Too late. She stepped into the living room and watched Doc tense, panic, and thrust a syringe needle into the base of a young woman’s neck, skin pale, hair brownish red. She collapsed into Doc’s arms.

“Help me move her,” Doc said. “It’ll go cleaner in the tub.”

Magenta was impatient, her limbs already reaching from Yaya’s cleft. Yaya couldn’t blame her. Shared nervous system, shared pain, and probably shared depression. The mental stones were both of theirs to bear. In a few minutes, those stones would fall away again.

“Not yet,” Yaya whispered. “We help Doc first.”

She grabbed the young woman’s legs and helped shuffle her into the bathroom. They laid her gently in the bathtub, her head resting against the cool wall opposite the faucet.

“Connie,” Doc said.

Yaya didn’t need to know that. She would’ve like to know Bryant less when she’d dragged him into his bathroom and let Magenta feed. Not out of guilt—that vanished with the stones—but he was an unpleasant person. Better off dead.

This one probably wasn’t. Her head lolled to one side, facing out into the bathroom. Her eyelids fluttered, half-opened, closed again.

Wait, what color were her eyes?

Yaya squatted beside the tub and batted Magenta’s eager arms from the rim. She thumbed open one of Connie’s eyelids and then the other. Blue eye.

Green eye. Not everyone with two eye colors was a chimera, but every chimera had two eye colors.

“Really?” Yaya asked.

“Would it be better if she was some random woman with complete heterochromia?” Doc asked. “She’s who I could get my hands on.”

Yaya batted Magenta’s tentacles again and stood from the tub. “Not her.”

“Why? Because I didn’t bring a man?”

Yaya turned to face Doc. “You were supposed to bring some sleazeball like last night. Chimeras put up with too much of ABP’s shit already.”

Doc scanned Yaya, from where her cleft began between her legs to where it peaked beneath her neck. Her eyes fell on Yaya’s face last. They looked crisscrossed with red map lines. “Like it or not, Yaya, you’re part of ABP’s shit these days. Both of you.”

“But—” Yaya looked to Connie, eyelids shut, but Yaya saw them in memory.

Sky-blue, sea-green. “She doesn’t deserve it.”

“Then don’t kill this one,” Doc said, a shrug in her voice. “Take only what you need.”

Yaya swiped both hands down her face. “You don’t. Understand. What we need.”

“Neither do you.” Doc neared Yaya, their faces inches apart. “But if you come to the lab, you won’t have to hurt her. We’ll find out that special thing, and there won’t be any others like Bryant Peters.”

Yaya flinched away, almost stumbling over the tub. “You picked her special, huh? Someone sweeter.”

Doc lowered her eyes.

“If it comes down to lab or murder, I’ll—” Yaya didn’t know. Her tongue ran over her teeth. She hadn’t expected Doc to trap her like this.

“If you got away from ABP, free and clear, what would you do with your life?” Doc asked. “Maybe we can work something out.”