“So I figured,” I heard her say. “I got a basic rundown. I was just gardening here, and the world’s ending all the way over there.”

“I’m…” I started. I thought of what I’d seen of Jessica and Riley. The strangling. “I’m sorry it came to that. Self-exile.”

“Nah,” she answered. “I kind of don’t mind being on my own. Spent my life with Jack and the rest. It’s good for me.”

I wasn’t sure it was, but an argument threatened to use precious time.

“You should tell me what you want from me,” she said. “Your sister is incapacitated, you need a good biology manipulator. If we’re talking about serious work, it might take some serious tinkering.”

“It might,” I told her.

“Meaning I should get started now if it’s going to matter in… how long?”

Twenty minutes until the Simurgh made her play for Fortuna.

But Riley wasn’t required for that. There was nothing she could theoretically do.

But after?

“No more than an hour, but it might be less than that,” I told her. “Could be half that.”

“It would need to be deployed. I’d have to get it from here to there,” she said. “What is it?”

“It’s… genocide,” I answered her.

Chris was staring into my eyes.

“Oh. Of?”

“Us.” No use dressing it up.

It wasn’t even easy to say.

“That’s a big ask.”

“I know, but we have resources—”

“For me, I mean. As a person. I don’t do that kind of thing. I’m… I find outlets like squeaky toads and earpods, clones that aren’t clones. I experiment with lifeforms that could seed other planets with life, and think about bio-rockets that might be able to get them there. I make real life versions of cartoon characters and movie characters I used to like. I don’t want to hurt people.”

“Even if it means saving everyone else?” I asked.

“I think I get why your sister wasn’t up to the task, now,” Riley said. “Give me the details.”

I did, outlining the parameters, the distinctions, the scale we were talking.

“How long does it take for me to get from where I am to where you are?” Riley asked.

I heard Aunt Sarah’s response, even if I couldn’t make out every word.

“That’s too long, then.”

“I can do it.”

I looked over at Chris, who was twenty feet away. Taking on a bestial form. He was going for his old namesake, it seemed. Black furred, rodent-like, lanky, with an arched back. He’d just spoken despite a mouthful of crooked teeth.

“Can you give instructions to my old teammate?” I asked. “He’ll access a lab to work, I’m assuming, put it together.”

“It would have to be a tinker,” Riley told me. “Specialty in anything relating to biology, blood, cloning, genetics, parasites, or anything like that.”

“He is.”