“So do I. We bought her more zips as we went through the city today. Some of the street vendors are cycling their WAIs and poaching power and network to produce pills. The zips seem to make her better.”

“It’s a false sense of improvement. The more she takes them, the worse she gets. It’s like a drug addiction now, but the damage from this might be permanent. I don’t have the equipment or the expertise to know.” She gave him a squeeze. “I don’t mean to frighten you. Remember how you felt after the Jackson explosion? Or Marrakech? Welga has survived terrible things. Let’s hope she lives through this, too.”

She couldn’t help a sense of optimism at having Luis back, even if their marriage couldn’t recover its former trust. Unlike other fights, this one felt like it would leave permanent scars. If you’d agreed in the first place, if you hadn’t been so dogmatic… but he couldn’t change that any more than she. If he could overcome the hurdle of living by her side, she could return the favor.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. A stray breeze blew across them, and a night bird cried out from a rooftop garden across the street.

“Should we go in?” Nithya asked.

“Not yet. I want a few more minutes alone with you.”

Surrounded by her husband’s arms and the scent of night-blooming jasmine, Nithya let herself relax.

WELGA

25. To live in harmony with all intelligences, we must relinquish our ideas of personhood. Just as we abstracted this concept to include corporations and environmental bodies, so now we must include artificial intelligences.

—The Machinehood Manifesto, March 20, 2095

As Welga faced the entry into a foam-lined crate, she reminded herself why she was doing this. For Connor, for Papa, for Carma and Luis and Nithya—for Por Qué, and the blood of Briella Jackson and all the others who had died at the hands of the Machinehood. She needed to squeeze herself into that cargo container and let herself be flung off the Earth.

She squinted up at the clear blue sky, a rarity in Chennai. She wished she could have seen Connor once more, told Papa good-bye. Would her body hold up through the launch? Would she have the strength to do what she needed to find and stop the Machinehood? She couldn’t admit her concerns to anyone else. As Jack Travis had taught her, she put all those thoughts in an imaginary box and buried them.

Fear has to take a back seat to confidence I will be here again. I’ll succeed in this Death can kiss my fine ass.