“I’m sorry.” Xochi settled herself back into her seat. “I’m sorry, Kira, you know I didn’t mean it. I’m just going crazy—this whole damn thing is over the line.”

“What’s done is done,” said Isolde. “The law is passed. Now we can complain about it, or we can get drunk enough to not care.”

“You’ve had too much of that as it is,” said Xochi, standing up and ripping the bottle from Isolde’s hands. Isolde’s grip was loose, her strength used up in the struggle with Kira, and Xochi took it easily, opening the window and throwing the bottle outside.

“Hey, Xochi!” It was a voice from the street, one of the local boys—Kira didn’t recognize it exactly. “Crazy stuff with the Hope Act, right? You guys wanna talk? Can we come in?”

“Go to hell,” said Xochi, and slammed the window closed.

“That was my bottle,” said Isolde, her voice slurring. Nobody paid her attention.

“I’m sorry, Xochi,” said Kira, sitting up straighter. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at … pretty much everything else in the world. But the world doesn’t have a face, so I was going to take it out on yours.”

Xochi smirked, but her expression fell again just as quickly. “I’m not ready,” she said softly. “None of us are ready.”

Isolde traced a pattern on the couch with her finger. “Haru was right, you know. What he said in the Senate hearing. We don’t have any children left, just adults who don’t know what they’re doing.”

The girls sat quietly, lost in their thoughts. Kira thought about Marcus—she’d rejected his advances, and now the government had changed everything. A two-month grace period to get things going, and then she could get arrested just for not being something she’d never been before. If she had to have children, she wanted them to be Marcus’s, she guessed; she’d never thought about anyone else, not seriously. But if she told him now, he’d know it was for the law, and not for him. She couldn’t do that to him. And yet she couldn’t go to anyone else without hurting him even worse.

Besides, she didn’t want to be pregnant. Not like this. If she was going to create a new life, she wanted to do it because it meant something, not because she’d been forced to.

And yet she’d just yelled at Xochi for proposing the same idea. She didn’t even know what to think anymore.

For just a second—just the briefest fraction of a moment—she thought about Samm, and wondered if a half-Partial child would be immune.

“Do any of you remember your mother?” asked Isolde. “Not your new one, Xochi, your old one. Your real mother from before the Release.”