I followed her out of the bar, which she locked behind us with a keycard. We walked down the wooden steps leading off the patio area and downhill onto a dirt road. We passed two houses that were built on stilts, cutting through the yard of the second. There was a blue apartment building here spanning the length of the two houses and the Clafendlin Cafe. She gave me a severe look, a knowing look filled with anticipation and unanswered questions, and the past. She unlocked a white door marked 7a and stood outside, waiting for me to walk in first. She came in behind me and closed the door, locking it with a bolt.

She approached me, and before I could take a breath, her mouth was on mine, covering my lips and parting them with her tongue. She did not kiss me aggressively, however, but lightly, and I could taste honey as I smelled her hair. I immediately reacted, my suit adapting to the rush of blood. A delicate touch of her hand in my hair, and I realized she’d removed her Sachigloves. I couldn’t stop myself—my grief and sorrow over my boy, our boy, trumped completely by the intoxication of knowing every part of her and begging to know it again, to know it more.

She moved her hands to my spinal connectors.

“Say … it,” she said, soft but serious. “Say it, Nin.”

“Arashi,” I said, and my suit retracted into the implanted spinal. She held my wrists with strong hands and walked me back toward the bed.

After we were finished, I collapsed on top of her, holding her close. We breathed in a silent, rhythmic agreement.

“I thought you were dead,” Shun said, a finger tracing the lines of my spinal connectors.

“I know.”

“I’m happy that you’re not.”

I laughed.

She smiled and nuzzled my neck. No treatment, no spray, nothing like that, and she smelled like strawberries. Always had.

I thought of the popcorn smell in the Clafendlin Café. For some reason, it was nagging at me.

“You remember the theatre we used to go to when we were kids? With the brown carpet?” I said.

“Red carpet. In Meek Onfidlack,” she said.

“You sure? I remember brown.”

“I know it was red. What about it?”

“We went and saw ‘Isn’t Anything’ with Brandy Butcher. You cried at the end if I remember right. When they got back together.”

She moved suddenly, looking at me oddly. “Nin, ‘Isn’t Anything’ came out five years ago. We never went and saw it. You were … you know.”

“No, we went and saw it, you cried. I always thought it was because of us.”

“You have to be thinking of something else. ‘Isn’t Anything’ wasn’t out. It’s impossible.”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

My vision shifted slightly, and I heard the smallest ringing in my ears like a hovering mosquito, and then it was gone. I shook my head. Shun relaxed her head back down on me.

“Bad memory, I guess,” I said.

She chuckled softly. A few minutes passed in silence, and then she said, “You know how I said it helped me? What we’re doing?”

“Mhm.”

“What I wanted to say was … it would help me … to have you.”

I turned my head to look at the blinking kitchen light. Shun’s apartment had no interior walls, but for the three surrounding the bathroom in the corner—nothing like the flat we shared in the Upper-City.

“I’d thought that doing something … like this would make me think about Asahi more,” I said.

“I honestly thought it would too. But then I saw you leaving, and it just felt worse.”

I kissed her forehead. “I know.” I rolled off her and lay down, one arm behind my head.

“You don’t have to go on the mission, Nin. You don’t even have to be a part of the Sun-Seekers. I know you think it’s silly—”

“Shun, it’s not—”

She held a hand up in the air to stop me.

“You could just stay here and do what you want. Be with me.”

I looked at her, thinking of all the ways I thought this would turn out wrong—the flood of memories that colored our relationship.

“What are you doing tonight? You leaving?” I said.

“You mean, am I going with Hinote? Yes.”

“Why? Are you gonna bomb every one of them? This wasn’t enough?”

Her face went stony. “It won’t be enough. Never will until they pay for Asahi,” she said, pointing at the door as if Andy Andalaf stood there, “and all the Sachi-sick in the Under-City promised better lives, working in the towers and hoping for better lives still, twenty years after the war.”

I stood, holding up a hand and muttering “Arashi” under my breath to get my suit to cover my body. I walked to the door. “That’s your choice, Shun. I don’t think it’s wise, and I wish you’d stay out of this. I get killing off a few Andalaf Jonnys or infantrymen, hell, maybe even some of the higher-ups, but the drill towers?”

“It’s the only way they’ll get—the fucking—point, Ningyo.” She said my name with acid in her voice, her face twisting like an old tree.

“Alright,” I said. “I don’t want to argue with you. I hope … just please don’t die, Shun.”

I left, closing the door behind me.

I walked through Meek Alfrendil and got to the edge of town. I saw a man with yellow skin sleeping at the side of a steep hill of trash and thought of Hinote’s daughter. I looked above to the Upper-Plateau, then to the remaining eleven drill towers where the giant tusked beasts lived, sucking Sachi from the dragon bones deep inside the earth.

I hated to think of Shun doing all of this without my help. It was so stupid, and they barely had a crew. Five people mad at Andalaf? It would take more than that to take down the towers. It would take more than me to find Morfran. I’d need something big to draw him in.

As I looked at the towers I remembered Morfran saying once, as we returned from a long campaign, “These creatures are ancient, wise, and they’re being wasted by Andalaf. Do you know how many there are in the world?”

I shook my head.

“Thirty-six. Twelve in Man’naka, twelve in Clyster, and twelve in Olifax. Do you know where they come from, girl?”

“No,” I said.

“The other side. The Sallis-Faint bring them through using the Dead God.”

His look had been severe, almost insane. Then he’d laughed, doubling over as he slapped me on the back.

Only thirty-six of the creatures in the world. And Morfran cared about them. He cared a whole lot about everything he’d gone mad for. If he knew they were being destroyed …

“Guess we gotta go tell Hinote to pay me more,” I said, panting in Shun’s doorway. There were still tears in her eyes as her face broke into a smile, and she ran to me, still naked, embracing me. We closed the door and made our way to her bed again.

“You’re serious?” she said after we were both dressed.

“If you’re going, I’m going, Shun.”

I thought about Asahi falling, Morfran’s uncaring expression, my raw, inhuman shriek. I imagined him feeling the same hurt as, one by one, I killed the creatures and then him.

“How soon before the sky falls,” Shun said.

I took out my bag of Sachi powder and said, “How many hits to the center of the sun?”