They spend the morning luxuriating in each other’s presence, in the simple act of sharing breakfast: garlic-fried pork and okonomiyaki, created by an exact division of labor—Yvette works on the pork, Jirayu on the okonomiyaki, a fluffy thing studded with squid and generously garnished with bonito flakes. Too early to order takeout, and in any case both of them are competent cooks.
Jirayu does not allow work to interrupt. She doesn’t pick up her tablet or phone; she does not think about the logistics of monetary movements or supply chains or stock prices. Next to the reality of Yvette, such things pale to meaningless phantoms, exposed for the figments they truly are. Her marriage is the solidity of the earth. It outlasts economic vagaries, and shall outlast their collapse.
Yvette pours earl grey for them both with a butler’s adroitness. She wants to be all things to Jirayu—lover, bodyguard, personal servant. “I need to learn to cook more dishes,” she says, “so I can be your chef too.”
“I won’t say no to you making us proper beef brisket soup. Peking duck too, if we’re getting fancy.” Jirayu takes a good sip of the tea. “But first, you’re going to be my dress mannequin.”
Jirayu’s collection of attire is extensive, and accounting for the additions of Yvette’s clothes brought back by Tatiana, the walk-in wardrobe holds enough to outfit an entire acting troupe. Their physiques are dissimilar, but there are a few dresses that can be loaned. She experiments with one now, a deep purple blouse and a black, flowing skirt. Not a perfect fit, but it looks good on Yvette’s frame; height always elevates simple clothes, giving them the aesthetic of minimalist elegance.
“I’m not objecting,” Yvette says, amused, “but are you asking me to switch to a more femme look?”
“Oh, never. You’re too handsome in suits to waste. But I’m building up anticipation.”
Yvette revolves on her feet for Jirayu’s benefit, trying to approximate a catwalk model’s gait. Not very successfully, but she makes her best attempt. More comfortably once she’s put on the clothes that are her wont; she murmurs in muted surprise that everything is an excellent fit. “This light green’s nice, don’t think I’ve ever tried that shade; did you pick it out?”
“Some version of me did.” Jirayu steps back. “You look fantastic, ready to be presented. I’m going to call Noor over, and we’re going to have to fabricate a bit of a cover story. Here’s the idea I’ve been concocting, and we are going to have to rehearse a few details . . . ”
They go over the cover story—at one point Yvette bursts out laughing; Jirayu shushes her. And then it is time to test the tale out.
Noor, as ever, is prompt. Barely fifteen minutes have passed between Jirayu summoning em and em appearing at her apartment.
“This is Yvette,” Jirayu says as her operations chief joins them in the living room. “She’s an asset from my mother’s American investment dating years back.”
Ey looks Yvette over, adversarial, appraising the way ey would be with any new hire. Nothing in eir face suggests ey has ever seen her before in any capacity. “I remember you mentioning her last year, boss, but—”
Yvette says, without missing a beat, “I was educated at a specialized institution from the age of ten. The elder Madam Vihokratana was promised our top graduate. That’s me.”
Slowly Noor looks from Yvette to Jirayu. “You’re telling me there is some kind of child soldier, or child assassin or child bodyguard, academy in North America.”
Jirayu makes a gesture. “I’ve been in contact with her for some time, Noor. Don’t worry about it. America is a strange sort of place, but really a bespoke bodyguard trained to loyalty isn’t that odd an idea. Yvette commanded a high price and Mother could afford it. She made a prepurchase.”
“You’ve never touched human trafficking—”
“I was trained very well,” Yvette says mildly. “Compared to most children in my country, I lived in the lap of luxury, Mx. Noor. To have been chosen is every reason to rejoice. I’m not a product of sordid conditions, and I’ve been serving Ms. Jirayu for longer than you think, a duty that fills me with the utmost delight and honor.”
Ey stares a moment longer before dropping into the chair opposite Jirayu’s. Ey does love eir comfortable furniture, and in private formality between em and Jirayu has long dissolved. Yvette remains standing, the picture of propriety. “Why all this secrecy? You could’ve just told me about her. Put her on the roster like normal staff.”
“I have reasons for concealing her as a wild card.” Jirayu crosses her legs, glances at her wife. In the suit that belongs to Yvette of this timeline, she commands attention: precise tailoring makes the honed lines of her silhouette even sharper, the anatomy of a hunter. “She saved me at the EmQuartier.”
Noor blinks, remembering the condition the mercenaries were left in. “No one single person could’ve done all of that.”
“I’m very good, Mx. Noor.” Yvette’s expression does not shift from its placid neutrality.
It has the intended effect on Noor. “Mind if I use your home gym, boss?”
Jirayu knows exactly what Yvette is after. She gives a nod, and follows both of them over. Her home gym was furnished to accommodate Yvette—the equipment survived her forward-and-backward erasure, oddly—and there is a rectangle of clear space for exactly this purpose: Noor and Yvette sparring. It was their bonding activity, and Jirayu is hoping for this to spark—if not recognition—then at least acceptance.
Both of them take off their jackets as they step onto the mat. Yvette and Noor are roughly equal in height but built differently, Yvette broader but Noor much denser: the kind of muscle that invites comparisons to boulders. Ey can press a fantastical amount of weight.
The two of them begin well apart. The distance is swiftly closed. Yvette has marginally greater reach, but in quarters this close that translates to near nothing. Noor opens with an uppercut that could have shattered her jaw; she nimbly dodges that and returns the favor with a kick that would have dislocated eir elbow. It is rough, nearly as serious as a real fight, and Jirayu enjoys the spectacle—the leashed violence of it. The two do hold back, but to a casual observer it’d look as if they’re trying to maim each other in earnest.
But though Noor usually wins—ey is superior in hand-to-hand—this time Yvette has unfair advantages. She doesn’t show them immediately. She waits until there is an opening, catching Noor’s fist in her hand; does something to eir feet that trips em over.
Yvette bears em to the ground, pinning em with her weight. She jabs em, gently, in the neck.
“All right,” Noor says, straining to glare at Jirayu. “She’s good. Fast. I’m still not buying this entire spec op academy for toddlers concept. That is ridiculous.”
“Nothing is off-limits in America,” Jirayu says. “You know that. And I didn’t say toddlers, Noor, that’d be very silly. Those have neither a personality nor fine motor control.”
Wordlessly Yvette gets up and offers Noor her hand. To eir credit—a graceful loser—ey takes it and allows her to help em to eir feet. Ey picks up eir jacket, careful not to get sweat on it; Jirayu has trained her staff to take some care with their uniforms. “She’s to be a secret, but you wanted to take me into your confidence. Go on, boss.”
“I need to find a spy.”
“For leaking your schedule to Peterson?”
“Among other things.”
Ey glances at Yvette, who stands with hands behind her back, expression as composed as a painting. “She any good at smoking out rats?”
Jirayu shrugs. “She’s good at anything I need her to do.”
“High praise. All right. Do you suspect Ingvild? She comes in and a day later Peterson tries to get you and Ingvild then, supposedly, single-handedly nabbed him. In a way that’s most probable if he knew and trusted her.”
“You had her trailed.”
“Have,” ey corrects. “I’m getting live updates as we speak. Extra background checks didn’t turn up anything unusual, credentials are impeccable, nothing outside what it says on the tin. Her daily routines are depressingly normal. I had someone dig into her electronic presence—not much of that, but from what little exists, again nothing that raised flags. Got a photography account, lots of winter vistas, not one corpse or bit of shrapnel in sight.”
The appearance of civilian life. “I want to make sure there’s no rats hiding on my payroll. I’ve got someone else on the office workers, but the worst thing I’ve found out so far is minor embezzlement.” Which has tempted Jirayu to minor violence, but she cannot give in to such conduct for the cleaner side of her operations. HR discipline will have to do. “So the main suspect is Ingvild, and anyone else that doesn’t strike you quite right.”
Noor raises eir eyebrow. “Such as a new bodyguard who appeared out of nowhere and made outrageous claims?”
“Other than Yvette,” Jirayu says dryly. “I’m getting her settled in my apartment. Can you take her out tonight to work?”
Eir brows crest further—she has never let any bodyguard stay right in her suite. Except while traveling, and only in high-risk areas. “I’ll come by at half past ten. You’re sure she is competent at surveillance.”
“I’m sure.”
Once Noor has gone, Yvette says, “I can’t believe you came up with that child soldier school idea. I’ll be the first to insult every aspect of America, but none of the desert warlords are that organized or that smart. Their human trafficking is the most banal, most disgusting sort.”
Jirayu slides her hand into the crook of Yvette’s elbow, guiding her toward the garden. “It’s still more believable than the truth. Oh, good afternoon, Noor. Do you remember Yvette? No? Well, she’s my wife whose existence was erased from all memory—including your eidetic one—and now she’s back, only she’s a cyborg super soldier modified by aliens.”
Yvette’s laughter is a sudden, gusting thing. Often it is restrained. In private it is loud, and Jirayu enjoys it—the calligraphy of the sound, the flowing poetry of its cadence. “People who think you have no sense of humor are fools. Why are you hounding your new employee Ingvild?”
“When you arrived, you didn’t show any hint of worrying that my place might be bugged. The Vector isn’t keeping an eye on me that way.” She ticks off her fingers. “They nearly let me die at the EmQuartier and would have removed your anchor from this timeline, ruining their own plans. And your Bulwark handler isn’t acting despite claiming to be present in every branch. This means both factions are reliant on human agents.”
“A lot to deduce. But yes—tracking devices aren’t an issue; they saturate cities with them in some branches; not here though, and for whatever reason they don’t use conventional human tech. Maybe it’s beneath them. So you think there might be a cognate like me on your payroll?”
“Yes.” She brings them to the stone bench where they used to watch sunrises. “Should you be seen in public?”
“I’ve managed. Gamayun let me know I’m hard for the Vector to perceive. Something about the properties of being from One Comet Nucleus.” Yvette’s eyes fall on one of the potted hydrangeas. “I remember Noor telling me ey knew your mother.”
In spite of herself, Jirayu tenses. Yvette can feel it, she knows. “Ey signed on with Mother when ey was what, nineteen? A few years my senior. We nearly grew up together.”
Her wife’s voice is careful. “In Comet One Nucleus, you didn’t talk about your mother much. At all, really.”
“I didn’t tell you about her here, either.” Jirayu tilts back against the bench, at an angle to Yvette’s arm. “There is only one story. It’s about how she died.”
“Jirayu, you don’t have to. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No. I held back the first time around.” Out of a driving, relentless need to remain a creature of perfect armor, tungsten and carbon steel; a need to tell the world, and tell Yvette, that she was a self-sufficient being that required no other. A closed system. “I didn’t let you get to know me. Not really. And in some ways, that is unfair in a marriage. I’ll make amends now.”
For a minute or so she looks at the water features: several tiny fountains cycling water infinitely, forming a near-perfect loop. As close to a metaphor for their union as any. She’s not yet told Yvette this was her domain, and this instance has not expressed interest in horticulture, in the task of nurturing green shoots toward the brightness of blossom, toward the fragrance of fertile things. Once she asked her original Yvette if she wanted a real farm, an orchard to look after and nourish. Yvette said that it’d take her away from the duty of guarding Jirayu, and that was not a worthwhile tradeoff.
“There was a car bomb,” Jirayu begins, not easily because it’s not as if she has ever told anyone else this. This is the most private of matters, the sole secret maintained within the core of herself, in a life where she’s nearly always monitored. By bodyguards, but nevertheless there’s been little privacy. “I was sixteen. About to be seventeen, actually; Mother and I were going to celebrate my birthday next week. I didn’t get parties, but I got time with her, tea and desserts and a little gift every year. A gun when I was fourteen, and beautiful too. Custom-made, I’ve never seen anything like it since. You wouldn’t think someone in her profession would choose to be a mother, but she doted on me completely. Trained me to replace her, of course, but she loved me. It wasn’t the most practical way to get a successor—one of her lieutenants or so would’ve been a better, more obvious choice; she was a traditionalist, in that regard. And maybe she saw a child as a living legacy, too.”
“Noor said she was . . . charismatic.”
“Oh, yes. There were a lot of people at the funeral. Can you imagine? Most arms dealers don’t get mourners at our going-away parties, not that we deserve any.” Jirayu nearly laughs. The sound tastes like iron in her throat. “Well, the car bomb. I was riding in another car, she made sure we were always in different vehicles since she was the primary target. People wanted to do horrible things to me, naturally, to break her spirit. But mostly they wanted to end her. So—it was ingeniously rigged, nobody noticed until the last minute. It went off while we were about to go . . . I don’t remember where. There was a lot of screaming, I got out of my car and ran to hers. It’d been reduced to scraps and flame, and her detail was dead. She wasn’t, though. Her lower body was twisted into the wreck, the seat, and half of her face was burnt. Her spine fusing into metal. I think I was trying to pull her out of all that, but I was sixteen and never the strongest. And she could still talk.”
“Right,” her wife says very softly, hand closing around Jirayu’s.
She does not squeeze back. “Mother told me she wasn’t going to make it. Obvious. I kept trying anyway—I was crying in the most embarrassing way, just bawling my eyes out. Then she said, end it. She wanted to go with dignity; she didn’t want them to salvage the mess her body had become and drag her to a hospital where she’d die by centimeters. A clean death was the best our profession could hope for, she’d told me since I was small. Anyway, I took surprisingly little convincing. I shot her in the head with the gun she gave me at fourteen. Then I threw away that gun. A shame, no? It was so beautiful.”
“Jirayu.” Yvette’s voice is taut, a string on the cusp of snapping. “That’s—”
“Chin up, Yvette. It was character-building.” Her mouth pulls into a rictus, a cadaver’s or predator’s. “After that, I never felt afraid again.”
It’s strange to be working with a permutation of Noor that regards me as a stranger. I try to think of whether ey survives in the branches I’ve crossed, but I was so singularly focused on Jirayu that I never took notice. A failure of sympathy on my part; in One Nucleus we are—were—fast friends, united in the purpose of protecting Jirayu. I disappeared from eir life. Likely ey assumes me dead, knowing me well enough to tell I could not suffer a world without the woman I treasure more than myself. Maybe ey mourned me as ey mourned her. I’ll never properly know. I fled that branch without ever checking if there’d been a funeral, a gravestone or a jar of ashes.
Now Noor is assessing me, studying and picking apart every facet as though this external scrutiny could bare my soul to em and affirm that I have no intention to act against Jirayu. “Tell me about yourself,” ey says.
“That’s not much to tell.” Jirayu and I went over my supposed background, covering the basics. She added a number of embellishments. For casual conversation, I should be convincing enough, and after all there’s only one person I need to sway. “I was a kid in a big family—Christian, no contraceptives, that sort of thing. They had to manage the numbers so they could afford to feed the rest. Luckily my parents didn’t want to sell me into sex slavery, and really I lived better at the boarding school than at home; didn’t miss them much, after a while. Don’t remember their faces anymore or my siblings’ either, but I don’t think of it as a big loss.”
Noor makes a turn, navigating an especially steep curve. “What’s the terms of your contract with the boss?”
“She owns me completely.” This is the one part of the role I like: it corresponds to the truth. “No warranties, no refunds.”
“And you’re okay with that.”
I smile. It is genuine. “I like to be owned by her. Cuts down on a lot of useless decision-making. I’ve got one job and need to think about only one person. Life couldn’t possibly be simpler.”
“A bit twisted. But it’s your life, and the boss is the boss.”
In another branch, Noor was there to watch as our relationship bloomed from that of a defiant dog and a patient mistress. Ey was there to see it become something that approached a marriage. Ey teased me about it: Normally I think sleeping with your employer in this line of work is a horrible idea, but the two of you work well together, and Jirayu looks a lot less like she needs therapy these days.
I touch my bare throat, wistful already for the jeweled neckpiece. In One Nucleus Jirayu kept a small wardrobe of them, leather and fabric and precious metal. For private wear only, though I’ve been tempted to don them in public. During sex, a collar makes me focus even better on the sight and scent of her, eventually the taste; it makes me feel whole. She is an ocean in which I could happily drown.
But now I’m thinking of what she told me, the part of her she’d kept locked away for so long. She came out of her mother’s demise strong, in the sense that you can remain strong after you’ve amputated a necrotizing limb. When I left the apartment, I was terrified of what she might do to herself; I insisted that I should stay. She told me that she gave me a task, and expected it to be done well and promptly.
“I met the elder Madam Vihokratana once,” I say, aloud.
“Yeah? So did I.” Noor does not give anything away—no extra information preemptively yielded—while warning me that ey can fact-check if I dare to invent.
“Commanding presence. I was twelve, and not yet the school’s top candidate—bit of a runt—but I overheard Madam talk about her daughter, and I thought, well, my parents never talked about me like that. It came across to me that she genuinely loved her kid.”
“That she did. Nice to see when you come from a dysfunctional background.” Ey doesn’t clarify whether ey means emself or me, but in this job—the apparatus of violence—most people emerge from circumstances that breed pathology. What child of a good, well-habituated household becomes a mercenary for hire? “I told the boss once that her mom would’ve been proud of her. She told me, thank you, Noor, I already know that.”
I can’t help snorting. “She’s . . . very.”
“Don’t get too familiar.” Eir voice is dry. “But if you enjoy working for her, that makes my job easier. When I signed on with the elder Vihokratana, she assigned me to Jirayu’s detail pretty fast. A while later—she felt she was getting on in years, I suppose—she made me promise to protect Jirayu with my life. I told her, madam, that’s my job to start with. But I like to think of it as a point of honor. I’ve kept my promise.”
“Thank you.” This comes out reflexively.
“That school must’ve conditioned you well and good. I was about to tell you I’d rip out your spleen if you harm her in any way or even upset her, but it doesn’t look like I’ll have to. All right, we’re here.”
Ey pulls into a quiet parking lot. From there we adjourn several buildings over—the basic rule of surveillance is to leave as few traces as possible, keep vehicles at a distance—and come to an apartment complex. Much less nice than Jirayu’s, no lobby, no receptionist. Security measures are of the most easily bypassed sort, entirely ordinary. We need no more than a forged keycard to get through.
According to Noor, Ingvild is seeing someone, and would be sleeping over elsewhere tonight. A window of opportunity for us to rummage through. The keycard gets us into her room. We put on gloves, and get to work.
One bedroom, one small bathroom, a corner that could be generously called a kitchenette if one stretches the definition—it’s equipped with no more than two appliances: an electric kettle and a microwave. The bed is so narrow it makes me think of a barrack bunk. I’ve become accustomed to Jirayu’s luxuries, bed sheets with fantastical thread counts, ergonomic pillows clad in silk, granite bathrooms. But I have not forgotten my origins of privation, when I often as not slept under the remains of bombed-out roofs, under black boughs shorn of canopy, on hard ground and pallets. From that perspective, Ingvild’s apartment is palatial; from what I know of her income, it is completely austere, not meant to receive guests—not meant for anything beyond basic needs, the sort of accommodation I might’ve gotten for myself. The bathroom hosts the blandest, cheapest sort of toiletries; the fridge holds bottled water, energy drinks, a few oranges.
“This is some of the most depressing shit I’ve ever seen,” Noor says. “And I’ve broken into all sorts of homes. What kind of institutional hell did she grow up in?”
“Maybe she’s just frugal.” But I know that’s not the case. Her background sounds, if not affluent, then comfortable. This is a temporary residence. She can pack up and move at a moment’s notice. That by itself is suspicious—typically signing on to be Jirayu’s bodyguard is a long-term contract, lasting several years, barring misconduct or treachery.
I begin the slow process of patting down her bed for anything hidden. None. I peer under; also nothing unusual. The nightstand drawer has a couple cheap paperbacks, both in Thai, wuxia novels to judge from the covers. The first sign of personality I’ve spotted.
Ultimately we find nothing—her wardrobe is staid—save for boxes of ammo and a spare smartphone that has had its battery removed. There are no computers; I’d expect at least a heavily encrypted laptop. This suggests she relies on her primary phone as her sole device, and it’d be on her person at all times. All of this raises questions, but nothing actionable—
My skin pricks. The Bulwark implants whisper under layers of nerves and fat, awakening verses in my marrow. Gamayun explained my modifications poorly, but I don’t need sophisticated calculus to understand what I’m feeling. The alien instruments inside me are resonating with their own kind. The wardrobe. I locate a false bottom, push it open, and find underneath what appears to be a jewelry box. I retrieve it, open it, hold it up in the light. Placed into slots are what appear to be large black pearls. Cosmetically different from what I’m given, but identical in purpose. She is a cognate, like I am, assigned to monitor Jirayu.
“What are those?” Noor from behind me. Ey pauses as eir phone buzzes. “Ah, shit. She’s back early; still in the parking lot. We have time to get out, but she’s going to know someone has been through her things.”
We tidy up as best we can and then head out through the fire exit, the thief’s egress of choice. I replaced her box of Vector compasses—they would almost certainly double as tracking devices—and as far as that goes, she’d be none the wiser. I hope. But my thoughts race ahead of me: the Vector, then, has anticipated my arrival and dispatched a pawn to watch Jirayu for that event. Ingvild, unlike the Vector, would have no trouble perceiving me. It both relieves and concerns me that the Vector needs human agents. They’re not omnipotent.
But they must also have a near-infinite number of cognates, unless the Bulwark has been arranging the demise of those as well, both sides culling the other’s troops. An endless war of attrition that arcs across the quantum tree, twining into its roots like a snake. It would help if I were apprised of the tallies, but then I’m no more than infantry, cannon fodder almost, to Gamayun.
Our departure is uneventful, and Noor takes me out to a bar after. Ey watches as I case the location, noting the seats, the bartender, the other patrons, the exits. Something very like approval passes through eir features. I appreciate it too, that ey feels ey must thoroughly grade someone who will serve as Jirayu’s personal guard. It speaks to the depth of eir care, eir affection for my wife.
We have very different tastes in liquor. Noor goes for the whiskey; I opt for a pear-and-mango daiquiri. That prompts em to say, “I’d have expected you to pick something more macho—American beer or something.”
“Heaven forbid. Those things taste like wastewater, and that’s an insult to sewage.” The real reason is that my alcohol tolerance is nothing to write home about, and I’d rather stay sober around Jirayu. I swirl my little cocktail glass. “The boss loved her mother, didn’t she?”
“If you think I’m going to spill because I’m imbibing alcohol, Yvette—”
“It’s not that. I already know a bit about . . . ” The tragedy. The fatal event. What is the correct name for such a thing? “I just worry that she might be lonely.”
Noor gives me an odd look. “Do you—pardon me—really have no one else in your life?”
“None.” All my friends are dead or left behind in America, where I will not set foot again.
“Look at you. Just saying it, admitting it like you aren’t supposed to lie and pretend you have a flourishing, full life of your own the way normal people do.” A long draw of whiskey, Noor’s throat working as it flows into em, and then a clink as the glass is set down. “What the hell, as if I have a life either. Jirayu gets lonely, I guess. She’s got no family left that anyone knows of. Her business associates are vipers. With the kind of wealth and power she has, it’s not . . . easy to make real connections.”
“And she doesn’t want to.”
Ey studies the unquiet whirlpool inside eir glass. “After Madam Vihokratana’s funeral, Jirayu told me she wasn’t sure how to be a human being. I told her it was all right, people strive toward how to do humanity right all the time and it didn’t make them any happier. Possibly it was the wrong advice to give. In my defense, I was twenty and very stupid.”
I want to say that I like being the only thing she cares about, the only possession she regards with any depth or affection, and which she wants to keep with her forever. But it’s as Noor says—you aren’t supposed to confess your dysfunctions, these petty crimes of psychological unwellness. I’ve already said plenty, and to em I must seem obsessed with Jirayu.
A pulse stabs through me.
I set down my daiquiri. What I feel is not quite agony. But it’s the twisting sensation, the warping of my physical matter, that tells me I’m about to translate.
Brightness flares behind my eyes, and then I’m elsewhere.
Pedestrian cacophony: conversations, phones ringing or dinging, street vendors hawking glutinous rice and pork skewers and too-sweet drinks. A Krungthep street. No one has noticed my abrupt materialization—a quirk of translation; the natives of a branch never see anything out of place, their perception bending around it. Above me is a vastness of concrete bearing up the elevated train station, the countless footsteps of passengers crossing platforms. Opposite me is the side-entrance to a hospital complex, one of the greater and more expensive private ones, and then I realize I’ve been here before. This is the branch designated Orbit Five Rachis.
In it, I’ve been dying of a brain tumor.
The last time I was here, I could not stay long—I watched my counterpart in her hospital room still laughing and talking with Jirayu; not yet close enough to mortality’s end to open up an absence into which I may slot. The branch rejected me and forced me to translate elsewhere. Now, perhaps, the instance of myself has declined more deeply, eyes empty, cognitive functions dimmed. I scan the area for Jirayu, knowing she must be nearby. It is why I’ve been drawn here. I don’t have a plan, a contingency for what I would do if I locate a second instance of her that I could theoretically stay with, whom I could armor within the alloy of myself against the universe’s ills.
Then I spot her coming out of the hospital, alone. No detail. Where is Noor? Her clothes are wrinkled as though she hasn’t changed out of them for days, and her hair’s in no better condition. Normally she is so precise with her polish, using the way she looks as both defense and intimidation. When she looks up I can see her face is pale, her gaze shadowed, and I know that her permutation of me is gone.
Her eyes widen when she sees me. Her mouth parts around the syllables of my name, and then she’s running across the traffic.
I begin to move forward; I begin to make of myself her shield. But though I am fast, a speeding car is faster still, and she’s not looking—she’s not . . .
A car horn blares; tires screech against asphalt. The brakes are applied too late.
In nightmares I will always be seeing this. It will replay over and over, the sight of her mangled body, the visceral reality that spills out of punctured flesh and shattered bones. The sound of impact, as loud to my ears as if it’d happened to my body.
But a final mercy: I’m not allowed to stay and watch. The snap effect pulls and Orbit Five Rachis recedes.
The air is cool in Jirayu’s apartment, insulated from dust and city pollution, from the chatter of passersby and traffic. She’s tending a potted anthurium, and startles when she finds that I’m abruptly—impossibly—next to her.
I drop to my knees. I throw my arms around her and cling on without explaining. I don’t say anything. The only thing I can think of, the only words on my lips, are not ones she needs to hear because they will reveal my weakness: Please make this stop.