Every character was stylized, to the point it could be hard to keep track.

“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing at a guy in the background. “Were we introduced to him?”

“We saw him in the background earlier. He was putting the gun on the jeep,” Rain said. Rain wore the trinket at his neck, which changed his appearance to the scruffier, dark-haired alternate look. He sat with a similarly disguised Sveta and me on a curved couch, his boots resting on his bag, which was on the quarter-circle shaped table in front of us. The couch and table setup were one of twenty-five, each arranged so it was a rotation from nearby tables and couches, placed in the lounge area of a larger building.

The building was something of a hybrid: a dining hall, library, social area, and market all in one. At this end of the greater building, the smells and noise of the food court were muted by an intervening bottleneck. On the floors above, I could see the bookshelves of the library. Individual chairs, beanbags, and study nooks were up there, away from the light conversation of the lounge floor.

Twenty-five tables on the ground floor, a crowd, and then two floors of library on three sides, a wall of thick glass on the fourth side. Circular lights high above us glowed blue, pumping out the UV light.

This was Lyme Center. When the last winter had rolled around, things had been bad. Suicides had peaked as the winter went long, and isolation had been a part of that. Being cold and hungry was one thing. Being cold, hungry, and alone? The inorganic way that so much of the Megalopolis had sprung up had led to whole groups and clusters of people in isolated pockets being left with no contact with other people. There had been places where people could gather that had been crammed with those seeking human contact from dawn until well after dark, and there had been places where there just hadn’t been anywhere to go and talk to other human beings that weren’t neighbors.

Lyme had been a tent city a month ago, and past the big windows of Lyme Center the construction was continuing well past sundown. Snow, bright yellow construction vehicles, and dark skeletons of pre-fabricated buildings being put together. No plumbing, not in the original sense, just fat tubes set into ditches just deep enough that gravel and dirt could be piled over top and packed down.

“What show?” a guy asked, leaning over the back of the couch. He looked twenty-five or so, and from his jacket and the bag he had slung over his shoulder, he had the look of a tent-city denizen who hadn’t quite let his guard down.

Not so different from a homeless person who kept everything they valued within arm’s reach.

“Blood Atoll,” Sveta said, adjusting her headphones so the one wasn’t covering her left ear.