Every muscle down her long body tensed, and then her front smashed the skyscraper’s glass. Shards rained from the jagged hole to the street. The wind carried screams to the glassy hole and beyond. Magenta’s torso stretched from the building’s side. Her tongue lapped at the December chill and gathered snowflakes.

“Don’t.” Doc wasn’t sure what she was asking Magenta not to do. That helpless Kentucky aura drew around her. ABP wouldn’t let living destruction survive, no matter how sweet it might be inside. Pain corrupted everything.

A fresh Yaya-like face split from the pulsing pink mass and drew close to Doc.

She looked like herself from that first night, one blue eye, one hazel, the end of her nose red with cold, her mouth melting in a sloppy, tipsy smirk.

She leaned into Doc’s lips. It should have felt as sweet as a night’s second kiss, but instead it felt like one final goodbye. Doc dug her fingers into curling black hair and held tight for as long as she could. Every second placed another moment between the present and the immediate, horrible future.

Wind swiped at Doc’s coat and hair, and debris stung her eyes. She staggered back without meaning to, tried to grab for Magenta again, and found empty swirling air.

A megaphone crackled. “Yolanda Betancourt.”

Chuckling quaked deep in Magenta’s flesh mound, and she spoke in a playful sing-song. “She’s not heeere anymooore.”

Tentacles formed a web around the glass opening and eased Magenta onto the skyscraper’s outer shell. New limbs helped grasp the glass, and every inch of her swept through that hole, even the limb that ended in Yaya’s face. Whatever remained of her, she was the appendage to a larger, stranger creature, unraveling and reforming for all the world to see. One last time, she had pretended she was human, maybe for Doc’s benefit and nothing else.

But now Magenta was finished pretending.

Doc followed the snake’s tail until it disappeared. She stood at the gaping mouth of glass, wind whipping at her blazer. Her tattered hazard suit slid out of her arms, a yellow raindrop for the faraway pavement. She didn’t watch it fall.

~

The sub-level garage resembled a warehouse, similar to Sibs stations, its rafters high and bare. An incline led agents and vehicles to street level. Yellow suits darted this way and that, gathering weapons and manning vehicles, alerted

that their specimen had escaped the building.

Doc found Greenwich at the base of the Predator Engine. They were still refueling.

His gas mask bobbed up and down. “Standard issue uniform?” he asked.

“Forget it,” Doc said. “I need you in the analysis lab.”

Greenwich hesitated. “Sorry, Doc, but I don’t work the lab. Especially not now.”

She felt eyes on her and glanced down the Predator Engine’s greasy tubes, where members of its crew worked at the oversized tires and the enormous metal shaft that grew from its top. They seemed to have accepted Greenwich into their ranks.