“One of you,” she said again, the last word partnered with a blow so that the pronoun was made insult and I understood why she was hitting me.

It was an assault I’d imagined could only come from a Source angry at a memory or else at the piece of themselves that had endured, at the Mem that reminded them. But in her heavy breathing and in the shadow where her face should have been, the aging attendant spent what may have been her last reserves proving she’d been made a kind of surrogate Source. Hidden in the dark with what was now less than half a woman, she must have hated me as much as she hated Dolores. In truth, she hated me more.

“Look at her,” she shouted, her blows intensifying. “And look at you! You took her life with you, you wretch.”

I both heard and felt a crack before I tasted metal in my mouth.

“You’ve taken my life, too, you beast!”

And suddenly I was thinking of my Professor. Of Harvey and Camille and Ettie, too, but the Professor first. What he would go through when he found out and how he would blame himself when I was dead. Because I knew from the strength that did not match her stage in life that the woman would not stop. She wasn’t Walter’s Mem; I had not gotten tangled in a memory. Every blow was meant for me, and outside of the Vault, there was no one to intervene.

At first I was shaking too violently to realize that the beating had stopped. I’d heard Dolores scream with my voice but hadn’t noticed when she’d gotten up from the couch. After that came the sound of glass breaking, and when I looked, the attendant was crumpled in front of the French doors, a point of impact where her back had collided with the glass.

Through tears both protective and organic, I saw Dolores standing between our collapsed bodies, her chest heaving from the excitement or from the effort of having flung her attendant off me. As she watched me now, her eyes grew wild and a horrible confusion drained her face of color. When Dolores began to scream again, it almost covered the heavy gallop of Lyman running from the front door. Before he could reach us, I offered my hand to her, and she took it. Still like touching my own flesh, trying to discern the end of my skin and the beginning of hers was as futile as tickling myself.

“Dolores.” I clasped her hands, squeezing them in earnest as the screaming settled into moans, but the confused expression persisted.