“I’m sending her in,” the professor announced.

  Hayley's back was to the pair as they performed maintenance on the autorobota in the warehouse.

  Her attention was fixed, or rather, appeared to be fixed on the slate filled with data on the work they were doing.

  Her attention was actually on the moon, her life at the glamour casino, now with Lee there as he went on the S-boat adventures causing mischief and mayhem amongst the stars.

  “No, no fucking way!”

  Hayley giggled at the vaguely goose-like word they both used so frequently.

  She felt Lee's eyes on her.

  “You cannot send her back”

  Hayley froze, now trying to look extra attentive to the slate. She thought the matter of being sent back to her parents had been settled hours prior. She was beginning to wonder when the pair ever slept.

  “We’re out, and she needs a starter dose.”

  “Okay, we still have like twenty puffs on that inhaler. You're welcome by the way.”

  “Yes, yes, but she hasn't had any. We have to send her back to get some.”

  The conversation was about something else, but she was inclined to believe Lee would protect her, and therefore, whatever she was to be sent off for was something to be protected from.

  “She will be fine. Angel’s your friend, right?”

  “Yes, they'll take care of her. But she doesn't know who to look for, or what to say. Their name isn't Angel, I just…”

  “Yeah, you miss your fucking dealer and all that Halo’s got you so melted that your language center is a blob and you dont need as much inhaler now.”

  “You would've liked Halo. You'd be too smart to be this nervous.”

  “Excuse me? I ain’t ever been nervous, bitch!”

  Hayley knew this word, except it didn't make sense. Lee was not a pregnant, overly aggressive female wolf.

  “Oh, oh yeah? You're gonna send her alone because you—”

  “The machine can't take two!”

  “I just fucking did! Bitch!”

  Lee added the last swear almost cautiously. Perhaps they both knew they were misusing the word.

  The professor paused, his scowl hidden behind his hair's unique woven rows.

  “Show me the data. Can their electrical grid handle doubling the power requirement?”

  “No, no look, we both have weak bones. The density only needs like twenty percent or so, and I already wired in from across the street. And I checked, they aren't on the same breaker.”

  Hayley found herself looking over their shoulders at the obsidian slates they were comparing.

  She found the numbers immediately, and realised they were power conversions from the doorway. Two large spikes appeared and showed they had overloaded the circuit. The doorway closed due to something like an avalanche tube, but the autorobota simply corrected itself and used a secondary for the return trip. The system had sixteen built in.

  One other had been blown prior.

  “See!” Lee interrupted.

  Hayley didn't see, but the professor seemed to.

  The numbers themselves made no sense. She had once asked, as a child, how the new electric lighting worked. Her father, of course, shouted such follies down and told her the only engineering she was to learn was the method of nailing a sole to a shoe.

  The library had volumes on the subject, but without a practical application, she was only ever an observer of the phenomenon.

  Then, when her womanhood began to blossom, she was excluded from all her father’s spaces, except to clean them. She was sent to the nearby school for girls, and while she easily passed any task set to her, she received negative marks for constant inattention. The older she became, the more difficult it was to read at the library uninterrupted. Her father would never sign books out for her.

  Instead, her father had to pay dearly to have those negative marks removed by inviting those men to watch her dress fittings.

  Her skin crawled just as it did that first time. The two men in the present had stopped talking and were staring at her.

  “Girl, you heard?”

  “My name isn’t ‘girl.’ My name is—”

  “Hayley,” Lee finished, although she was far more annoyed than the proud look on his face.

  “That’s actually your name?”

  “Yes. Do you have a name, or only a title?”

  The professor smiled, with a sarcastic chuckle, “Yeah, no, I ain’t no gray. Not that you understand that joke. Despite Lee calling me all that dumb shit, like Prof and Sarge: My name is Ray, not Raymond or any other dumb shit. Just Ray.”

  “Justray, I believe that—”

  “Ray. Nothing else.”

  “Ray, sir. I believe that now that we are acquainted, I could ask that both of you stop behaving so unbecoming of gentlemen and honor my preference of treating myself and each other and personage.”

  The professor looked at Lee, “The fuck?”

  Lee replied, “Be formal, stop swearing, be polite.”

  Ray looked at the pair partially amused, partially bewildered.

  “If your boyfriend does it, I will too.”

  Hayley frowned. “The lowmen operate in the same way, no single man does the crime. Perhaps I should take my leave.”

  “You’re the one that wanted in,” Ray snapped back.

  “No, Prof, I'm in. No problems.”

  Ray sighed. “Effen Locals. Fine. Lee, help me get the power fixed up and then you can both go visit Angel.”

  “You mean to send us both through the telecaster?”

  “What?” Lee asked

  “The doorway.”

  “Telecaster is a type of guitar,” Lee corrected.

  “I have not heard of this. I simply concluded the name from its function, casting us afar through telelocation. Like in the fictions," Hayley explained.

  “Your girlfriend is smart, Lee, maybe I'll get to replace you,” Ray said.

  “Ha-ha, very funny.”

  “I’m not joking. You're kind of bad at this, Lee. I sent you to pick up some dirt and you came back with a local and a pile of corpses.”

  “Lee saved my life, and the only function I have seen you perform is heckling. Is that the field you got your doctorate in?” Hayley interjected.

  “Oh dip! Old-timey clapback!” Lee laughed

  “Okay, fine, you and Mick Jagger can find your own… Telecaster. Which one of you spent a dozen lifetimes in Kemet learning to build it again? I'll wait.”

  “His name is Lee…” Hayley's indignation stalled out.

  “Do either of you have surnames?”

  Ray smiled again. “No.”

  Lee replied, “Yeah, Stone.”

  “Emmaleigh Stone,” Ray added.

  “No! And I got it legally changed.”

  “One can legally change their names in Amerigo?” Hayley asked.

  “Arilon,” they both corrected.

  “In Arilon then? How does the constable find you if you've committed a crime?”

  The pair looked at either other and burst out laughing.

  “Sweetheart, I've done so much crime,” Lee said, barely over his own laughter.

  “My mere existence is illegal in some times and places,” Ray answered, “Why do you think I send Lee out for errands? He passes as white.”

  “White?”

  The pair looked at each other, then towards the obsidian slates.

  “I'll research while you two go get her dosed. Or should I bounceback?”

  “Bounceback. We're already lined up for a late morning.”

  “Real.”

  ***

  Hayley screamed as the telecaster flung her through time and space. Every inch of her body lit on fire, she felt seized and frozen, and tossed in terrible fits.

  Hayley got sick before she noticed where she was.

  The warmth and sunlight shone too brightly, too blue. She reached for her face and saw her hand had become stuck to the arm of Lee's jacket.

  She had reached out for him in the chaos, her hand and dress were partially fused with his clothing.

  Lee took out his square.

  “Lee, landed, too much juice. Need to correct that. Hayley touched me, hand fused with left forearm jacket, dress fused to left leg, calf area. Will try to preserve samples.”

  The device clicked.

  Lee pulled out a small knife and sliced the fused part of his jacket and pants free, without regard to how much skin was left bare. The effort tore a layer of her own skin free, leaving a piece of Lee's clothing fused with her dress while he placed part of his sleeve with her skin embedded into his pocket.

  Hayley took a breath and realized whatever the air of Nova Yorkshire had to offer, this place was surely lacking. The air stung and contained an array of bizarre smells, and the heat was rapidly starting to wear on her.

  “Sorry, I should have mentioned, it's a lot hotter here. We are way farther south than we were before. And the air's way cleaner.”

  Hayley's nose began running, as if on cue, “Clean? It is contaminated so badly I am becoming ill. Take me back!”

  She knew the answer, the telecaster would reopen in an hour. She sniffled, knowing she would have to endure this until then.

  “Bruh, you heard the prof, it'll open in an hour. Can't bitch at me about it.”

  She imagined the wolf, heavy with litter, barking about wanting her nose to stop running.

  Hayley chuckled.

  “I suppose I see the comedy of it, the bitch,” she said.

  Her accent was different on a number of words, and she realized this was one of them.

  “Bish-cht,” Lee tried to echo back.

  “That is not what I said, and I am not interested in being mocked.”

  “Sorry, sorry. We have to get going. We can't land near the temple, so we have to hurry.”

  ***

  Lee followed an unseen path until he hit a dirt road, and then easily made his way to the town centre featuring a pyramid.

  Hayley couldn't hide her excitement.

  “Oh my! Is this one of the Northern Afrikaan pyramids? I saw one in a book, but the picture did not portray its splendor!”

  “What, no? Those are way bigger. Well, okay, there are some really big ones here too, but this is just—”

  A man, armed and dressed in armor shouted at Lee.

  Lee closed his eyes, then began speaking absolute gibberish. Hayley was terrified at first, as the other man spoke a coherent language, simply one Hayley did not know.

  Lee on the other hand made gibbering noises like a madman.

  But they seemed to be able to converse. They motioned and pointed, once at Hayley, but often towards the steppe pyramid ahead.

  Finally, Lee paused, closed his eyes, and said to her, “Okay, this might not go well. There's some kind of new order, new regime or something.”

  “Oh, your gibbering couldn't elicit answers?”

  “The inhaler isn't fool-proof, okay? But I was able to—”

  The guard grabbed his arm, holding the staff menacingly in the other.

  “We follow him, I'll talk my way to Angel after meeting with the head honcho.”

  “Alright, I will meet the honcho. Is that like their king or chief administer?”

  “President?” Lee offered.

  “I don't know that word, but perhaps. Leader?”

  “Yeah, we are being taken to this guy's leader.”

  ***

  They sat in a wooden cage somewhere inside the pyramid. Hayley thought to fight, but Lee told her to go along with it.

  “Did they say when we will be released?” Hayley asked, her stinging hand growing more painful over the hours spent here.

  “No, the inhaler wore off and I thought it safe not to bring any obvious tech.”

  “They still took your speaking device.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Yeah, that's real bad. I’m sorry, Hayley, I didn't mean to get you killed on your first mission.”

  “Killed?!” Hayley shouted.

  “Shh-shh, no, don't be loud. It's just, they said something about barring outsiders, and we might get sacrificed. I may not be right, just let me think a minute.”

  “Get…sack-riif-ized?”

  “They might cut us open and take out our hearts. I think. I know I'm mixing cultures and guessing a lot. Because, if you recall, my fucking inhaler ran out.”

  “Thysied? What can we do? Escape?”

  “Doubtful. We aren't armed and anything we do might alter the past. This was a fucking milk run, not a big heist.”

  Hayley didn't quite understand, most creatures fought when a person attempted to milk them.

  “Perhaps on Arilon you have docile animals, but here, animals must be broken in. I will show you.”

  “No, Hayley, don't do anything—”

  “Sir! Sir! I must be removed from this cage at once!” Hayley shouted at the distant guard.

  The guard spit something back that sounded like a curse.

  Hayley spit the words back the best she could.

  His eyes perked up, and he approached the cage, saying something in the same ugly tone as every other man who ever had her cornered.

  She watched his eyes trace her figure, and thought she may be some kind of novelty.

  She leaned a bit towards him, hands behind her back.

  She widened her eyes, as pleading as she could. She did the opposite of every action her mother drilled into her, kneeling slightly, pouting her lips.

  She took a small step back and he reflexively took one forward.

  Hayley kept up the act while sliding one of the thin strips of bamboo boning from her dress.

  She knew it would shatter uselessly if she struck him with it, but it had been sharpened on the lower side to slide through the hems of the dress. It was common knowledge that if held right, it could pierce a man's temple.

  Hayley had practiced in secret, she pierced leather and wood; she supposed bone wouldn’t be too much more difficult.

  The guard suddenly announced something, and lifted a crossbar that the pair couldn't leverage from the inside.

  The door swung open, and he reached in to grab her.

  His posture was off, he leaned in, never stepping inside.

  Hayley crouched just a bit more. She hoped Lee was doing something helpful, and she heard him make a sad mewling noise.

  He was cowering in fear. But, he could plainly see the bamboo she was about to thrust into the guard at that angle. She realized he was going along with her plan, that the guard wouldn't be so careless unless Lee looked enfeebled.

  The guard himself was exceptionally tall and heavily muscled.

  He caught the fabric of her dress upon her shoulder. Hayley lunged forward, producing the bamboo spear and slamming it into his skull in one smooth practiced motion.

  The bamboo cracked in her hands shortly after it pierced his skull. She buried at least a hand-length of the spear into his brain.

  He howled in pain and staggered backwards. One eye rolled uselessly and filled with blood, his head wound dripped down his thick jaw and large chest.

  “Oh shit,” Lee said, his feigning ended.

  The guard lifted the staff and pointed it at the pair.

  Lee tackled Hayley as she stared at the staff mindlessly. They hit the ground at the same time the back of the cage shattered as if hit by an invisible giant's fist.

  Hayley imagined she could do the same to a cage made of a dozen pieces of straw.

  The wood from the cage shattered wholly, the splinters hit the stone behind them with enough force to become embedded.

  “Uh, the fuck, they aren't supposed to have this.”

  The guard's face contorted between various emotions as he tried to line up another shot.

  Lee took a chunk of wood nearby and threw it, missing the guard entirely.

  The noise it made was enough to have the guard twirl around to meet the new challenge, and the twirl itself staggered the guard even further.

  Lee sprung to life and ran toward the guard. It was obvious Lee was not born on this planet. His run was something more akin of a dance, except made heavy.

  But Lee was able to tackle the guard nearly the same way he had tackled Hayley, except where he rolled to avoid landing his weight on Hayley, he ensured he hit the guard with his entire body weight.

  It was enough to cause an “oof” sound to come from the guard, and Lee grabbed and jerked at the staff.

  The guard’s grip, though one handed, was more than enough to best Lee's whole-body effort.

  Hayley ran over and used the heel of her shoe to stomp on the guard’s head.

  She smiled, her mind wandered toward the moment she made her own shoes, how she had melted a larger volume of lead that her father allowed into the shoe. She had a few hollow places in the arch and the toe that she filled in, so her heels were much heavier than a typical lady's. Her father had hit her for it, he also made her do more dress fittings to make up the difference. While she imagined stomping his head in with them, she was also grateful he didn't force her to take the weights out.

  The guard's head made a wet crunch and her heel pressed deep into the mush that was left. His grip on the staff didn't waiver, but he stopped moving.

  Hayley slowly pulled off her shoe and began trying to clean it.

  “Got it!” Lee called out, holding the staff aloft.

  “Can you fire this weapon too?” Hayley asked.

  “Probably, but I don't have time to learn it and I don't have the stuff to ask.”

  “Inhaler?” Hayley offered.

  “Well, it's a plant they grow here. I was able to reduce it into an inhaler, but even that isn't as good as the real thing”

  “A language plant?”

  “No, well, kind of? It's a psychic plant, and it's extinct in the future.”

  “Extinct?”

  “Died out, or maybe wiped out. Have you heard of the Tower of Babel?”

  “Marysson struck it down.”

  “Okay, weird, but yeah, sure. They all spoke the same language."

  “Oh, that was not mentioned in our version of the tale.”

  “Okay, well, it was in mine. Everyone spoke the same language, and it was taken away.”

  “Because they sought to kill Marysson before his conception?”

  “That's… Okay. Let's get going though.”

  “Say-kick means to kill Marysson?”

  “No, it means we can talk with our minds and see things without our eyes and stuff, just come on!”

  Hayley realized Lee had nearly left her in the chamber with the cages. She noticed, and was grateful for the idea, that they were all otherwise empty.

  ***

  Hayley woke up and felt a man near her, reaching for her face and chest.

  She yelped, and threw her nearest elbow backwards as hard as she could.

  Lee took the elbow to the chest and coughed, wheezing, “Fuck, no, shh, shh.”

  The sounds brought her back to the present. The sun was finally waning on the horizon. She had fallen asleep waiting for the evening to come.

  “You’re just fucking like her. Wake up swinging. I gotta watch that.”

  “Who? This other Hayley you failed to marry?”

  “My Hayley wouldn't marry me if I asked. She's…independent.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “No, we really have to get going.”

  “You said if we missed the opening after an hour that it would be an entire day until the telecaster would reopen, and it is not yet dark enough to travel safely. Tell me of her.”

  “You two are too much alike, except she's all grown up.”

  Lee looked at her the way men do, very briefly. But his eyes were not those of lust but of sadness.

  Hayley wanted those eyes from him.

  “If you are patient, it stands to reason that I may become her.”

  Lee looked at her, and smiled. “With all that fucked up time travel shit, you might be more right than you mean.”

  Hayley thought about that, but shook that distant possibility away.

  “What do you know of her, did she grow up in Nova Yorkshire too?”

  Lee frowned at this

  “I don't know a lot about her. We were both leading secretive lives, my job and her job didn't mesh. She had a contract she couldn't talk about, and I definitely couldn't talk about mine. So, I guess, I don't know?”

  “Tell me of your contract then.”

  “Okay, I guess that's fine. So, Arilon got hit with a meteorite shower… Well, okay, maybe that was my fault for setting off that FTL bomb, but Sarge thinks it was actually the General, but, well—” Lee caught Hayley’s confused look. “I should start from the beginning then?”

  Lee told Hayley as much as he could, though, he had to catch her up on a lot of the vocabulary of a 2073 martian. Ray was an accountant in his version, but the version who built the telecaster was a mercenary called Sarge. Both versions used their FTL drives, a machine that could telecast an S-boat from anyplace and anytime, to any other place and any other time; both used weapons to destroy a fearsome enemy.

  Sarge was his title but he died.

  Lee couldn't account for this, only that he arrived in Ancient Kemet before an event he called the Fall. He learned how to create the telecaster studying there, hence why Lee started calling him professor, and tried to go back to the future.

  “But he found you instead?”

  Lee had trouble explaining anything, and simply used statements that were not joined by narrative.

  There is a wall around time, starting in the early 1900s, persistent until this fearsome enemy destroys the Earth. The telecaster cannot safely cast to Ares. Lee crashed, his body and physical shape is his original, no dying occurred. Prof has tried to explain the process of time-travel-dying, but it is very uncertain and even the prof said he can't replicate it with any certainty.

  “Something about a drop of water in a pool, and you can’t get your exact drop back.”

  The imagery danced in Hayley's mind a moment.

  “Water is made of many tiny quanta. If you picked every quanta back out, then you would have your original drop of water.”

  Lee smiled at her in a way she wasn't used to, and she felt a heavy warmth in her chest that radiated down her spine and into her undercarriage.

  “Yeah. You are real smart, just like her. If we are still doing this in a few years, maybe I'll have to make you an honest woman.”

  Hayley scowled, “What kind of insult do you pay me now? Have I not been forthright?”

  Lee held out his hand, “No, no, it's a saying. It was a compliment.”

  “Arilon is an awful place, if you compliment your ladies with accusations of dishonesty.”

  “It meant I would marry you. The honesty is that you'd be married. I don't get it either, it's a dumb saying. I say dumb things but I lo—” Lee held the sound a moment too long. “I like you, and I like hanging out with you.”

  Hayley felt a tear she didn't call forth spill down her check. She checked her dress to try and see what part of her was hanging out.

  “That’s another phrase, it just means spending time together and doing these missions and things.”

  Hayley was already overwhelmed with the tale, the fatigue, and the heat that persisted even in the darkness and the hunger.

  “You sway me to and fro. When up, I feel quite glad but the lows are too much.”

  Lee looked at his hands, then back at her.

  “I heard that before too. I'm not perfect, I got problems. But I'm happy you are here.”

  The moonlight made his smile seem ethereal, and the romance of the moment nearly overtook her. She thought that if he became ungentlemanly, she wouldn't fight it, maybe even allow it.

  He kissed her before, so reflexively before he remembered she wasn't the other Hayley. She wanted that kiss, but meant for her.

  She knew she could make him, but that's not the place of a lady. The feeling that it must be earned pulled her back.

  “Do we have any kind of meal?” she asked instead, trying to move away from the moment.

  “Uh, no, sorry. I thought we’d be back by now. I promise you'll get a tenner when we're back?”

  “Tenner?”

  “TNR, total nutrition ration. I have a bunch from the crash. Eat one and you aren't hungry for a couple days. Between that and the Halo, I didn't even notice.”

  “You mentioned this before, Halo. Such as an angel, or?”

  Hayley got the joke, why this person's nickname was Angel.

  “It's a drug, makes you smarter, faster. You can keep up with a computer, briefly. Burns you out and never fully leaves your system. Messes with your nerves and signals… And I've done a lot of Halo.” Lee chuckled, somewhat shamefully.

  “Your Angel will bring you this drug?”

  “Well, not here. They live on Saturn. Here we—”

  “They? Saturn? Have you not met this person?”

  “The planet you called Cronus, with the rings. We make fuel out of it, but as a by-product, you can make the drug. You can't make it anywhere else but space.”

  Hayley waited for him to continue,

  “You ever, uh… Trans?”

  “Trance?”

  “Trans, like people who aren't… Okay, Angel isn't a boy or a girl. They are something else, in between or both or something. It's personal, don't ask them directly because it's super rude.”

  Hayley pondered this, being both or neither, or a possible other thing outside the gender binary.

  “You keep strange company, but as you have said, it is not my business and I shall be polite.”

  Lee smiled again, “For being old-timey, you picked that up a lot better than some people in my time”

  “That is because your world is full of lowmen who have no capacity for politeness or honor.”

  Lee laughed, “You aren't wrong.”

  ***

  “Lee! You stupid fuck! Stu! Pid! Fuck!”

  The whisper rang out like a shout, and Lee crouched low despite being caught in the middle of the road.

  “Stupid!” Another loud hiss came from what looked like a market stall, all closed up for the night.

  “Angel?!” Lee hissed back.

  “Yeah, stupid!”

  Lee nearly dragged Hayley off her feet, pulling her into a full upright run toward the stall.

  Hayley saw Angel crouched behind it and immediately saw what Lee meant.

  Hayley then noticed the clothing, stones and precious metals and fine cloth. Angel wasn't dressed well by Hayley’s standard, but the clothing and adornments were worth a small fortune.

  The cloth was finer than anything she had seen in her life, although it was used sparingly. It was woven with gems using a fine gold filament that glowed in the moonlight.

  Hayley did her best curtsey, but only knew the words “sir and “ma’am.”

  “M’they” is what came out, clumsily.

  Angel looked up and smiled, then Hayley watched that smile turn to a snarl.

  “Lee, where the fuck did you get this victorian ass jailbait Hayley from?”

  Lee's cheek flushed, even in the moonlight.

  “We, uh, literally ran into each other. She crashed the telecaster.”

  “The what? You got a guitar?”

  “She named it. She's on the team.”

  “Oh no you di’int. When Sarge finds out.”

  “Prof already knows, he invited her.”

  “Bullshit. Bull-mother-fucking-shit.”

  “Do all future persons swear so profusely?”

  “Lee, you got you a prude Hayley? Does this one even fuck?”

  “Shut up. Angel, for real.”

  Hayley paused, the first time the word was ever used with context.

  “Fuck?” Hayley considered, “Is that what ‘fuck’ means, you disgusting jackal!”

  Hayley felt more betrayed than when the pigman's son was sitting at her dinner table, but couldn't quite articulate why.

  “I trusted you!” she shouted, realizing it after the words left her. “I trusted you and you are a vile craven lowman. Or, lowed-person?” she said, trying to make sure that she was not in offense.

  “What did your underage little hoe just call me? Lowed?”

  “Angel, Hayley, we have a mission, we have to—”

  “Fuck your mission, Lee. I've got too many problems to clean up your mess, whatever it is.”

  Angel finished the sentence a half dozen paces from the pair. Hayley couldn't help but find them beautiful, almost graceful.

  “I need the plant, a lot of it,” Lee said, looking around in realization of his loudness.

  “Fuck you. It's almost all gone now. Come back a few years ago.”

  “I can't cross streams and I can only come on this day. You know the math gets bad otherwise.”

  Angel paused.

  “I have a little. Private stash. You’ll have to synthesize it.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Kemet.”

  ***

  “You’re a pedo bitch,” Angel said, handing Lee the small pouch. “And you, you should have stayed home,” they said, looking at Hayley pointedly.

  Hayley retorted, “I was about to be made to marry the pigman's son, nearly too old to be attractive to him. I was to be taken by him, against my will, arranged by my father. Lee is not a gentleman, but he seeks to be. That is more than most men.”

  Angel looked at her, and she felt the look go deeper than deep. Most men only looked at her body, most women only looked at her clothes. Angel looked at what existed beyond the physical world or her technically adult body, and Hayley felt it.

  “Youre still a pedo bitch,” Angel said to Lee.

  “Hey, wait, I never did nothing to her.”

  Angel shot Lee a look.

  “Okay, I kissed her, on accident. Accidentally! It was a moment, and I forgot she wasn't…"

  “An adult? Yeah.”

  “My Hayley. I mean c’mon, she’s definitely not underage and she looks so much like her.”

  “No, Lee, she doesn't. Not on the inside."

  Hayley caught Angel's eyes and caught the meaning. The idea was too heavy to be carried by words. But Angel saw her, she wasn't a young copy of another woman. In Angel's eyes, Hayley was complete and full, now. And also not to be taken advantage of in a series of accidents.

  “You have to earn it,” Hayley said aloud.

  “What?” Lee asked

  “If you think you are to be with me, it will be earned, like any other gentleman. You will not resume anything with me, because I am original.”

  Angel laughed, “Oh, damn, girl! You tell that creeper!”

  “I’m not a creeper! I mean, yes, you're hella good looking but I’m—”

  Angel crossed the room faster than humanly possible. Lee shut his mouth with a click.

  “You are gonna defend her, against even yourself.”

  Hayley felt the same feeling again, flowing off the pair like a wave. It felt as if the sea had frozen while the mountain flowed. Angel told Lee, and like a mountain worth of liquid rock slamming a frozen ocean, the ice cracked and the rock poured it.

  “I'll defend her,” Lee said, emotionlessly, like it was an idea he thought of idly without other prompting.

  Angel, just as quickly, began placing the shredded plant into a tube that had burnt edges, Hayley realized it was for smoking.

  “C’mere, girl, I got you a present. You'll need it where you’re headed.”

  “What is this?”

  “Your loading dose, girl. Come get you that language upload.”

  Hayley watched Lee take the first inhalation to demonstrate, although he was very intentional to only burn and inhale a small amount.

  “I want you to rip it, as hard as you can. You'll cough, and that's all good. Just breathe and it'll pass. Okay? Big rip for Angel’s big girl?”

  She felt the childlike desire to impress Angel well up; she didn't know if it was Angel's feelings or her own. She decided it was her own and that she did want to be impressive.

  Hayley impressively inhaled.