Everything went exactly according to Nita’s plan. INHUP was collapsing in on itself, she’d taken out her mother. Adair had been as good as his word, and black market forums had started questioning the legitimacy of the video of Nita circulating. Her involvement in the end of el Mercado de la Muerte, and the theft of files from Tácunan Law had been leaked as well, and the conversation online had shifted.

People were still hunting her. But they were more cautious now. They were waiting to see her next move. It wasn’t the power Nita needed, but it was a step in the right direction.

To all intents and purposes, she’d won.

Except it never really felt like it.

Her eighteenth birthday came and went, and she spent the day by Kovit’s side. She forgot it even was her birthday until the next day, when some spam arrived in her inbox promising her a fifty-percent-off birthday discount.

Adair emailed her a video file he’d managed to get from INHUP in the midst of the scandal. It was from her neighbor’s security camera, and it showed Zebra-stripes and her father fighting. Nita couldn’t watch the whole thing, it hurt too much, so she skipped to the end, where Zebra-stripes stood over her dead father.

She expected to feel relief, to feel satisfied at this proof that she’d killed the right person, that her father had been avenged. But it only made her feel more empty and hollow inside.

Through it all, Kovit slept. He had a breathing machine, and his chest rose and fell as it dictated. His chest was a mess of bandages. At one point, his pulse skyrocketed, and the nurses dragged him away for another emergency surgery.

When he came back, he looked even more waxy and still, his hair losing its gloss and his eyes becoming sunken. Sometimes, in the dead of night, Nita would enlist the help of her police supervisors to help her drag Kovit’s bed through the hospital to the emergency room to let his body absorb some of the pain. His color always looked better after that, though the police escort always looked unnerved.

On the third day, she had a new visitor.

Agent Quispe walked through the door wearing a crisp business suit and a cold expression. Her brown skin looked taut and a bit waxen, and her buzzcut had grown out a little. The officers at the door had relieved her of her gun, and she crossed her arms when she entered the room.

Nita rose from her seat beside Kovit, eyes wide. “Agent Quispe.”

“Nita.” Nita had never heard Agent Quispe’s voice so cold. Usually it was firm and commanding, occasionally gentle, but never angry, especially not this stony calm sort of anger.

Nita gave her a patently fake smile. “What brings you here?”