At least the city had survived in some form. The bomb had been too deep to irradiate it, just shake it to pieces. At least there was that.

He wanted the shadows of his old room. He wanted to feel the privacy of being home more than he feared to suffer the pain of seeing his and Gina’s little place again. He pushed open the door and went in.

For a moment, he did not quite comprehend what flooded his senses, the scents, the subtle sounds. Then there was movement in the shadows, and he was instantly braced, ready for action.

She stepped into the light that shone in from the door.

She said, “You’ve been gone a long time.”

A rush of energy surged through him. Was it happiness? Was it fear? He did not know this emotion, but he did know Gina, who looked up at him with an expression of calm concern, but not surprise.

“A long time?”

“Two years, Mark. I helped with your new body, while it was growing. I washed it down every day. That was my job at the lab.”

To him, she was a joy and an astonishment, but to her he was absolutely familiar.

“Two years?”

She nodded. “Come on in, I’m just warming some soup. It’s good.”

He went into their old room, into the pungent odor of soup and the softer odor of her body, and despite everything, he was enchanted.

She seemed to know it and laughed a little, glancing back at him seductively.

“Do you remember when we were kids? They said you were getting that back, too.”

He nodded.

“Didn’t we have fun?”

“Where was I?”

“You know. Waiting.” She murmured, “In the editor.” She ladled rich vegetable soup into a cup. “Here.”

“I was turned off! For two years, I was turned off !”

“You had no body! So of course you were turned off. You couldn’t just sit there in the editor all that time, what would you do? You’d go crazy.”

“I thought I’d been—that it had been … just a few minutes.”

“You came out of the woods near Sausalito in real bad shape. The body wasn’t salvageable. It had to be destroyed.”

She spoke matter-of-factly, but he absorbed the information like a blow. He’d been in memory banks, empty of all consciousness, for the whole time it had taken them to grow him a new body.

“But … am I dead or alive?”

She smiled. “It’s good soup.” She sipped from her own cup.

And what of her? Nobody had actually told him what had happened to her. But he knew. Suddenly he knew quite well. Gina had died in the deep shaft. He’d been blown out with the remains of the drone, but she’d been completely vaporized.