“I meant patricide,” I said, swinging my leg in a sweeping motion I thought might catch her off guard, but she jumped over it. “Pretty shitty move, killing a helpless old man.”

  “Oh, please,” she scoffed. “You had no pity for him. You hated his guts. You were probably almost as relieved as I was to see him die.”

  “What you did was messed up,” I continued. It was harder than it looks to keep an eye on her attacks and come up with stuff to push her buttons as well. “I mean, seriously messed up. You sure you’re okay?”

  Miro switched to the next song, the Weird Al version of Gangster’s Paradise. It would have been easier if he was still singing to nonsense seagull ballads rather than rapping about what it means to be Amish.

  A scream—James. Where was she? She wasn’t in the karaoke room anymore; she must have been with the pods. I couldn’t see her, couldn’t help her, couldn’t...

  Sidera swung again, catching me under the jaw so hard I tasted blood. She didn’t seem fazed by anything that had happened today, as if all this had just been an uneventful few hours at the office. Murdering your dad is not an alternative to idle chitchat with your coworkers.

  But that’s what made us different. Sidera was driven by a single thing: her desire to rule the universe. Her own, since this one wasn’t good enough for her. And me? Well, despite its flaws, I loved this universe. It was the only one we had. The only one with chocolate and bacon-flavored ice cream. Sidera and Desmond lacked not only care, and tact, but creativity; their universe was going to suck with them in charge.

  I swung my fist at Sidera’s face. She dodged, but not fast enough, and my knuckle squelched as it dug into her eye socket. The sound that came out of her mouth wasn’t human. I tried to force down my disgust as I swung again. As I kicked her in the leg, right where James’s bullet had hit.

  Miro phased into a new song, another one from a world I had never seen, this one a beautiful lament.

  All the wind knocked out of me, and I collapsed on the floor. Sidera had moved without me seeing, without me realizing. The same swoop of the leg I had tried and failed now had me on my back, Sidera grabbing my neck with both hands, squeezing, squeezing...

  Stars danced in front of my eyes, and not the fun kind. The ringing in my ears got louder until it drowned out the singing, everything but my own ragged attempts at breathing. My legs squirmed beneath me as I tried to kick her off, to no avail.

  Weak. Weak. I would die at her hands for failure to learn a single thing.

  At once the pressure on my neck and chest released, replaced by a stream of warm red liquid. Sidera collapsed to the side, her head going the other. James stood over us once again, her shirt drenched in blood. She was panting, heavy, eyes stuck open. She held my sword in her fist.

  “Thanks for dropping this,” she said.

  “Thanks for... well, this.”

  She reached down to help me up. My heart was pounding, my body still desperately trying to catch up on all the air it missed.

  And behind our ragged breathing—silence. Miro had finished their set and sat down on the side of the pit, apparently exhausted.

  “Desmond?” I asked James. She nodded, indicating the other room with a jut of her chin. His body lay prostrate on the ground there.

  She’d saved us both.

  She’d saved us all.

  We didn’t say any of that, not yet. Instead, we helped each other to Miro’s side, joining them in the karaoke pit, basked in the light of the still-running machine. The screen displayed symbols that seemed to have a smell, or maybe that was the music, another music we couldn’t hear with our ears.

  “Is it over?” asked James. Miro nodded.

  “I hope,” they replied. “We felt the Dread collapse and go. Some of us got tips for our performance. Most of us did not. What did you think?”

  “You saved the universe,” she said. “What does it matter what we think?”

  “So, you hated it,” said Miro, sighing. “Very well. At least I go out with a bang.”

  “You’ve still got a dozen more songs in you,” I said. My every word was agony, but they were words that had almost been taken from me for good, so I would use them. “At the very least.”

  “No, this is the end.” The way he said it, so casually, made me think my translator must have been damaged in the fight. Maybe he was just talking about groceries. “This was the plan from the very beginning. To preserve our last minutes to fight whatever was to come. We did it. Now we get to rest and party it up and then we reintegrate with the rest of the universe.”

  They closed their eyes, their breathing shallow. I glanced up at James, who shrugged, then hissed in pain. The blood on her shirt... shit, it was hers.

  “How am I the only one not actively dying?” I spat.

  “I’m not dying,” said James, forcing a smile. “It’s fine. I just need to lie down for a bit —”

  And she just collapsed on the floor.

  I rushed over to her, pulling open her shirt to reveal a gash the size of Texas on her abdomen. Oh stars, it was deep. How she was even alive and talking and even walking seemed impossible now. If I could kill Desmond a second time, I would have.

  “Shit!” I shouted. “What do I do? Miro, what do I do?”

  “Don’t ask me,” they muttered. “I’m dying too. You see, it’s the slow march of time that gets—”

  “I realize you just saved us all, but right now you’re really not helping.”

  I looked down at James, then at myself. I could, couldn’t I? Just a drop of my blood and she would be...

  No, it wouldn’t work. Even if that was an option, we were in the only place in the non-universe where my mojo was inert.

  And she’d made it quite clear that that wasn’t part of what she wanted.

  “M-Miro,” I sputtered. Shit, James’s skin was so cold. “This place used to carry your memories, right? Like some kind of external hard drive? In case you forgot?”

  They nodded. “My backup brain. It’s what allowed me to continue on for as long as I did. It’s useless now that my every self is dying of old age.”

  “Can I have it?”

  Miro met my gaze. “You want my backup brain?”

  “If there’s more disk space available,” I said, looking at James instead.

  “We haven’t used disks since—”

  “Please. She saved my life. She knew this could happen, and she still put her life on the line for us. For all of us. We owe her that much. I don’t know if we can fix her, so if there’s any other way...”

  Miro stood and hoisted themself out of the karaoke pit. They marched toward the back wall, kicked it, and a small metal safe dropped open. They reached in, pulling out a leather-bound book.

  “Here,” they said, holding it out to me. “Though it’s probably going to get hard for her to write anything; there are only two pages left and my pen’s dried up.”

  “This is a journal,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “This was your mental backup? The whole time, it’s just been a book?”

  “Journaling is very healthy for the soul, you know. Frees up the mind to focus on more important things”

  I bit my lip, holding back tears, holding back the urge to punch them square in the jaw. My hands stung at the fresh memory of bone colliding with bone.

  “There has to be some other way to save her,” I said, clutching her shoulders. It was amazing how quickly skin lost color, lost heat. My hands did nothing to keep the blood in her body.

  “If I were younger, I would invite her to merge with the hive mind,” they said, “but their body would still die.”

  I ran my hands through my hair. There had to be something. If this had happened at Nimien’s, we could have used the chairs. Hell, the pods here would have kept her from outright dying until we could treat her, but they were all out of commission.

  “Wait,” I said, turning back to Miro. “How?”

  “How. What?”

  “How did you merge a new self into your mind?” I asked. “You don’t go with them into the temple. They come in alone and come out connected. So how?”

  They shrugged, reaching back into the safe. The hologram turned back on, ready to congratulate us for coming this far, though he fizzled in and out of the light.

  “There’s a part of me saved here,” they explained. “Though I suppose you already know that from the welcome hologram.”

  “Is there any room for another mind in there?” I asked. “Please, Miro. You said you were dying. You have no bodies left. What would happen if someone joined who wasn’t you?”

  “It would be... complicated,” they said. “But it would save her essence. And there wouldn’t be any of my selves left to be bothered. But it would be like pouring a glass of water into the ocean—retrieving those same molecules would be complicated.”

  “But not impossible,” I said. James would be saved, and so, in a way, would Miro. I had to risk it. She just saved the universe. I had to save her. I reached my arms under James’s body, lifting her up.

  “Help her,” I begged. “Copy her brain. Save her.”

  Miro nodded. They took James’s hand, tenderly placing it on the orb. There was no response from her body, but the little crystal ball glowed a beautiful apple green, only for a second, before going dim.

  “There, she’s inside,” said Miro, handing me the ball. For a second, I worried it would copy my brain, too, but it seemed it needs their touch to be activated. “What are you going to do?”

  “Find her a hospital,” I said. “Just in case her body can be saved. Tell Zander and Blayde I’ll be on Earth.”

  They held up the little leather book. “You don’t want my backup brain anymore?”

  “Give it to Blayde. She likes journals,” I said, and I carried James into the exit light, her brain and Miro’s bouncing in my pocket.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Aftermath Is Just Aftercare for Math Abuse

  It was a small relief to bury my friend on our homeworld. A larger one to know we were only burying her corpse. I’m aware that’s how funerals normally go, but seeing as how Blayde was in attendance with James’s digitized brain in a handbag it’s safe to say this wasn’t your usual celebration of life.

  The funeral was somber, as serious as James had been in life, before space had brought out her snark. There weren’t dozens of people sobbing, mainly because there weren’t even a dozen people there, and that was counting the preacher and the undertaker.

  This was the third funeral, fourth memorial, I had attended in four years. Most had been empty caskets. I couldn’t listen to the preacher, saying the same words I had heard as John was lowered into the ground. As Matt’s empty coffin had been laid to rest. As Zander’s had. When we’d buried Nim’s memory on that long-lost planet, we’d at least tried to make it personal.

  Oh. I’ve watched Nimien die three times now. I bit my lip. Maybe this wasn’t the last.

  Somewhere behind me, an older woman let out a wail of pain. Grandmother? Her family only knew the official story unlike the rest of us: a low-ranking FBI agent. The capital-A-Agency reported her death as a failed operation. Dead in the line of duty. Nothing to help the family’s pain.

  As if anything could.

  Well, the little crystal ball might have. That or made things ten times worse. I knew James was alive. But I’d also held her body as she’d died. I’d also carried her lifeless corpse into the ER, sobbing, hoping there was still hope.

  There was. That hope was in Blayde’s purse.

  It didn’t mean I wasn’t going to have that extra piece of trauma living with me for the rest of my life. If Nimien was right about anything, it was my desperate need for a specialist.

  The sermon finished and the family was invited forward, their roses at the ready. The coffin lowered down slowly, white roses covering the sleek black polish of the wooden box that held our friend. As the people dispersed, a man approached with a shovel and began to drop the dirt back in, his face as solemn as he could make it. A formality, I assume; he probably would bring in a tractor once the family left.

  Blayde stayed beside the hole, her black hat covering most of her face. I watched, alone, while James’s family walked back to their cars, talking between themselves. Zander stood back, eyeing, just as I had, the dark figures watching from afar. He gave them a nod. They nodded back.

  Blayde pulled a small jar from her pocket, unscrewed the top, and poured the contents into the grave. A stream of brown dust hit the coffin in a slow torrent. The gravedigger paused, leaning on his shovel as he watched the odd woman perform this odd ritual, polite enough to stay silent as she performed this last act. It was only when she screwed the top back on the bottle that he spoke, as kindly as he could.

  “Were you two close?”

  Blayde nodded. “Closer than I would admit,” was her quiet reply. “She was... very dear to me.”

  “I’m sorry.” The gravedigger was kind, not pushing her. “You have my condolences.”

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “May I ask... the dirt? What was that about?”

  “It wasn’t dirt. It was stardust.” Blayde replied, as she slipped the empty bottle back into the pocket of her cardigan. “Captured during the birth of a star, so new, so far away, that its light will not reach Earth for another five thousand years. My version of a rose.”

  “Oh,” the man replied. He returned to digging as Blayde turned away, looking for Zander and me.

  “It’s you,” said a voice, before she could join us. “I didn’t believe it, I should have... it’s you.”

  The man beside her carried James’s face. Harder lines, older lines.

  “I know you,” said Blayde, quietly.

  “We met, though we were not formally introduced,” he replied. “My daughter told me all about you.”

  She nodded solemnly. “Mr. Felling, I presume?”

  He replied with a curt nod. “And you must be Blayde. I can’t believe that you’re really here, that you’re...”

  “Real?”

  He nodded once more, slowly, as if afraid that too much movement would scare her off. “I thought you were part of my girl’s imagination. We had her tested, you know.”

  “She mentioned that,” she said sternly. “How very nice of you.”

  “But you’re real, so everything she said... you saved my life. Back when I was based in Shanghai. During that...”

  “It was nothing.”

  “So, it’s true, everything she told me? About you being an...”

  Her face dropped. “Yes. But you must not go around spreading the news. Some people want me gone. I don’t want them to know where I am.”

  “Of course. Just so you know...she left no will.”

  “Why do you tell me this?”

  “So that you’re not surprised if you get none of her assets.” Mr. Felling frowned. “We are not keeping things from you. If you want anything of hers... well, we can talk.”

  “I have the only thing that matters.”

  “We would love to get to know you. We’ve heard so much about you. James spoke very highly of you.”

  “I don’t think that would be best.” Blayde shook her head. “I will not bother your family. Just know that... that James was a very, very brave woman. She always put others first. Always.”

  Blayde turned to walk away, striding across the wet grass, lowering her head so that the hat completely obscured her face. But James’s father didn’t move. He stood, planted firmly on the hill, arms akimbo, his face glum and without light.

  “This wasn’t an accident, was it?” he called out after her, but she did not stop. “Tell me the truth. I deserve it!”

  “You may deserve it, but it doesn’t mean you can live with it,” she replied. “James Felling died saving our lives. All of our lives. That is the truth.”

  “Don’t lie to me!”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Felling,” she called back, clear and final.

  When she finally reached us, she was holding back tears. Her hand was stuffed in her purse, and I knew what it would find there. A tear broke the floodgates and rolled down her cheek.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I did everything I could.”

  “You did,” she replied, meeting my gaze. “You saved her. But I should never have left her there. We should have brought her back here the second she hitched a ride. I should—”

  She broke down again, tears flowing freely now. Zander beat me to her, wrapping her up in the tightest hug I had ever seen. She sobbed into his shoulder, his coat turning into the sea.

  “I’m tired of burying my friends,” she said, quietly. “I’m so tired. This is why we kept coming back to Nimien, over and over again. Not a trap, but a reprieve from pain. And now I feel... I feel...” She turned to Zander. “And you don’t.”

  He shook his head. “Barely anything. Flashes.”

  “Hey.”

  I turned around, and there was Marcy, dressed to the nines in a stunning wool coat and Louboutin heels. Blayde needed Zander and Zander needed Blayde; they needed space. I trotted over to my bestie, who frowned, hands deep in her pockets.

  “Hey,” I replied.

  Marcy nudged the grass with the tip of her shoe, struggling to maintain eye contact. I guess I was too since I was staring at her shoe.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” she said. “Dany wanted to thank you in person, but her ministers won’t let her have a moment to herself. Foollegg tells me James was a hero. “

  I nodded. “She was. Is, I mean. She’s not totally dead. We saved her brain in a hivemind’s memory ball. She’s going to be okay.”

  Marcy raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “I didn’t either. But desperate times...”

  She took a deep sigh, finally looking up. She looked beautiful, movie-star beautiful. Like a full team of makeup artists and hairdressers had prepared her for this moment. I felt the opposite. We’d been back on Earth a few days, catching our breath, debriefing the Agency and the Alliance, but there hadn’t been a single moment for self-care. Sure, my skin was kept flawless by the universe, but just because it was healthy didn’t mean I was put together.