It had room to expand.

She reached for one chimera’s forearm, where a white bandage covered a red patch, and grabbed hold. Their touch burned briefly. Magenta’s merge with Sabin hadn’t adapted to avoid merging with other chimeras, but their union had numbed the pain. She wouldn’t break this time. Her cells went to work, first to understand the texture of this chimera’s brain, and then to absorb and replicate it.

Her cells seeped into Magenta’s, patches of skin clambering, thrashing, eager to fuse.

This was better than peanut butter. Bryant and the agent had been protein, nothing more than biological batteries. Chimeras were different. Magenta didn’t know why. It was a zygote-eat-zygote world, but they didn’t have to play by

cannibalistic rules.

A new tree dug its roots into the orchard of minds. No new memories merged with the old, only flashes of thought and feeling. Sabin’s elation welcomed the newcomer with neon lights. Magenta and both chimeras had felt fear in the street. Regret as machines beeped and buzzed. A world unseen and unknown, always outside their reach. Whatever orchard they formed together, it weighed heavy as old Yaya’s cairn, but special beyond stones.

When the chimera liquefied, tentacles split from the ends of Magenta’s fingers and reached for the nearest steel tables. Fire flashed up her nerves. Old Yaya had been alone until Magenta spoke. How many other chimeras, other people of all kinds, felt crushed under stones because they had to bear them alone?

Magenta couldn’t have handled it, but she never needed to. Never alone before, never would be. She reached for tables, bodies, minds, every cell joining hers into new trees, thoughts, and feelings. Longing, rage, joy, bittersweet partings, eagerness to smell a newborn baby, hope to see the sky again.

Magenta drank everything. A well-groomed orchard shared water between roots. It could become fireproof.

Her shape grew unruly, a mile of yarn unraveled from its skein. Though she didn’t feel like she’d eaten the chimeras, her mass was greater and she was slowed the same as when she’d been digesting. She would have to adapt around that, and fast.

Rubber boots stormed the outside hall. “Same as they did in Kentucky,” a deep voice said. “On my count.”

A door began to slide open on either side of the room. Magenta drove fingerless limbs against the nearest and dragged it shut. Gears shrieked in the walls. She couldn’t reach the other door before flames spit through its mouth.

The banana agents were here. They wanted to raze the orchard and carve its minds into separate plots. Steel rooms and steel tables would not let trees grow, but ABP could keep snipping the leaves and roots.

Magenta piled herself in front of the shut door. She couldn’t find a shape she liked, every section of her body squiggling on snakelike limbs. When the agents came funneling through the far doorway, she thrust the shut door open, its passage clear. She surged through, a chunky living soup of skin and minds. Her limbs scraped at every wall for new openings. Climbing into the ceiling vents would take too long when her massive form had to fight gravity.