Anne Holtzman sat with Claire Becker, their arms around each other, weeping.

Vindicated.

Vindicated, but their husbands weren’t coming back.

And they were still going to see John Stockton burn.

Levi knocked on the open office door, in his best suit, missing Abigail and Ada something fierce.

“Please have a seat, Reverend,” the secretary said, guiding him to a chair.

Levi sat, nervously.

A few minutes later the inner door opened, and an important looking man in a suit, a man he’d seen on TV, strode out, not even looking at Levi.

The secretary did look over, though. He smiled at Levi. “She’ll see you now, Reverend,” the young man said. “You can go right in.”

Levi stood, still nervous, and walked through the door, into the inner office, with its massive desk, and the famous woman behind it.

She stood, came around the desk, and took his hand.

“Reverend Levi,” she said, “I’m Barbara Engels. Thank you so much for coming. I understand you may be able to help me with questions of…” she paused, and then smiled. “Well, questions about my faith that I’m having right now.”

Levi smiled back. “Well, Senator,” he said. “I can sure try.”

“Well, it’s some progress,” Cheyenne said. “They’re rolling back the Nexus detectors. It’s a step in the right direction.”

Angel frowned. “Yeah, but the laws are still on the books. It’s still illegal to have it in your brain. Even though we all know most of the Congress has it in theirs.”

Tempest leaned back on two legs of her chair. “What if we could prove that most of Congress had Nexus in their brains?” she mused. “That most of them were actually using it, not just suffering through it? That would force some change, now wouldn’t it?”

The woman who called herself Kate stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon.

She’d needed to come here. Needed to get away from everything for a while. Needed to clear her head. Needed to mourn Breece. Mourn the Nigerian. Mourn Hiroshi properly.

Mourn the old her, the life she’d burned away.

She’d needed to purify herself. To be sure she was at peace with the things she’d done.

To be sure she wanted to take this next step.

A week of hiking, hiking down into the canyon, back up the steep and narrow trails that clung to its walls. Hiking where she could see the age of the planet, as clear as day; where she could see millions of years of history, written in broad stripes of rock and sediment along the sides of the canyon.

A place where you could glimpse the scale on which the universe operated.

A scale far bigger than the human.

A scale that dared humanity to think bigger. To lift its eyes. To reach for more.

And now Kate was certain.