rights and say I own my body, hair to heel. Even you don’t really own yourself, and you work for them.”

Doc’s voice took on a breathy tone, a cry in her throat. “Why don’t you just run? There’s a whole world outside the northeast. Worse places, better places.

You could disappear.”

Yaya had never left the tristate area, but it wasn’t like the internet didn’t link every land together. No passport, but there were other states. Some of them were theocratic nightmares. Others sounded too good to be true. She had heard there were no cop tanks in California, but residents said that reputation

exaggerated the greatness of the Golden State. There were parts of America where the dogs of ABP wore collars and leashes. They couldn’t invade homes or compel Sibs checkups. Some chimeras died in peace. They weren’t injected with mystery drugs.

But then, Magenta had led to so many good things.

“We’d miss you,” Yaya said, planting a kiss in Doc’s hair. Her chest drew away from Doc’s back, leaving creases in the skin from crocodilian teeth.

Magenta’s tentacles slid out from their folds, buzzing static through Yaya’s nerves, but they weren’t for her. They slung around Doc’s waist where Yaya’s arm had rested.

Doc didn’t press them away.

Yaya’s voice took on a whisper. “Do it for us.”

“This is manipulative,” Doc said. She ran her hand across one of Magenta’s wet limbs, stroking along the barbs so they wouldn’t puncture her palm.

“You’ll kill when ABP wants,” Yaya said. “Doc, roll over. Doc, sic. That’s a good Doc.”

“Don’t taunt me.”

“I’m sorry.” Yaya kissed Doc’s hair again. “We don’t even want you to kill though. Just bring. Like you were going to bring me to ABP. Bring us someone.”

Doc’s pulse quickened against grasping tentacles. She didn’t need to say a word; Yaya felt the answer coursing through Doc’s blood. She pressed at Magenta, guided her to lower places. Yaya let it happen without interruption.

This moment was between Doc and Magenta.

Yaya instead stared at the ceiling and thought of what she’d had to do to keep the stones off her mind this long, kept her from feeling restless or crushed.

She thought of that bathroom, the blood and the body.

It might have soothed Doc’s conscience to know that Bryant Peters was technically alive, but better she thought him dead. If she learned what had really become of him, she wouldn’t bring anyone to Magenta.

16

Doc lingered beside her car, a crumpled printout clutched in her fist. The patient name read DOCIA HALL, and she hoped that was its only error. She never pressed anyone outside her social circles to call her Doc; even her father still called her Docia. The printout also told her good news: clean screening, no cancer. Come back in a year.

ABP had scheduled the appointment long before Yaya came into Doc’s life, and there was no throwing it away over Magenta’s appetites. Every year since Kentucky, Doc visited one dermatologist or another for her skin cancer screening. Most patients would’ve preferred to get their negative test results by email, text, or even phone call, but Doc knew that if the results were positive, she would be asked to appear in person. She’d know without being told. Better to see the results in ink and paper personally.