Tilly listened to their exchange, her head spinning, her body stiff with disbelief. The slab of ear she’d lost must have distorted something, she speculated. That self-assured look on Apollo’s face was teenage arrogance, not truth. He couldn’t have just committed mass murder. He couldn’t have just razed his hometown. He was trolling her. That’s what kids did online these days, wasn’t it? Especially guys. Even black guys? Probably. It was a new day. Niggas had been in Paris since 2011. Maybe they were on 4chan too. She didn’t tweet as much as she used to. She still logged into Myspace when she had a little too much Chardonnay. Things were different now.

When she was coming of age, trolling was like white guys’ new national pastime. She’d read an academic study on it somewhere, for some case. Something about privilege and power. The most privileged tended to use power the most flippantly because they knew they would never lose it. That’s why Eminem was so extra. Teenagers, all teenagers, thought of themselves as almighty. He was just being a teenager, that was it. “Teenagers gonna teenage,” old Rick might have said.

Tilly gawked at his motionless body, stroking the part of her maimed ear that was left intact. The pond of blood around him accented the white room. Is this how bears would decorate if they had human rugs? Tilly wondered. That was a question old Rick might have asked. Was it old Rick or new Rick that she’d shot? Could she have shot him in the legs? She’d never killed a coworker before. Was she the same Tilly?

Tired of posing so many questions to herself, Tilly turned to Apollo, who was crouched in a corner, his arms being wrapped in T-shirt tourniquets by Zed. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do all this?”

“Because Black lives matter.”

“I’m not your Facebook friend, kid. I’ve been through your search history. The first time you Googled Black Lives Matter was in August. And you didn’t even click any links. Give me a real answer.”

“Black privacy matters.”

“I’m still not convinced.”

“Well, that’s on you. You took the internet away from me.”

“I’m not the NSA, kid. I’m FBI. And they took it from me, too. I used to be a hacker. It was never the glorious life you probably think it is, full of ideological purity and utopian ideals. Ascetics don’t have friends.”

“You killed my friend. And my friends are only my friends because their friend got killed by you.”

“I’m not your fucking friend, you maniac,” Kai interjected.

Sol laughed, drawing Tilly’s attention. “Why did you do all this?” Tilly asked her. Sol laughed again, somehow above the entire situation. Tilly envied her.