And then Izabel did survive when her mother didn’t. So she started fighting herself and those simple instincts. Now she was stuck, not selfish, and not good at surviving either.

She went to the privacy pods in the mall next. They were windowless and soundproof. Sometimes the people who worked at the mall used them for naps. But Izabel used them to scream and yell and curse and dance and be alone, as an adult, totally alone.

She signed up for an hour with the man managing the pods. His nametag read sasha. Then she sat down to wait for one to open up. There was one other person in the waiting room with her. He had a briefcase by his feet.

“Getting work done?” Izabel said.

“Yes,” he said. “You?”

“Oh, no. Just . . . need some time.”

“Everything okay?”

Izabel tried to hide it, but she looked him over. She couldn’t tell if he was being genuine. He had nice shoes. He was showered. His clothes fit him. This put her at ease for some reason.

“Sorry,” he said. “I think that was, umm, sort of knee-jerk. Not taking into consideration that we don’t know each other.” He laughed a little.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m Izabel.”

“Patrick,” he said. They shook hands.

“Patrick,” Sasha said.

Patrick got up, grabbing his briefcase. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

“You, too,” she said.

Shuffling by them all, leaving a pod, went a man who had been crying.

In the privacy pod, Izabel was finally ready to read today’s actual news. The family that had been murdered last night had been identified. The news had photos, again, of each person smiling. This time a married couple, Talia and Miriam Berenson, and their son, Rey, and Talia’s mother, Floss. Three generations.

Izabel was sure she recognized Floss from her days in quarantine at the hospital. Was the family really so lucky, she thought, to have survived in different places and be reunited? Had they been so lucky, only to be killed, ten years later, at random like this?

She put the tablet back down. At a small desk, there were pens and paper. And a shredder to shred the paper, too. It was part of the delivery on privacy—something you could write and the cloud would not store.

She sat down and started writing.

Dear Killer,

I want to put you in a shiny electric car and program it to go to the Arctic. To charge itself when it needs to, but stay locked. I’ll put food and water in there, and enough air filters for you to keep changing them. But not your mask. And maybe once you’re in the Arctic, maybe you can breathe the air without anything on your face. You can let your cheeks and chin and lips get wind-chapped. You can beg for your mask. I can’t have you here anymore. Near my house.