Not that there weren’t tragedies here, without guns. A man died in a car once, when the first version of the filtration system jammed. And he wasn’t found for hours. Not until the cars were called back to the porting station to be cleaned and charged for the next day. The person who oversaw the cars being run through the car wash—they saw the body as the yellow was rinsed away.

In all of Izabel’s old imaginings of violent incidents, she was rushing to put pressure on a bullet wound on her mother’s body. They weren’t like the way she failed to save her mother in real life.

Lots of people told her that she hadn’t failed her mother at all. That she rushed her to the hospital and they did everything they could do for her for days, and she died like almost everyone died.

But Izabel took the blame where she could.

On the news, they showed a map of the killings, with four red dots over each destroyed house. They had guests on, commenting on possible patterns, possible distances that could be covered on foot, given certain suits. They kept trying to get Inspector Paz on the show, but she never came on. They would note it at the end of the show. “After many attempts to contact Inspector Paz, she declined to comment.”

When Izabel was out, she overheard conversations about the killer sometimes. But more often people were talking about a book they read on their tablet, or how often they swept their kitchens, washed their sheets. Izabel felt uncomfortable at surprising times, like ordering lunch—having a full conversation over a counter with another adult and never mentioning the killings.

This wasn’t a completely new feeling. She remembered it from when the town began. When she walked through the mall with a water ice and no one said, “How weird is this!” She wanted to yell it out, if no one else would, “Is this real!” or “I’m eating water ice!” But she didn’t. It was as if everything in the world was saying, Continue, continue. Hush, hush.

Izabel took Cami to the mall after her school day. She asked her, “You still don’t remember what you dreamt about last night?”

Cami shook her head.

“Did you have a good day at school?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there anything you want to talk to me about?”

“No.”

“Okay then,” Izabel said.

She put Cami into the free daycare and went to the privacy pods. She still felt sick at the death of six more Calandrias of the world, when there were hardly any Calandrias left. And she felt more sick when she thought about how Cami knew somehow, in her sleep, that they had died.

In the pod, Izabel began to write.

Dear Killer,