I go back to the kitchen. I bring up my contacts list on my ocular implants, scrolling through the names. I want to speak to someone, though I don’t think I can share anything about what’s happened. My gaze pauses on a few exes—David, Simone, Amrit. I used to be so close to them. I almost married David, but then I realized he didn’t know how to love and could only keep people at arm’s length. Now I have no idea what they are doing. There are no friends I want to tell—most are colleagues. Tila’s the one with all the friends. I’m slower to trust and, perhaps like David, I never truly let anyone in. Normally it’s Tila I’d turn to, and I can’t turn to her now.

I send the names away. I still want to believe this has been some big misunderstanding. I can’t pretend, now that I’ve found that note.

“Tila, what have you done?” I ask the empty room. There, alone in the dark, I realize another lie I told myself.

I’m far less than ninety-nine percent sure she didn’t do it.

*   *   *

I lie awake all night, trying to piece together everything Tila has told me in the last few weeks; but if she’s given me any hints, they don’t jump out at me. After I finally stumble from my bed, I’m too tired to even yawn. I project the news from my implants directly onto the white table as I drink coffee, and then I set the coffee down.

There’s no headline.

How is there no headline? I scroll through the pages, open other news sources, then another, until several are sprawled out over the white table. Nothing. Nothing about the first violent, brutal homicide in almost eighteen years, committed by a civilian, who also happens to be a former member of a well-known cult? If that’s not headline news, I don’t know what is.

I can’t help but be a little relieved, too. It’s taken a long time to make that cup of coffee, to sit down in that seat, to steel myself to look. And there’s nothing.

I blink and send the news away.

When the coffee—if it can even be called that, for it’s almost caffeine-free and from the replicator—is gone, I have no idea what to do with myself.

I pop a few Rejuvs and curl up on the sofa, a second cup of coffee beside me. I don’t read. I don’t watch the wallscreen. I stare at the ceiling and clear my mind.