Sunlight crept deeper into the room, and Doc stirred from beneath the sheets. She turned slowly to face Yaya, her face stiff in unspoken and unexplained surprise to find herself not alone. The glint in her eyes made the wait worth it. Maybe things could be different.

Doc rolled over again and let her shoulders sink against Yaya’s chest.

“Your leg.”

Yaya realized it hadn’t ached when she stood minutes ago, and not while tangled with Doc last night. She glanced down.

A soft gray carapace now coated the once-swollen stretch of shin. Its surface shimmered, and exploratory fingertips found it brittle, a bug’s frail exoskeleton that would harden over time. She wondered if the residue had seeped from her skin when it grew.

“Might be an adaptation,” Doc said, her throat dry and raspy. “Your body knew what you needed and grew it for you.”

That would explain Magenta’s voracity, if she had anything to do with this.

If Yaya so much as caught odd-colored chickenpox, she would suspect Magenta going forward.

Another blade of sunlight slashed across the room before Doc said,

“They’ll miss me if I don’t go.”

Yaya slid back so they were no longer touching. Doc was a hostage.

Somehow that had slipped Yaya’s mind. “Then go,” she said, not unkindly.

She watched Doc rise, disappear into the bathroom, reappear, get dressed.

A lot of trouble just to hide beneath a smelly hazard suit and gas mask, but that wasn’t Yaya’s business. She leaned back, eyes trailing down the bed. Her gut rumbled.

Doc paused beyond the footboard, midway through throwing on another white blazer. “There’s no more peanut butter, so you’ll have to scavenge,” she said. “If you’re hungry.”

“Not me,” Yaya said. Her mouth felt sticky. She needed to poke around for a spare toothbrush. “Maybe the monster.”

“Magenta,” Doc corrected. She finished getting dressed and then gave the bed a long stare, another unspoken and unexplained message rippling through the air.

She wouldn’t tell. Not after last night. Whether through mercy toward Yaya or greed that she wanted Magenta all to herself when ABP took so much already, Doc’s lips were sealed. She didn’t even say goodbye when she stepped out of the apartment.

Yaya sank into the bed and thought about sleeping. All that protein yesterday, she needed more rest to digest. Her gut felt otherwise. It rumbled again.

“Fine, fine,” she said, and clambered off the mattress. More peanut butter, but she was having a fruit or vegetable today if she could get her hands on it.

In the bathroom, she found a spare toothbrush behind the boxes of pads and tampons, still bound in plastic. A little morning prep and she was ready to indulge hers and Magenta’s appetites.

She paused one step from the bathroom door. Something nestled inside her

underwear. First thought, her tampon had come loose, except she wasn’t wearing one. Magenta had made that impossible. Muscles had to be slithering out.

“Knock it off,” Yaya said.