“It makes sense. I’ve seen other Knights or Pawns in the Ratel suddenly change personality completely. They wouldn’t seem to know me, even if we’d spoken the day before. Think how dangerous that makes this drug.”

“Whether it’s in the hands of the Ratel or the government.”

“Exactly.”

“So you think … the Ratel overwrote Adam’s personality, and made him Vuk?”

“Yes. I do.”

“What does this mean for us?”

“It means we stick to our original plan for the SFPD. It’s all we can do.”

“If we take the Ratel down, though, then the government will have Verve.”

“Yes.” He doesn’t look happy about it.

“There is no good and evil in this scenario, is there? There’s only bad and worse.”

We keep walking through the streets for hours. At some point, Nazarin’s warm and callused hand takes my own. I don’t pull away.

15. Tila

FIFTEEN

TILA

I feel sorry for those still left in the Hearth.

I’ve tried to put the Hearth behind me and to forget as much as possible. But I don’t think I can ever forget. Not completely. All those people, following Mana-ma’s rules set out in the Good Book, listening to her sermons, their voices rising up in song. Did they really think that by following those rules they’d achieve salvation, and have their pick of next lives in the Cycle?

I never knew how many people were actually happy there, and how many people were just pretending. How many knew the truth of Mana-ma?

Mardel discovered it, in the end. True enough, he stopped drinking alcohol. The problem was, he also stopped drinking everything else.

No one noticed right away. I heard my father comment that Mardel looked weak and wasn’t able to pull his weight in the fields, but he put it down to alcohol withdrawal. By the third day, Mardel was badly dehydrated. They tried to make him drink water, but he’d start shaking and spit it out. They managed to force some down him. We tried another Meditation, urging him to drink water rather than alcohol. It didn’t quite take, not like the first time. Perhaps our fear lowered efficacy. He lingered a few more days. Then he died.

Mana-ma found a way to spin it. God had simply called him home. I saw it for what it was: a failed experiment. Would she try to change us again in Meditation, and if so, who would she choose next? Would it go wrong?

I didn’t want to stick around to find out.

My parents were from San Francisco. They’d joined as idealistic teens and I think, somewhere over the next twenty-odd years, they realized they had made a mistake.