One day, the printout would offer bad news, effects of chemical and creature finally catching up. Nine years clean, but she couldn’t expect health to last forever. No one could. For all Yaya’s Sibs-related griping, she forgot that chimeras weren’t alone in mandatory checkups or arbitrary death clocks.

Everyone died. An unlucky few stressed about it first.

When Doc felt less deflated, she finally answered Greenwich’s last text, telling him she’d gone home and crashed and hadn’t seen his urgent request until morning. If not for her mandatory doctor’s appointment, she would come in, but no arguing with mandatory, right?

Outside her car, she awaited a catcall or a hand to stroke her spine unbidden, but it was too close to midday, and the air was bitter. No one seemed eager to bother her here and now. She would have to go elsewhere.

Downtown was bustling, as always. Pedestrians darted between shops, their breath misting even as the noon sun hung overhead. This summer had been especially hot for the northeast, and every meteorologist predicted winter’s pendulum would swing hard the other way.

Doc believed it. She felt the cold.

She felt warmth, too, standing in the crisp November air. Magenta’s arms.

Yaya’s arms. Doc would be in bed with them now if she hadn’t had to come out.

They were expecting she pick something up for them.

One younger white man, probably in his twenties, caught her eyes and smiled in passing. There was a pretty Black woman with a septum piercing who grinned in Doc’s direction, and she raised her hand in a friendly wave when she noticed Doc looking.

Doc turned away. Last month, last year, absolutely. Not right now.

No one else glanced at her. Whatever allure she’d held for the asshole who couldn’t keep his hands to himself last night—clearly busy, clearly not in the mood, some irritated vibe that couldn’t be measured or quantified—she didn’t hold it now. That, or the men who passed were better than the man who’d slid a hand down her back unbidden. Better than Bryant Peters.

Was Yaya going to leave an open-skulled corpse in Doc’s apartment?

Would Magenta have devoured Bryant wholly given the chance? She and Yaya had been hiding in his house, possibly for days. The cops might have interrupted some greater digestion in progress.

After a couple hours, Doc returned to her car. Her ears and nose were chilled, her hands scaly. She thought first of calling Yaya and telling her that delivery was cancelled tonight, except Yaya’s cell phone remained in ABP

custody, and Doc had no landline. She then thought of texting her friends and asking for a couple of local exes’ names. Gwyn was mostly into men, and her last ex-boyfriend had been especially shitty. Or was it sexist to largely focus on men? What about Trina or Precious?

This was the wrong direction. Friends would misread Doc’s intentions if she went hounding for their exes’ numbers. Worse, their going missing or turning up dead would leave an obvious trail.