Air swept through the palace as Magenta’s skin swelled. “I taste you. I want to kiss you.”

Muscle descended from the ceiling, but it didn’t wear Yaya’s face. Black horns curled from its front, above an eyeless nub and enormous teeth. She was much like Magenta had appeared in Doc’s bathtub, only one hundred times the size and writhing with her own slender limbs. The air crackled around her,

almost the same storm as when Doc would touch her in bed.

Almost. The air tasted of others, too. Yaya was here. The chimeras who’d been confined to the skyscraper. Newark’s population.

And Camille, the girl from Kentucky. Her dragon breathed fire through Magenta’s blood. Magenta had become a nest of minds. She thought, therefore they were, each and every one making up pieces of the whole’s influence, the sum of universal parts.

Doc, too, if she remained in this palace. “I’m sorry,” she said, drawing the syringe from the case.

“Tell us why,” Magenta said.

“For what I had to do in Kentucky. For what I have to do now.” Doc raised the syringe.

“She’s still here, Doc. She forgives you.”

Doc wasn’t supposed to be listening. There was no one else left in the city to end this. She didn’t have a choice.

Magenta’s voice thrummed through the floor. “My us understands you.

Why don’t you understand our me? Why don’t you understand yourself? Let the stones roll off your mind and see with a clear head.”

“I don’t have stones,” Doc said.

“You do. You’re buried in a cairn, but you’re not dead. You can still crawl out.” This time, the voice didn’t sound like deep Magenta. She sounded like Yaya. “Come to us again.”

Magenta’s stalk leaned close. Barbs ripped from her flesh, snagged Doc’s clothing, and peeled it away, same as they’d torn her hazard suit. She stood exposed to December’s chill. Barbs sank into flesh again, and then warm muscle encircled Doc’s legs, waist, chest. That familiar electric touch caressed her cheek, and she closed her eyes. In the moment, there was no syringe, no double-zero virus, no ABP, only a storm that swept her into the palace’s ceiling, where Magenta thrummed in every surface.

“You like us because we replace the mistake in your mind,” Magenta said.

Her voice quaked through Doc’s bones. “We help you forget the past.”

Doc’s hand still clutched the syringe, thumb over the plunger.

The voice sank into a whisper of temptation from a thousand lips. They kissed every inch of Doc’s skin. “You could forget forever,” Magenta said.

“There’s no ABP here. No masters watch your every move. You’ve killed because they told you to, but now they’re dead. If you stab us with that needle, do it because you believe in it yourself.”

The grip on Doc’s body loosened. Bumps coated her skin as the outside cold drifted down the back of her neck.

Magenta bristled in every surface. “Or you can walk away, leave the city.