This is a data center, she thought. It’s filled with business computers, and since everyone who worked here was probably a tech nut like Afa, it will have other devices as well. There’s bound to be another screen somewhere. She checked Afa again, making sure he was okay, and swept the shards of glass away from him as much as possible before heading back upstairs to the offices. She started in the corner offices, hoping that their extra prestige might mean an extra computer or two, but found nothing: several docks, but none of the screens to dock in them. They’re designed to be portable, Kira thought. Anyone who had one probably took them home. She kept looking, checking each office one by one before starting in on some of the cubicles. It reminded her of the offices she’d searched in Manhattan, and the memory gave her an idea. On a hunch, she left the cubicles and searched the back halls and rooms for anything marked with the initials Afa had had on his door: IT. Information technology. She finally found the IT office on the first floor, knee-deep in water. The IT director was still there, dead at his desk, his upper body covered with slime and his lower body stripped clean of everything but bone. She held her breath, sorting through his shelves, and found a screen slightly smaller than Afa’s in the desk drawer. She fled back outside, gagging and closing the door behind her, and made sure to rinse herself off in the cleaner water outside before heading back upstairs, where she found Afa had woken.

“My screen got shot,” he said. His voice was soft and vapid—he had again regressed to the “confused child.” Kira sighed, knowing that an attack like this had made it inevitable, and sat down beside him to comfort him. He looked at her with worried eyes. “Where’s my backpack?”

“It’s right over there,” she said, checking his pulse. Elevated but normal. “How do you feel?”

“My screen got shot,” he said, trying to stand. He screamed in pain the instant he put weight on his leg, and collapsed back to the floor.

“Forget the screen,” said Kira. “I’ve got a new one, but you’ve been shot, too. You need to take it easy.”

“I need my backpack.”

“You’ve been shot, Afa, right here in your leg—”

“I need my backpack!” His eyes quivered, on the verge of tears, and Kira stood up to bring him his backpack, wondering if maybe he had another screen in there and she hadn’t had to actually spend all that time with the dead IT director. She dragged the pack over to him and he clutched it to his chest, rocking back and forth. “I can’t ever leave my backpack,” he said. “I’m the last human being on the planet.”