I settle my mask back over my nose when Aisha returns with a handful of black clothes. “These should be your size,” she says, pressing close to me in the cramped laundry closet. She’s in a better mood today, like she’s managed to pack away Trevor’s death and Calvin’s shit, but she’s coming unraveled around the edges. There are bags under her eyes and a tremor to her hands. “It’s all super masc, promise. Give it a shot. I’ll be right outside.”

I don’t have physical dysphoria the way the workbooks in the ALC office describe it, narrowing in on obvious sex characteristics like that’s all being trans is. I don’t care about my chest, and I’ve never once, in my life, wanted to have a dick. My period sucks, but it never made me feel like less of a guy. Still, as I’m taking off my shirt in front of the mirror, I have to turn away. My dysphoria comes from the way other people see me, and I can’t help but look at myself from the outside. Why do my wrists have to be so small? Why does every shirt have to sit on my ass like that? Why do hips and chest and thighs have to read female?

I won’t have to deal with it for much longer. My skin is only a temporary thing. I wonder if I would feel the same way if I ever had the chance to start testosterone, knowing everything about my body would change but being unable to grasp exactly how. I’ve caught glimpses of the previous Seraph martyrs, bodies of children shattered under the weight of the Flood, but only glimpses. A twist of rotten flesh here, a fang or feather there. I thread a belt through the loops on the black jeans and zip the hoodie up to my throat. This self won’t last me long.

I knock on the door to tell Aisha I’m done. She comes in and rocks back on her heels to inspect me.

“Roll up the sleeves,” she says, and I do. “Try these gloves,” she says, and I do. “There.”

Combined with the mask, I must look like the people in the ALC office photographs, like I’m about to throw Molotov cocktails through Wall Street windows. She turns me around to the mirror.

“What do you think?” she says over my shoulder. “Fit all right? Not too warm?”

I blink at myself in surprise. I like the black bloc anarchist look. It’s soothing to smother everything that could clock me as a girl under black cloth. I’m formless, able to blend in with the rest of the Watch like we’re all shades of the same person.

“No,” I say. “It’s good.” I adjust the gloves and try pulling up the hood. “Do you do this for everyone?”

“I insist on it,” she says. “I need a little bit of control over something.”

After Aisha can’t justify fussing over my outfit anymore, we go downstairs. Everybody is waiting for us, and like the white cheeks and too-long teeth, that makes it real. Erin twists the ends of her hair while Salvador opens and closes the blade of xyr knife over and over: click, tp, click, tp. Nick hands a rifle to Cormac, reciting the plan as he goes. It’s the closest thing I’ve heard to a prayer in days. Beside them, Faith checks her own gun, movements fluid and perfect the way the coast guard would have taught her.