“She took a regular flow to check out their design. She didn’t think their idea would work, but she needed to make sure. And that… that’s when her body gave up.” A muscle twitched in Papa’s cheek. “I wonder sometimes, if she’d trusted them, if she hadn’t taken that last one and tried the new stuff, would she be here today? Would you be sick? She’d have spent all her hours figuring out your condition. Maybe she’s up in heaven right now, looking at us and yelling at me for letting you join the service, for letting you put pills in your body.”

“Oh, Papa.” Welga wrapped an arm around him and squeezed gently. “If she’s up there, she knows you couldn’t have stopped me.”

“Ha. You were always stubborn. More than your brother. But I tell you, I’m proud of you right now, for going after these people, for chasing your cure. Don’t give up. Don’t settle, like me. Your mama left this world doing what she loved best. I think she’d be proud of you, too.”

“I promise I’ll keep fighting,” Welga said. “Now go to bed, please. If I live through all this, I don’t want to come back to Earth to find you keeled over from a bad heart, okay? You need to hold on, too, until we get the world working again.”

She helped him up and kissed his scratchy cheek. She turned off the lights, locked the front door, and stopped in front of her mother’s photo screen. The same routine she’d had every night in high school. With two fingers, she touched her lips and then her mother’s face.

As she passed Luis’s room, she stuck her head through the doorway. “I’m likely to crash if we drive back tonight. Be ready to go early, though. We’ll leave at eight.”

They arrived in San Francisco about ten hours after leaving Phoenix. Ammanuel and Hassan surprised them by opening the door of her and Connor’s apartment.

“I wouldn’t have bet on you going rogue, Ramírez,” Hassan said.

“It’s not safe for you to know too much, boss,” Welga said. “Stay out of this.”

“I’ll take that advice the same as you would.”

Which meant not at all. She couldn’t blame him.

“You can’t do this alone,” Hassan rumbled.

Welga tilted her head at the bedroom, where Luis had gone with Connor. “I’ll have my brother.”

“And he can protect you?”

“I can protect my own damn self.”