Rick blinked and reread the message on his phone. He must have forgotten to take me off the list.

It was a group text. Some names Rick recognized, but most he didn’t. He scrolled to the top.

Hector: Most of you know about Jerry’s funeral, but I wanted to remind you it’s today.

Hillside Memorial, the one north of the airport.

Hector: 4 p.m.

Hector: We’re all going to miss him.

He frowned and ignored the rest of the messages.

In all the time he’d been alive, he’d never wanted to die. As dark as things got, there was always a reason for him to keep fighting. Now that reason was gone. Hector had taken that from him.

He’d tried to text Kristina the night she left, and the night after that, too, but she didn’t return his messages or answer the phone when he called.

She used to say, “I’m nobody’s rock,” and she always smirked when she said it. That was wrong. She’d been his rock through the years when they were low. The life expectancy for a reCon was short, but he’d recovered because she stayed—even though he was broken. Even though she’d married a lion and gotten stuck with a lamb.

No one could see it from the outside. The suicide attempts, the bursts of anger and anguish, the unpredictable way she’d change from one day to the next, none of that kept her from being the thing that made him endure. He picked up a mostly empty beer can and shook it, then tipped it to his lips. He paused.

He put the can back on his nightstand and went to the kitchen for coffee.

He knew what he’d do now.

***********************

He stared through the window across from him on the train, but he didn’t process anything he saw. When a young woman sat down in the seat across the cabin, he didn’t avert his gaze. She stood and moved to another seat. No one wanted whatever vibe he was putting out, including him.

They wouldn’t put him through reCon again. You didn’t get a second chance after they mutilated you, though it had always seemed such an empty threat, anway. The reCon was so debilitating, who’d be able to kill again after that?

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I would.

Anxiety at the thought of it made him swallow. He conjured the yellow light and slipped into empty mind. He’d begun to study what he felt within the state, and it was different than he’d thought. The anxiety was still there, and his heart rate still rose, but they passed through him. They were events that simply existed in the same space he did, but he gave the fear nothing to hit, no edges, no bristles to disturb. That kept the dizziness and tunnel vision away, and turned his anxious stomach into an anchor that sank to the core of him, making of it a simple sensation around which he glided when he fought.

He’d come back into his power after losing the reason to use it. He laughed, just one chuckle. Like the anxiety of the recon, it passed through him. He ignored the worried look of a nearby passenger as the city rushed past them.

When an opponent tries to knock you out and misses, you make them pay.Did Hector realize how badly he’d miscalculated?

***********************

Rick let go of the empty mind before he got off the train, then walked the few city blocks to Hillside. He hadn’t known Jerry was Jewish.

The cemetery reminded him of the temple garden, though with rather more grave sites. The grounds were massive. Spots here must be expensive. He didn’t imagine Jerry made enough money for this sort of expense. The text had said the after-service was at the cremation garden.

There were a few crowds in various places, so he hung back until he saw someone he recognized.

He began to approach, but Manuel, who Rick hadn’t noticed before, locked on to him and began walking quickly to intercept.

Rick clenched his fists and slowed. Had it been someone else, he’d have knocked him out and kept walking until he found Hector.

“Whoa, buddy. Whoa.” Manuel held his hands up in front of his chest. “You shouldn’t be here, man.”

After closing the three paces between them, Rick stopped. “That right?”

Manuel shook his head. “What, you think he’s gonna let you anywhere near him? Sam wouldn’t shut up about Hector being dead wrong about you.”

“Hector shoulda figured that out a while back, don’t you think?”

The other man frowned. “You know man, there’s something I never understood about you.”

Rick waited for the rest of it.

He sighed. “Everyone can see you can fight, and I don’t just mean”—he smashed his fist into his palm—“like that.” Manuel nodded. “But why you only got one button?”

Rick squinted.

“Sure, Hector’s done you wrong, but you go in there?” Hector pointed at the crowd. “That’s a meat-grinder, and even if you fuck him up or kill him, then what? You’re a reCon. Hector’s dead, sure, but you’re dead, too, or who knows what they do to a reCon who learns how to get around it?”

“Maybe no one has.” But Rick wasn’t so sure.

“You really think that? All of California, you’re so special it’s just you? Or you think they bury them who do? Put ’em in hole and poke ’em, try to figure out how they did it.”

The thought had passed through Rick’s mind.

Manuel crossed his arms over his body. “You’re always forcing it, man. Always just knocking the shit outta whatever’s in front of you. Remember that first day with the laundry machine? You tried to force that too. Didn’t work. That’s your one button, your one move.” He tilted his head and leaned back. “Maybe learn another one?”

Rick gazed at the clear blue sky over the magnificent cemetery grounds. Though there was a needful urge within him to settle the score as quickly as he could, and that urge was a force itself—and it had always been that—Manuel’s words put a gap between that urge and Rick. In that gap was an empty mind.

Rick looked over the heads of those in attendance. Hector’s gaze was on him; the man wore the reptilian blankness of practiced calm, but those snake eyes flashed. Rick waved.

Then he turned and walked away.