“Have they ever let you talk to them?”

“No, but I didn’t ask. I don’t know them.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Did Dr. Lopez have an opinion?”

“He said it was up to me. The medical team has taken enough samples to work with, even if I leave.”

“But he didn’t have an opinion about what would be best? Even when you were a kid?”

“Not that he shared.”

“What about your dad?”

“My dad said that sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. And the grass is always greener.”

“Big fan of idioms, your dad?”

Her lips twitched. “Yes.”

“And not in favor, it sounded like.”

“He was not in favor of his only child leaving forever, no.”

“Understandable,” Lennon said quietly.

They turned a corner, and walked in silence for several minutes. They were in an area that was mostly businesses, near the lumberyard, and there weren’t any other people on the street.

“Did you and your dad…get along?” Lennon finally asked.

She gave him a confused look. “You want to talk about my relationship with my father?”

“I’ve just…You know that we’ve heard of your father, right? Out there?”

“Ah,” she said, understanding dawning on her. “Right. You want to know what the famous Isaac Rojas was like.”

“I was just curious if he was different from the rumors.”

She didn’t need to ask what he’d heard. Her dad had already seen the inside of a prison cell—more than once—when the virus hit. And the Americans had a lot more access to information inside the Q back in the first few years. When they’d had internet inside, people had seen video of what was happening.

It made sense that her dad had argued so forcefully to control the news and internet inside. He’d done some pretty gruesome shit to get the Q under control.

Back when Lopez had first started supplying people with new organs, there were payment plans and deals. People who were in really bad shape could barter or beg their way into a new pair of lungs or a new kidney, with just the promise of repayment.

Trouble was, repayment rarely happened. Her dad had his hands full knocking skulls every day, and it never did any good. He couldn’t keep up with the backlog.

So, he started repossessing the organs. He famously pulled a guy’s lungs out in the middle of the square, in midday, surrounded by people—as a warning to others. He’d cut them out, wrapped them up, and shoved them into a bag.

When she was younger, she hadn’t understood at first why he did that. They couldn’t be reused. But later, she realized that he probably just liked the visual of sauntering off with a dead man’s lungs swinging from his hand, blood twisting a path behind him.

Lopez had put a stop to all payment plans and deals after a few repossessions. He said he wasn’t putting organs in people just to have them torn out by Isaac a few months later. It was a waste of resources.