, she went in the hardest on Kaori. Pushing to the front of the crowd to light the stake and burn the witch herself. “Someone has to stop this.”

*   *   *

The white walls of my room hugged me close. The hieroglyphics from Yusuf’s latest tutoring session still filled the window in my room, so electron shells danced in the red desert when I looked outside. He was tied up for weeks and I was trapped here in this shrinking cell. Normally, I wouldn’t care. Even when I was with Narek, I had my own separate life, with my own friends and work. I’d been ready to barricade myself in a cabin in the woods for weeks, after all, before all of this. I’d had my doc about Genesis to work on. At least that I could control, cutting and re-playing the bits of her story. My antsy fingers brushed off the footage on my laptop, trying to find some sense that I could weave with those scenes.

But looking at what I’d filmed slid something sharp and cold between my ribs. I still didn’t know how to feel about her now that she was gone, if she really did end her own life and leave me alone. Which pummeled me because just seeing her face used to light me up, because she was my heart walking around on two legs. Her face might’ve been mostly flat gray planes, but I could read her better than anyone else as we’d trawled vintage shops for her first drag show.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt more like a person,” she’d said, looking in the mirror of the curtained dressing room while I zipped up her sequined cocktail dress. Her voice had trembled just a little. She’d smoothed her hands down the gold glimmers at her waist, straightening out a wrinkle in the fabric, and had tucked a stray honey curl of her wig behind her ear.

I’d tipped my head to survey her in the mirror, knowing I had to brighten the mood or else this shopping trip to distract her from another legal synth loss would go down in flames.

“Yeah, but do we really think you’re a blonde?” I’d asked. “I was thinking more, like, recently divorced redheaded vamp having a night on the town with her girls.”

“Oh, honey.” She’d snapped to attention. “I’m so there. Get me that red human-hair number by the front window. And the highest goddamned rhinestoned heels you can find. Stat.”