Exit, and it took him. A sharp seam of light girdled his body as he sank. Iâd never hear from him again.
/Our turn next?
I spun around. Aremi, my prize, had dropped behind me, finally. I told her Iâd been worried about her, about what Melanak might have done.
/donât worry. am a big girl.
/there are other alts , I pulsed. /come with me?
I glanced over at the office door. Closed and locked. I didnât want any interruptionsâno Jocelyn to muddy the end.
/not sure , she pingâd.
/how about your email address?
/why?
/i want to know you better.
/ok , she pingâd back. /
[email protected].
Thatâs when I knew Aremi was gone. Her account, ghosted. Melanak had torched everything.
/what the fuck do you want? I pingâd.
/hahahahahahahahahaha.
So I pushed her, all my damage-per-second arrayed against her. Melanak tried to resist, except inside Aremi, he was a weak soul. I would take her with me into the Exit and annihilate us both.
But as I drove her, the Exit began to retreat away, likedraining water. I chased it, Aremi struggling in my arms, but still it fell away, out of reach. Crowds of figures then emerged from the skyâiridescent dragons, armored horses, creatures I didnât recognize. Below us, a new render appeared, lush and vivid, pagodas dotting the land.
The Chinese platform. This was the integration.
/wtf? Melanak pingâd.
A dark-haired girl with black wings answered. / ?
/konichuwa, fucktard , Melanak pingâd back.
The girl raised her hands, whispered a spell, and a thousand crows came and tore us both to pieces.
I powered the machine down. I could hear Jocelyn on the back patio. Iâd forgotten it was summer. Iâd forgotten about the sun. Since Jocelyn was home, midday, it had to be a weekend. Outside, she was tending to the plants in a raised bed on our patio. She wore a straw hat, pink gloves, and a pair of cutoff jeans made from an old pair of mine, which meant, at some level, I didnât disgust her. At her side lay a small pile of weeds. She had tried so hard to make this place a place.
âItâs over,â I said. âMore than over.â
She removed her gloves and pulled me to her. âThereâs so much world left to see,â she said, and let it hang there, between us, the line from the game, until I finally understood. âHow about a tour?â
I got on my knees. I didnât know the name of a single plant in the row.
âShow me,â I said.
Getting There & Away
On their first morning in what was the most spectacular place sheâd ever beenârampant sun, palms everywhere, bungalows planked on top of the waterâHaley and Mac paddled (Mac doing most of it) one of the resortâs outrigger canoes to the raft in the lagoon ( lagoon , outrigger , when would she get to use these honeymoon words again?) where, probably because heâd lost seven pounds since the ring sizing, Macâs wedding band just slipped off.
âTell me youâre kidding,â Haley said. She sat upright, her left arm covering her breasts. Sheâd been on the raft, sunbathing topless for the first time ever, feeling pleasantly retarded from the mai tais theyâd had at arrival the night before and then, because fuck it, again at breakfast. Theyâd flown for twenty-two hours, in a blur of deplaning and re-planing and magazines pulped down to their acrostics, to this crumb in the Pacific. She was not awake enough for an emergency.
Mac treaded water next to the raft, scanning the water, his snorkel mask askew.
âItâs right below us,â he said. âI watched it go.â The ocean was pristine here. She could see forty feet down, to the ridges of sand that looked like the piping on corduroy. Bits of coraland kelp drifted in the current. But she couldnât see the ring, the white gold band theyâd debated over forever that now had become, suddenly, a six-hundred-dollar piece of sea