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  Senna went still, the tea souring in her stomach.

  Finally, Marin glanced up, wincing. “That was harsh, Senn. Jonathan will not get off my ass about everything. His job, his mother, his goddamn squash tournament, you . . . It’s just a lot some days, you know? Everything is so much.”

  Senna wanted to say, I understand, but she didn’t, because she couldn’t. Nobody asked her about anything, not while she was in hiding. While she lived with Marin and Jonathan, she kept to herself, trying to be the smallest possible nuisance. Not small enough, apparently. Her eyes drifted to the holographic screen suspended above the plaza. It wrapped all the way around like a digital ribbon, news chyrons and station alerts adding noise to the already vividly noisy lights and sounds of Tokyo Bliss. Sector 7, where they had met for coffee, was particularly packed, food cart on top of food cart, plazas encroaching on one another, the swarm of commuters breaking for lunch filling the sector with a constant hum of conversation, laughter, shouting . . .

  A daily talk show broadcast flickered across the plaza screen. Daily Bliss. Senna knew the show well, watched it almost every day. It was just the kind of predictable, cheerful pap that helped her zone out. The hosts, perpetually elated, wore pastel suits and sat between leafy fake ferns, interviewing chefs, writers, actors and the occasional palatable station politician. The hosts, Hali Teng and Zaid Forrester, sat on identical stools, clown-big smiles at the ready, their skin glowing with makeup. That day, a striking woman preened between them, her black skin perfect and lustrous, and seemingly makeup-free. Hali and Zaid chatted and giggled, the barista behind them screamed something at a woman on her VIT, the lunch crowd peaked, bodies crushing against their table while Senna clung to her teacup.

  It was so much to take in, she hadn’t even noticed Marin was still talking.

  “. . . It’s become this whole thing. I wouldn’t even bring it up to you, you know I said you can stay as long as you want. That stands, Senn, I want you to know that. I would never kick you out.”

  Senna inserted the silent but, and she was right.

  “Jonathan wants a baby. You’d think he was the one with the uterus the way he won’t shut up about it. Baby fever. I told him: Let’s just get a puppy first, I don’t even know if there’s a maternal cell in my body! But of course he’s allergic to everything . . .”

  She found herself nodding along, half listening, but more intent on the Daily Bliss broadcast. The model’s name rolled across the bottom of the screen. Just one word, no surname. Zurri. She was there to advertise a new skin cream, one she almost certainly didn’t need. Her big, wide eyes were so dark, almost black, impossible to look away from. The beautiful nakedness of her skin and simple, chic slip dress only made Hali and Zaid look more ridiculous—too airbrushed, too injected, too bleached.

  “Isn’t she gorgeous?” Zaid fawned, flashing his boxy teeth. “Just perfection.”

  Perfection. Senna put down her cup, realizing her hands were hurting from the heat radiating through it. Someone bumped into her chair without apologizing. Her heart raced faster. She was trapped. Crushed. Just breathe slowly, in through the nose, out through the mouth.

  “And even fish are stupidly expensive now. He doesn’t want to pay the bio tax, which is understandable, but it will be a lot higher for an actual human child. He doesn’t want to hear it.” Marin finished, following Senna’s line of sight toward the broadcast. “Ugh. Zurri. I would kill for her skin. Jonathan says her new line is too pricey, but whatever, if we can afford a fucking baby, we can afford some moisturizer.”

  “She’s perfect,” Senna agreed. And speaking of . . . She didn’t know if she had the strength to bring it up, but she had to try. Closing her eyes, she pictured the monitor open on the guest room table. Then she remembered the message, the header in bold and black, unforgettable.

  IMAGINE THE WORST DAY OF YOUR LIFE. NOW IMAGINE IT NEVER HAPPENED AT ALL.

  Just thinking about those words stole her breath away again.

  “Maybe this is the right time for me to go,” Senna heard herself say. She hadn’t even opened her eyes yet.

  Somehow, she expected Marin to at least mildly protest, but she didn’t. Instead she tossed her head side to side lightly, saying, “You know, Senn, my shrink says I’m re-creating a toxic cycle with you, that I’m fixing you instead of fixing myself, because it’s easier to take on your damage than to deal with my own.”

  I’m not broken, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know if she was broken or not, and if she was, if it was fixable. The cracks splintering through her heart were so wide, the gulfs there so deep, they felt permanent. Impassable.

  “Do you agree?” Senna asked.

  “Shit, I don’t know. He’s right a lot but he’s wrong plenty, too.”

  When Marin didn’t offer more, Senna took a deep breath, realizing it was her opening. “There’s this study that reached out to me. They want me to apply, and if I got in, then I would need to move out anyway. Maybe it’s time.”

  Marin’s black, thin brows rose to her hairline. “What kind of study? Are you sure it’s not a scam? If they want you to buy something to start, then it’s a scam.”

  “I would hope it’s not a scam,” she said with a dry laugh. “Paxton Dunn is running it.”

  Her eyebrows somehow went higher. “No shit?”

  They were never allowed to swear on the compound. “They want applicants who have experienced serious trauma, they want to safely erase the bad memories. I’ve overstayed my welcome, Marin, I know I have, and if this program could help me, then I think I need to jump on it. This could . . . this could really change everything for me. It could free me.”

  Marin’s shoulders slumped. Her VIT buzzed with more messages, undoubtedly Jonathan, but she ignored it. “This is serious stuff. Serious medical stuff. Are you sure you want to take the risk? What about Dr. Fentner?”

  “I like him fine, but it’s not enough, Marin.” She didn’t know if anything would ever be enough. “I need more than therapy. I need a fresh start. And it sounds like you guys need one, too. You need your space. And your baby.”

  “Jonathan’s baby.” Marin smirked. “But I hear you. You know you’re still welcome to stay, Senn. I would never kick you out. Mina would . . . well, she would want me to take care of you. You can take some time to think this over.”

  “No, I’ve thought it over,” Senna said. Just now. Her heart grew heavier at even the mention of Mina. “And I want to apply.”

  She could leave the station, escape the noise and lights, go somewhere peaceful and isolated, and come back someone brand new. Someone who wouldn’t start to gasp and drown in a crowd, someone who wouldn’t wake every three hours from nightmares, someone who could receive a hug or a touch without wanting to crawl out of her skin.

  Someone whole.

  Marin had gone silent, responding to Jonathan, probably giving him the good news. And Senna looked back up at the holographic screen, seeking out the numbing softness of Daily Bliss, the rhythm of something she knew and liked, safe sights and sounds that washed over her like a cool fan gust.

  But Hali and Zaid weren’t smiling anymore from their little stools. The model, Zurri, was on her feet, trembling. The whole plaza turned to look at the feed while the studio fell into chaos on camera. Someone had burst onto the set, an older man with a bushy gray beard and thinning hair. He was soaking wet. With his back to the camera, Senna couldn’t tell what he was saying, but the model was crumpling on her feet, her hands out in front of her defensively. Security rushed toward him, but he had already flicked something in his hand. Then he ignited, nothing but a ball of fire that lurched toward the hosts and the model, slowly falling to his knees.

  The plaza had gone silent. On-screen, the man screamed.

  2

  Someone would put him out. Someone had to put him out. Zurri shrank away from the blast of heat and the sme
ll. Oh God, the smell.

  She was already a vegan, but the burnt pig stench would have put her off meat forever.

  She knew the man in flames. Tony. He had been Tony. Security rushed onto the set, sleek, silver fire extinguishers held at the ready. White smoke filled the air, a hiss of liquid fat and a strangled moan came after, then the sound of Tony’s body, what was left of him, hitting the floor. Next to her, Hali Teng had not stopped screaming, her hands covering her eyes. On her left, Zaid WhateverWhatever vomited onto his six-hundred-dollar loafers.

  More security guards in all-black jumpsuits arrived, circling the charred, twitching body. One of them held up his VIT monitor, mumbling something about paramedics.

  “Zurri . . . Zurri . . .”

  “H-He’s alive!” Zaid shook his head, wiping his mouth, a smear of greasepaint makeup coming off on his white sleeve.

  Zurri would never forget the sound of her name coming out that way, like a thick, wet bubble bursting out of Tony’s mouth. It almost didn’t sound like her name, just a death wheeze, the last rattle of breath before the end.

  “Get me out of here, I have to get out of here!” Hali Teng leapt to her feet, losing a heel, and raced off the set, shrieking.

  Zurri couldn’t move. Every muscle in her body refused to cooperate. She couldn’t look away from the security guards and Tony. White motes danced around them like snow, but everything felt blistering hot under the studio lights. Winter in the desert.

  Her eyes drifted upward, to the little red light blinking over the shoulder of one of the security guards. The camera. Zurri finally found her strength again, wobbling off the floor and storming past the guards and Tony.

  “Cut the feed!” she screamed.

  The drone cameras buzzed softly in the chaos, hovering at different levels to capture every possible angle, every reaction, every nuance. The little red light didn’t go out, so Zurri grabbed the drone with both hands, tearing it out of the air and slamming it onto the ground.

  “I said cut the feed! What the hell is wrong with you people?”

  The station’s first aid personnel scrambled past her, a stretcher hovering after them. Their orange-and-yellow jackets were bright even through the haze of powder from the extinguishers.

  “Jesus, Tony, what were you thinking?” Zurri muttered, kicking the drone into the shadows, hoping it broke when it hit the wall.

  One of the security guards spun to face her. The others parted for the stretcher. Zurri couldn’t look—Tony had to be too frail to transport anywhere. She imagined him snapping like a burnt twig, scattering to ash. Her mouth tasted like a campfire. Tony went on moaning. From the darkness surrounding the too-bright studio, Zurri’s assistant, Bev, emerged, dressed in a formfitting red suit, her white hair shellacked like a helmet to her head. Tears had carved white paths through Bev’s makeup. She couldn’t get a single word out, just shook her head and stared in horrified awe.

  “You know him?” the security guard asked. The thin silver holographic badge on his chest read: davies.

  “Yeah,” Zurri said, pulling Bev into a limp hug. Where was the person to hold her? Not there, she thought. Maybe not anywhere. “Yeah, I know him. He’s my stalker.”

  * * *

  —

  Zurri’s knee bounced as she slipped the wafer-thin tab of Rapture under her tongue. She had to crank down her VIT AR settings even before leaving the studio with Bev—the flashing, the blinking, the explosions of advertisements in 3D neon color were too much. On the set, she had been frozen, but now she couldn’t keep still.

  Below her, Tokyo Bliss Station unfurled like a sci-fi cocaine dream, seen from the top, a bottomless well of possibility, depravity, commerce, research and life. Heady, filthy life, so many people and animals packed into one orbiting meat grinder of humanity. When she was younger it was intoxicating. Now she wished desperately to escape it.

  Zurri paced back and forth on the carbon-black balcony, the plaza one level down filled with nosy paparazzi and newscasters with telephoto lenses and camera drones angling for a single picture of her. The invisible holographic wrap around her balcony would make that impossible, distorting any images they managed to capture, standard-issue stuff for celebrity living. Some even went so far as to have the tech installed into their VIT monitors, leaving them a hazy ghost wherever they went. But normally, Zurri liked to be seen. Lived to be seen.

  If only she could disappear.

  Through the plexiglass separating her from the interior of the house, Zurri watched Bev frantically flipping through different feeds on the vid wall, cycling through the coverage of Tony’s self-immolation. Bev was probably on six different calls, juggling their response, spinning and spinning, downplaying the relationship between Zurri, Tokyo Bliss’s celebrity darling, and Tony.

  Tony.

  Zurri shivered, a tremor passing through her leg again. The Rapture was beginning to kick in, but not fast enough. She needed to smooth everything out, polish down all the sharp edges in her brain that threatened to slice and slice deep. Sometimes she took three or four tabs to relax before bed. Her doctor said it was risky, but Zurri couldn’t give a shit, not when insomnia was the alternative.

  The holographic balcony wrap and beefed-up security measures had gone into place after the break-in. Zurri had woken up with a chill, nausea pulling her out of sleep. Some deep, unseen part of her knew she was being watched, and when she snapped her eyes open, Tony was standing there, looming over the bed. Watching her.

  He was doing something else, too, but Zurri wouldn’t let herself think about that. They had been close once, as close as two working people could be. He was her first manager, the man who had gotten her her first gig, some small-time modeling for an online shopping bazaar. Things went quickly after that, her upward trajectory as sure and quick as the elevators rocketing up and down the center of the station.

  “I’m good at this,” Tony had told her at an after-party a year ago. “Because the only thing I care about is you. I don’t think about myself. Fuck, at this point, I’m not sure I have a self.”

  He did. And he had taken that self and used it to break into her condo and violate what little privacy she had left. She had been meaning to schedule a work-life balance talk with him, because she could sense something had changed. But she never scheduled that talk, and Tony took things into his own hands . . .

  God. Zurri shook her head violently, trying to dislodge the memory like it was a physical magnet stuck to the inside of her skull. She took another tab of Rapture, and inside, Bev just became a red blur pinging back and forth like a child’s ball across the living room floor.

  Zurri’s whole body went numb, and then her VIT vibrated, and she gasped, startled, nearly falling over. She caught herself on the balcony railing, her head stuffed with the drug’s velvet-soft effect. Nothing seemed bad for a second, Tony’s flaming torso as inconsequential as a red lipstick smudge on a white dress.

  “No interviews,” she muttered. All her calls were supposed to be diverting to poor Bev, Bev whom she always kept at arm’s length now. She had learned the hard way not to trust her staff. Work-life balance. “What the hell . . .”

  Somehow, a call had gotten through. Strange. The caller ID simply read LENG. Swaying a little, Zurri rolled her eyes—even that took immense effort while this high—and tapped the screen on her wrist, the sound of a pleasant bell chime singing up from her hand.

  Then a man’s voice, nasally, British, began speaking. No video feed accompanied the call, just a disembodied voice speaking to her disembodied consciousness.

  “Hello, Zurri. This is Zurri I’m speaking to, yes?”

  She licked her lips, the drug dehydrating. “How did you get through?”

  “Ha. I can do that. This is Paxton Dunn.”

  Frowning, Zurri leaned her full weight against the balcony railing, the Rapture making the world spin slightly. �
�Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  On the other end, the man cleared his throat. “Christ. I’m sure you’ve at least heard of Merchantia Solutions.”

  “Sure,” she said. They sponsored half the sporting events on the station, even had an avenue down on the tech level named after them. At one point they had probably paid for one of the fashion runways she walked down. “I’m gonna ask you again, how did you get through to my VIT?”

  “The usual way. Beverly assured me you would want to hear what I have to say.”

  “Fucking Bev.” Zurri glared at the fuzzy red-and-white blur that Bev had become, still taking call after call inside the condo. “Fine. You have me for twenty seconds. What do you want?”

  “Nasty bit of business today on the Daily Bliss,” the man said, clucking his tongue.

  “On second thought? Zero seconds. Goodbye.”

  “Wait. Don’t do that, Zurri. I want to help you. I can help you.”

  She turned away from the windows and watched the massive column of elevator banks to the east. The cars glowed for the different level destinations, now green, now pink, now blue . . . Watching them made her head spin a little less.

  “Help me with what?” she asked, letting the rhythm of the lights going up and down soothe her. Help. She doubted it. Nobody got help in her industry. Not really. Not lasting help. It was just a revolving door of surgeries, drugs, rehabs, even more extreme cosmetic surgeries, laser face resurfacing, new drugs, new rehabs, rinse, repeat, then look in the mirror one day and find a stranger. When she next looked in the mirror, Zurri wondered if she would see her own reflection burst into flames.

  That’s the drug talking.

  “What you experienced was harrowing,” Paxton Dunn told her. She snorted. “Hell, it was harrowing just watching it from my office. But if I never wanted to think about it again, I could do that. Just—” She heard him snap his fingers softly. “And it would all go away. No more assistant à la flambé.”