Roland’s brain had reknit within about an hour of his injury. Manny had expected things to go back to normal then, or as normal as Roland ever was. But the post-human had been left with no clear memories of Manny, Sasha, or anything that had happened inside the Heavenly Kingdom. He remembered Mike’s name, and he talked frequently about a shack on the top of some mountain in Arizona, but that was it.

Manny tried not to dwell on it. Together, he, Mike, Topaz, and Tule started to walk toward the enormous modified strip-mining machine at the heart of Rolling Fuck. Mike put a hand on Manny’s shoulder and squeezed.

“Got some bad news for you, bud.”

“What?” Manny asked, hyper-vigilance spiking anxiety into his brain.

“Sasha left,” said Topaz, her voice as gentle as it ever got.

“What?” he asked. “Where? Back to the AmFed or…”

“No,” Mike replied. “She went with Jim, in that stupid aircraft of his. I think he offered her a job.”

“Is that bad?” Manny asked. He wasn’t sure how to feel. He’d wanted to get to know her better. But he’d also gotten the distinct impression she wouldn’t be happy in Rolling Fuck.

“Depends on your perspective,” Topaz said. “Jim can give her a lot of the things she might need right now. He’s also the worst person on earth.” She paused for a moment, then reconsidered.

“Okay, second worst.”

“You talking about Roland?” Manny asked.

“Fuck you,” she replied.

“Kid’s got a right to talk about him, Topes,” Mike said. “They went through a nightmare together.”

“Yeah,” Topaz said, looking up at Manny, “and now he’s left you alone with the shit you did together, while he wanders off into the desert to get wrecked, hasn’t he?”

Roland had, in fact, started his walk to Arizona about a day ago, laden down with several backpacks full of painkillers and psilocybin. He hadn’t bothered to say goodbye but, then again, he hadn’t remembered Manny at all.

“He can’t help it,” Manny told her. He’d been thinking about this a lot. “Roland warned me, before he went out there. He told me he couldn’t handle the guilt, the killing. He made it clear how much it fucked him up. And I still asked him to go anyway.”

“Sure,” Topaz said, her voice icy and sharp. “And you don’t have guilt over anything that happened out there? You think Mike and I don’t have blood on our hands?”

“Skullfucker Mike,” Mike gently insisted.

“We spent years fighting alongside Roland,” Topaz continued. “We shed a lot of blood together. He told us he’d always be there, to help us deal with whatever came after.”