THE SUN STILL hadn’t risen. Maybe it never would. Maybe the sky was sick of these endless costume changes: Casting off cloak after cloak, but never revealing what it wore under all those cloaks. Patricia climbed the tall staircase to the top of the hill, stumbling on the cement steps. Nearby, a hawk swung past, making its last hunt of the night, and it glanced at Patricia and said, “Too late, too late!” Which was what birds kept saying to her these days. She clomped to the top of the staircase and staggered across Portola to reach the brink of Market, looking out over the whole city and the bay, all the way to Oakland. She dug in her satchel for a tiny bag of Corn Nuts, crushed to greasy powder, and the dregs of a 5-hour ENERGY drink. She hoped the sun wouldn’t come up. When it did, she was going to report in to Carmen and tell her that they had pissed off some people with nearly limitless wealth, arcane superscience, and nothing to lose. That conversation would lead to Carmen making some decisions, some of which Patricia would have to implement personally. Those, in turn, would lead to more consequences, and more decisions.

Oakland glowed pink. Patricia could glimpse a panic attack coming out of her blind spot, but as long as she didn’t look at it directly, it would never arrive. Except that just as she hatched that notion, her bag made a loud klaxon blast, like she was in a submarine that was venting water. She jumped up and nearly took a spill over the railing. The alarm was her Caddy, which was displaying a “New Voicemail” message at the center of its swirl of spokes. The voicemail was not new, it was one that Laurence had left her right before the attack on Denver, which she had later found and deleted without listening to it. He had left it on her phone, not her Caddy, so her Caddy shouldn’t even have it. She put the Caddy back in her bag and watched the red blanket creep toward the AT-AT shipyard, while an orange thumbprint grazed the horizon. The alarm sounded again: “New Voicemail.” Once again, not a new voicemail. She deleted it a second time and turned her Caddy off for good measure.

Color returned to the world, cone time replaced rod time. Patricia thought about what it would be like to suffer Priya’s fate forever. She tried not to feel sorry for Theodolphus. She thought about Dorothea, getting her brains blown out. Her mouth tasted foul.

Her bag vibrated, then rattled and shrilled. The Caddy had turned back on somehow and was, you guessed it, trying to get her to listen to an old dead message.

“What is up with you?” she said to the device.

“You’re going to want to listen to this,” it said aloud, in its directions-to-the-airport voice.

She deleted the message again.