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who was still alive, what would I want to hear from her?”
    “Your Alt is dead, West. She’s simply a reflection of something in your own head. Reason it out, just as you reasoned out why you were seeing Chord and your family and those Alts you killed.”
    For a long minute, I stay silent, letting what Julis told me roll around in my mind, trying to knock answers free. “I guess if she had won and I were the one who died, I would want her to be okay with me always being a part of her,” I eventually say. “Physically, we were the same, you know? And even though she’s the worthier one after all, she has to understand that I make up a part of her; however she beat me, I helped push her to do that, too, in some weird, twisted way.” The words feel right as they pour out, and suddenly I don’t feel nearly as lost as I did when I first stepped into this office today. “My Alt showing up in my dream means I have to accept that I owe her my life, too.”
    “No one ever said this Alt stuff was simple,” Julis says. Her words are light, almost a quip, even though her tone isn’t light at all.
    “It’s not, at all. Sometimes it seems … hopeless.”
    “You’re not hopeless, West. And I think you are really on your way. Today was a good day, remember that.”
    “Okay, what now?” I ask her, crumpling the empty candy wrapper in my hands, then immediately smoothing it out again. Restlessness, relief, confidence that there’s an end in sight—that’s what I feel now. “I’m really ready for all of this to be over.”
    “Again, none of this is simple.” Julis leans down in her seat, picks up the garbage can from below her desk, and holds it out to me. I toss the wrapper inside. “So go home, do your writing exercises, and I’ll see you Friday for our next session.”
    The late-afternoon crowd swarms around me as soon as I leave the office building and step onto the sidewalk. Rush hour is always chaos here in the Grid, and practice has me diving expertly into the mass of bodies and moving with the flow before I get knocked aside. Noise is constant and all around, alive in its own right—chatter, traffic, footsteps on dirty pavement. The heat of the day is giving way to the cooler temperatures of dusk.
    Through the propped-open door of the restaurant across the street, the smell of fried noodles and brown house sauce wafts out. It is strong, mouth-watering, and reminds me that it’ll be dinnertime when I get back. It also reminds me that I didn’t go to the store like I should have this past weekend. I do a mental rundown of what food I have in the house and I come up empty. Crackers, hot sauce, a bag of fresh bell peppers in the fridge, iced tea—not much of a meal.
    And Chord might be coming over.
    And I want to see him.
    A sudden wave of sheer giddiness ripples right through me, catching me so off guard that I almost stop walking. I’m grinning like a fool and notice people passing by turning to stare at me—an old woman who smiles in reaction, a mom with two kids in tow, irritated at having to navigate around me, a boy a bit younger than me with encoded eyes who has no expression at all. I cover my mouth with my hands, but the smile lingers behind my fingers, a new and fragile thing. I guess it’s a smile that knows I’ll see Chord soon and that I’ll finally be able to tell him something good about counseling for once. Julis says it’s a breakthrough, a corner being turned. And even though I don’t know what’s going to happen next, things feel like they are moving in the right direction, closer to the way they’re supposed to be.
    Impulse has me turning toward the restaurant instead of the way I meant to go, back toward the inner ward train station to get home. My pay credits from teaching at Torth are still in my wallet, as good as money, and the idea of surprising Chord with dinner simply because I want to and am able to seems perfect. The last time I brought him food unexpectedly … well,