Doc parked on the street three cars down from her building’s front. A few short steps climbed to the front lobby door. It hung ajar this evening, the door failing to sink all the way into its doorframe, meaning anyone without a code could wander in. Doc yanked it shut behind her, fist squeezing her keys. She would have to call the super about that in the morning.

Someone was holding the elevator on Doc’s floor. She didn’t feel like waiting and took the stairs. The elevator looked empty when she emerged from the stairwell and passed it, the holder having moved on. She followed the

carpeted hallway toward her door, 4C. Her keys loosened between fingers in a soft jingle.

She had already unlocked both deadbolt and doorknob lock before she noticed the limping footsteps. They had already reached her back.

An arm slung over one shoulder from behind and pressed her own gleaming scissors to her neck. When she swallowed, her throat grazed one blade, a warning in steel.

Yaya’s voice warned with it. “Two can play ambush, Doc. But what was it you said?” Hot breath curled in Doc’s ear. “Oh right. Just try to relax.”

7

Yaya’s injured leg had scraped knives across her nerves every step from her apartment, every moment she sat on the southbound bus, every second she stood holding the elevator on Doc’s floor. Waiting in ambush. The knives sharpened her to go through with it. She took Doc’s purse and coat, ordered her to sit at the kitchen table, and then slumped against the wall not far from the apartment door, scissors aimed at her former hookup.

No, her hostage. “You won’t scream,” Yaya said.

Doc sat at the kitchen table and said nothing. Pale hair, skin, clothes, and eyes, as if she had plunged through bleach this morning to prove ABP’s purity.

The living room remained unchanged since Saturday morning, one wall bearing framed photos of Doc and people who must’ve been family, and yet the place felt colder, more alien.

Yaya’s stomach rumbled, probably her tentacled friend again. It had been feisty since the bathroom. Hungry, it hummed.

Doc glanced from Yaya’s sweat-stained face to the floor. “I can look at that leg.”

“You a doctor now, Doc?” Yaya asked. “So busy. I didn’t even know you were an ABP agent.”

“How would you?” Doc asked. “You barely asked my name the other night.”

“But you came for me.”

Doc ignored the double entendre. “I’ve had a long day checking chimeras.”

Yaya eyed the scissors. “Sure, I can’t be the only one who got Sibs since last month. It’s a zygote-eat-zygote world.” She laid one arm across her good leg’s bent knee. The other stretched out, aching across the shin. Not a break—

she couldn’t have walked at all then—but the sprain still hurt like hell.

Hungry.

“You need a hospital,” Doc said. Her fingers drummed the table, used to tapping a phone screen. That phone probably lay in her purse or coat, now seated by the door.