Better to go down swinging. Her cleft rippled open, and Magenta poured out, a virile, muscly stalk colored her namesake, the teeth stretching into a snout. She resembled a crocodile more than ever before.

The agents stepped back in unison. One rewound wires into the lightning contraption, its bolt clinking along sidewalk slabs.

Yet another electric hum sounded from Bruen Street’s intersection with Green Street. How many shots could the death machine fire before it overheated? In November’s cold, perhaps it was near immortal. In January, it might never stop firing. It already felt like it never stopped.

Yaya needed five minutes without its awful noise. She could ask why she’d spoken through her bones like Magenta. If they could have a moment to themselves without ABP planting flags of conquest in their DNA, maybe her life would make sense just once before it ended.

Thunder rocked the night. Yaya didn’t see the sword of light at first and wondered if the shot had gone wide, strayed into some distant neighborhood, and sliced its little apocalypse there instead.

But the building quaked. The death machine was aiming this way. A cloud of white dust billowed into the street, obscuring the intersection and agents.

Yaya could vanish in that dust if she darted into the cloudy street right now. One last mad dash for the death machine while no one could aim right or catch her.

She charged from the alcove and turned toward Green Street.

Too late. The electric scream hadn’t settled. Amber radiance glared down on her, a furious sun like she’d never seen in the day.

And then she saw nothing.

21

The Board called Doc in first thing Sunday morning. Did they never rest?

Extreme circumstances had struck the city last night, but they didn’t involve her as far as the Board knew.

Why then was she summoned to the Warren Street skyscraper? The Board had to know something.

No steel siding blotted out the sky at the penthouse level. Even the elevator shaft turned transparent, giving a brief glimpse of the city’s busy streets. A corridor led Doc to twin mahogany doors, where plush benches hugged the walls. She wore no hazard suit, gas mask, or rubber boots today. For once inside an ABP office, she could be as close to a person as the Board might see. The kind of person they told to roll over, or sic ‘em.

A voice bellowed through the doors: “Agent Docia Hall.”

And like a good Doc, she heeled. But Magenta had been a bad dog, so they’d put her down. Life was simple to the Board.

Stepping before them, Doc realized she was not the good dog in this scenario. Maybe she’d never been good, evidence of which lay on a steel gurney at the room’s center, its legs ending in tiny pivoting wheels. Warm overhead light reflected off a plastic body bag.