“Your post-traumatic symptoms are worsening.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did it . . . Was it . . . Could you feel it?”

“I felt this episode much more strongly than previous ones.”

Her stomach, only starting to stabilize, took a dip at the thought. “I’m sorry. I tried to stop it.”

“It cannot be controlled.”

She was unsure if it was a statement or a question. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t . . . I can’t really afford treatment. I’m living paycheck to paycheck as it is.”

The amber glow in his eyes shifted, and he leaned closer to her face. “Perhaps I can treat you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I should have begun a proper study much sooner. Your brain chemistry has changed drastically in the past three months, but I have little frame of reference, as I did not properly study you sooner. Still, there is much I can learn drawing from the medical literature I have found.”

She wiped her eyes. “Human literature?”

“Some of it may be useful. There are some approaches we can take, some therapeutic, some chemical. The latter will take some time to concoct, but perhaps we can arrange the former. But for both, I will need to conduct a study.”

She struggled to sit up, worrying that she might pass out if she stayed lying down. “What kind of a study?”

“I will need to insert monitors, see how your brain chemistry changes over time, when you are at peace, and when you are frightened, when you have nightmares, and when you have panic attacks.”

“You want to do that while I’m at work?”

“You do not feel safe here. It should be in a location where you feel safe. And also where you can sleep.”

“I suppose my apartment is as good as it gets.”

“Then I will find you there tonight.”

“And then what?”

“And I will begin the study, and begin to arrange a therapeutic schedule.”

The substance Ampersand used to calm her down had a way of also numbing her in all regards. But even through that fog, she felt like her heart might fall out of her chest in gratitude. If anyone could fix this, she knew, he could.

2

Cora flipped open her phone to check the time for roughly the thirtieth time in the last five minutes. 10:43. He’d said “tonight” but hadn’t given her anything more specific. She’d even cleaned her apartment up to her not-very-exacting standards, though she wasn’t sure why; everything was dirty, toxic, deadly Earth atmosphere to him, with its cruel sun, unbreathable air, and multitudinous pathogens waiting to destroy his systems if the biosynthetic engineered barrier that protected his organic parts broke down; what was a little unsorted recycling?

“I am ready to begin.”

She looked over her shoulder and nearly jumped out of her skin. There he was, next to the giant beanbag chair, standing over her. The crown of his dirigible-shaped head, flaring out like a triceratops, nearly touched the top of her nine-foot ceiling. In tungsten light, his almond eyes always shone redder, his off-white “skin” slightly darker. She knew now that it was skin much in the way that humans had skin, but instead of individual living cells, his body was covered in billions of microscopic drones, which lent him some limited shape-shifting ability, such as the ability to form a syringe from the tips of his fingers, or the ability to become completely invisible. Same with the plates he used to travel; they weren’t liquid metal as they appeared but billions of self-replicating nanites.