Doc tried to stop the needle. She tried to push it. Neither seemed right. She remembered Kentucky clouds, not white cumulus puffs in the sky, but chemicals that covered a high school and then blew back, carrying debris from the dead pale dragon. She’d made so many mistakes that night. Her mind had been trawling for answers these past nine years, eager to turn back the clock. She’d told Yaya and Magenta while they had fought in her tub that she believed in second chances, but was that a lie too?

The needle pierced Magenta’s flesh. She didn’t recoil. She didn’t fight back. The power rested in her to stop this, and she did nothing. Why wouldn’t she take the choice away?

Tears rushed down Doc’s cheeks. “Imagine getting that one-in-a-million second chance and still failing. Second chances have expiration dates, you know? Sometimes you make a mistake, and there’s no fixing it, no matter how sorry you are. You don’t know how else to be.”

“Forgive yourself,” Magenta whispered. “They’ve bound you to their will.

We were the same. They told us to hate ourselves and be miserable, and we obeyed. We understand, Doc.” Her warm embrace tightened, her last chance to hold Doc. “And that’s why we’ll keep forgiving you until the end of time.”

The fist of old concerns clung to the syringe. Doc’s fingers trembled. Her thumbpad grazed the plunger, but she didn’t press down. Plastic slid across skin and out of her limp palm.

Tentacle tips slipped around the plastic and drew it away. Doc didn’t know where the case of syringes had gone. She didn’t care, so long as no needle punctured Magenta. Her tears fell hot and relentless.

Magenta wrapped around her. “There’s no one left to be hurt,” she said, her tone patient. Countless heartbeats warmed her skin. “Cry all you need. There’s no one left to hurt us.”

Doc did as she was told. She didn’t know how long she cried, her body racked with sobs. She felt numb by the end, only vaguely aware of Magenta’s still-warm embrace and the faint crackle of static in the air.

Magenta would not let go. Doc didn’t want to be let go. Tension melted down her limbs at last, a pleasant surrender, and she clung tight to a muscle she couldn’t see. The world was dark and full of sweet sensations.

Jet engines roared across the distant sky. They would be flying over Newark soon, their pilots eager to report with the naked eye what satellite imagery could only suggest.

Doc kissed Magenta’s skin. “They’re going to kill us.”

Magenta hummed with the earth itself. “They’re going to try. But show me everything you know, everything, and they’ll never touch us.”