I come into the sitting room where we left her . . . and find her quiet in her chair. Her eyes are closed. I tell myself that she’s sleeping; any second she will open them and greet me and offer me some tea. But even after I reach her side and touch her arm, she remains motionless. Her skin is warm, but not the heat of a living person anymore, more that energy that lingers long into the night on a sun-warmed walkway. Once the stored warmth drains away, there will be no more. I touch my fingertips to her wrist, then her throat, just to be sure. There’s no doubt.

Adele is gone.

This is not the first time I’ve been confronted with death. NBS leaves a very quiet corpse, who happens to be capable of breathing. If that jumper has any true loved ones, then they do a merciful injection and handle the details. Though Adele only needs the latter, not the former, that’s the least I can do for her, this woman who was like a mother to me while I lived on Gehenna.

I drop to my knees, but no tears come. This feels more like a pilgrimage than true grief. If anyone can find immortality, it is Adele. Perhaps she has gone, now, to Mary’s arms or into the great Iglogth. There are mysteries whose answers we can never know, until our time comes to tread that road behind those we loved. An ache springs up in my throat, but I push it back.

“You would’ve left instructions,” I say aloud, through the clot of sadness.

It’s impossible that she, with her whispers of foretelling, didn’t see this coming. So I search her apartment and find a new message on the console. I sit down, elbows on my knees, and listen to her last wishes.

“Jax,” she says—and of course she knew it would be me, somehow, “you will play a daughter’s role at the end. I saw that when I first found you at Hidden Rue. Please notify Domina, as she was good to me. The dancers will want to come, too. I prefer a simple service and molecular dispersion afterward. It’s enough to know you will remember me. As for Vel, he’s going to take my death hard, and he’ll need you in days to come. Farewell, dear Sirantha.”

The vid ends then. I don’t realize I’m crying until the first warm tear splashes onto the back of my hand. Wiping my eyes, I activate the comm and enter the code for funeral services. A bot answers, the same one they use as receptionists and admin all over the galaxy, plain and efficient. Dr. Carvati has a similar model.

“Gehenna Mortality Center, how many I direct your call?”

I explain who Adele is and what she wanted, then the bot connects me to the correct party. Fortunately, she forwards my information, so I don’t have to repeat the explanation. A human answers this time, middle-aged, but well preserved thanks to targeted Rejuvenex treatments. He wears a patient, understanding look that grates on me straightaway, or maybe it’s his waxed eyebrows.

“I’m so sorry to hear of your loss. I’ll send a technician to assist you right away. If you could provide your direction?”

I do. The actual conversation doesn’t take long. He just needs some banking information to be sure I can afford his help. When he realizes who I am and whose fortune I inherited, his manner shifts toward the obsequious. Yeah, my instinctive antipathy was spot on . . . but then, it usually is. Thinking and planning may not be my strong suit, but I have reflex down to a fine art. He doesn’t care about the trial or what I’ve done; he only cares that I have a big bank balance. The mortality manager tries to sell me bells and whistles: a host of mourners to add consequence, a choir of angelic children, and a night black hovercar to convey us to the ceremony. Stubbornly, I refuse it all because Adele asked for simplicity, and I will do as she requested. He’s annoyed when he cuts the call.

The technicians come and go, removing the body with utmost discretion, then they leave a bot to scrub away every last trace that someone died here. That seems wrong somehow, so soon, but I don’t protest. Better to have it done.

Hours pass as I use her contacts to notify people as she requested. By the time Vel returns, it’s nearly evening, though on Gehenna, the sky always looks the same. One can only mark passage of time by artificial means, by the way the seconds tick away. I’m standing at the window, gazing up at a tangerine dream of a sky, when I hear his steps outside. The door recognizes him, too, even after all these turns. That twists me up inside.

“Where is she?” he asks, but as I turn, I see he already knows.

He saw the whisper of death in her tired eyes and her sallow skin, the hands that trembled in her lap. And so he ran from it. He told me that was what he did best; he ran from Ithiss-Tor, and his life with Trapper permitted him to hunt as he ran. He only ever stayed once—with Adele—until she told him to go. I make up my mind, here and now, that I never will. That’s the one thing I’ll never ask him to do.

“At the center, being prepped.”

“There will be a ritual?”

I suppose he’s attended a few such services, Trapper and Smitty, at least. Before now, I never considered what it meant for him, living among us. He must be so tired of losing people, and yet he goes on. He does not return to his own people because he cannot. He is a changed being, not wholly Ithtorian in spirit, and their ways chafe him now.

“Yes, tomorrow. I handled all the arrangements according to the vid she left. Would you like to watch it?”

“No, I think not. When I see her like this, it is harder for me to remember her as she was, before.”

“That’s why she sent you away, you know. Not because she didn’t love you. Because she did.”

Vel stands so very still, but such pain lives in that stillness. “It should not be so sharp after all this time. I should have reached some acceptance.”

This is an area in which I have some experience. “I’d like to say you forget the pain, that it fades, and you only remember the sweet moments, but that would be a lie. Sometimes, with Kai, I go along without thinking of him for days or weeks at a time, then something sets it off—a smell, a man’s laugh—and then the knowledge drowns me. That he’s gone. I’ll never see or touch him again. And it is brand-new, all over again.”

“How do you bear it?”

“Because they’re worth it. So you ride out the rough days.”

“I . . . loved her, for all I said we do not bond as humans do. She taught me.”

“Love,” I correct gently. “And you always will.”

He turns away to gaze out her window, as he must’ve done with her at his side, so often before. And then he strides into her bedroom, which he might have shared, turns past. At first, I think there’s nothing here of him to speak of their time together, then he picks up a framed image. It’s not a simple still. This is Adele with a tall, thin, and average-looking man. Brown hair, brown eyes. Not special, except it’s Vel. It is. They’re at the market—she’s bright with joy—and some random art photographer has captured these ten seconds, where she gazes up at him, and then he leans down to rub his cheek against hers.

Adele knows, I realize. This was taken after he told her the truth, and so he’s offering affection in the Ithtorian way. And her reaction is . . . luminous. Vel watches that perfect moment loop endlessly. His claws tighten on the frame, and a small sound escapes him. Nothing I ever heard from him before, but I don’t need the chip to tell me it’s born of raw anguish.

“Would you leave me for a time?” he asks quietly.

“How long?”

“The night should be sufficient. I will see you in the morning, Sirantha.”

On some level, I understand what he intends—a final, solitary good-bye, where the dust of her skin lingers. Vel can detect it on a level humans cannot. It must feel, to him, as if her death surrounds him even now. He said to me once, My people can communicate with pheromones, so our olfactory sense is more refined.

“Will it bother you if I spend the night upstairs?” I want to stay nearby in case he needs me; I don’t trust his composure. An outward show of grief would reassure me, but that’s not his way.

“Of course not.”

I pass the night in the flat where I once spent six glorious weeks, the only path I’ve ever chosen for myself. Until now. So it’s only right that the circle carried me back to her, even if I grieve in the unchanging light, gazing out over the city that never seems to sleep. Here Gehenna offers vice- never-ending.

I stand and remember Adele.

Now with some turns distance from that statement and the benefit of greater heartbreak than I thought I could ever bear, I acknowledge the rightness of those words until Vel comes to tell me it is time to go.