“Do you think you’re funny? When?”

Before.

Before what? Before Yaya had woken up and discovered the open window, surely. A bird must have paused on the outer sill, only for a moment. How could it have expected one of those miserable tentacles to snap snakelike from inside and tug it up into Yaya’s—

She gagged over the sink. Spit dribbled out, but no vomit.

Magenta’s appetite was a pendulum, swinging between ravenous hunger and sleepy digestion, with Yaya carried along for the metamorphic ride. If those tentacles could reach that far, then they’d grown longer since last night and now likely crowded against Yaya’s abdominal organs. If she still had those organs.

She balled up half a roll of toilet paper and tried to wipe up the dead bird.

Bending down stabbed at her insides, but she managed to scoop slime and bone together and stuff the problem into the garbage pail.

“Magenta?” she said again, stern now. “No more birds. Unless it’s cooked chicken.”

No birds, Magenta said. More repetition, no telling whether or not she understood. Peanut butter.

“We’ll see.” Yaya’s stomach rumbled. A phantom hunger, not hers, but haunting her gut. She needed to step outside. Maybe she’d be back when Doc came home, maybe not.

Yaya caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. Her right eye was hazel, as usual, but her left eye’s violet-wreathed blue now blinked a pinkish purple.

“Magenta,” she whispered. One finger prodded around the eyeball’s edge, as if her old iris color lay hidden in a cocoon of thick fluid. She wondered if

Magenta could see through from the far side.

She borrowed a pair of Doc’s underwear, snug but better than re-wearing yesterday’s. Yaya’s lavender suit had seen cleaner times, but she had nothing else. She threw it on and then borrowed a spare winter coat from Doc’s coat closet before heading out into the crisp November morning, destination unknown. Early pedestrians traveled the sidewalks, and commuting cars formed a steady stream past Doc’s apartment building, filling Newark with occasional car horns and passing bus roars.

Jumpies would be calling soon. Whichever ABP goons held her phone would know where she worked, even if they hadn’t broken her service’s security. They had probably already known, though. They knew her life and owned half of it; the rest was extra. She had no money either, purse abandoned in her cramped apartment. Doubtful that ABP had walked away. Someone would be watching for her return, either a gas mask or a uniform cop.

She guessed a cop tank sat parked outside the Gemini graffiti mural nearby, and its cop had probably called the city in to clean it up. Back in the day, cops drove cars, often blue and white, before Yaya’s teen years when late Secretary of Defense Heston had championed the need for more robust urban law enforcement vehicles and firepower. Too many cities were happy to oblige. TV

had normalized brute strength, broadcasting most of the U.S. police action in former USSR states as a favor to Russia.