Reluctantly, Kirsten forces her arm away from her face and rolls to get an elbow under her. She forces open her eyes on the same shimmering brilliance. The circuitry hasn’t blown. Her mind has. Koda stands over her, cloaked in light like the sun.

She stares dumbly at the apparition for a moment, then a tide of joy washes through her. She’s waited for me, like she promised! And now she’s come to take me…well…somewhere. As long as we’re together, the rest of it can go to Hell for all I care.

Then she sobers. The blood on Dakota’s shirt, it’s still there; she can see the minute ends of the threads where the bullets ripped through the fabric. This is a dream, then; nothing changed, her love still lost. Her grief returns, and with it rage at the waste of a good life, waste of one more human, the ruin of her own life.

Dakota is hard-pressed not to take a step back as the weight of Kirsten’s emotions pushes against her like the tide. She can feel them, taste them almost, spiced with the bitterness of her lover’s grief. Her smile falters and she takes the final step separating them.

“My love….”

Instinctively, Kirsten recoils, leaning back against the credenza behind her. “I….” The word comes out as a croak which she, even deaf as a stone, can hear. She clears her throat, dry as dust, and tries again. “You…you’re not real.”

“I am,” Koda replies, dropping to one knee and slowly reaching out to grasp Kirsten’s hand. Kirsten makes a half-hearted attempt to pull away, but Dakota holds on strongly. “Don’t be afraid.”

“No!” Kirsten cries out, struggling anew against the implacable grip on her hand. “No. This is nothing but a dream. Or…or a hallucination brought on by lack of oxygen.” That’s the answer, and she knows it. Her dying mind, latching on to one last shred of hope.

“It is no dream, cante mitawa,” Koda counters, raising her lover’s hand and brushing her lips against the reddened knuckles. “No hallucination.” She changes her grip as she uses her free hand to rip away the remains of her ruined shirt. “Look,” she whispers. “Feel.” She places Kirsten’s hand over her unmarred chest, willing her to feel the heart beating beneath, and covers it with her own. “I’m alive.”

Kirsten moans. Her face twists in an expression of negation. “But…I saw you die! I saw…blood…so much blood…so much….”

Dakota closes her eyes against the pain, all of it coming from her grieving lover. “I know,” she replies hoarsely. “I know.”

With a sob, Kirsten throws herself forward into Koda’s arms. Dakota catches her easily and wraps her tenderly into a tight embrace, bearing the brunt of her young lover’s grief as best as she is able, and returning what peace and love she can through her touch, holding steady through the surges of emotion that batter her soul. Kirsten’s emotions. I’ll have to learn to shield from this, and soon, or I’ll be no help to either of us.

After a long moment, Kirsten gathers herself and pulls away, scrubbing away her tears. Her mind feels loosed from its moorings, fluttering wildly between the chasms of belief and disbelief. “How?” she asks finally. It’s the only word her mouth can seem to form as blue eyes, shining with wisdom old as the ages, lock into her own, piercing her. Awe sweeps through her. This must be what it is like to meet a god, the raw power of divinity beyond human understanding.

“I was given a choice. I chose to be with you.”

“I…but…you…that’s not pos—....” Frustrated, she closes her eyes, shutting out the sight of her love so near. Her ears useless, she does the one thing she has never done before. She listens with her soul.

And believes.

Dakota can feel Kirsten’s sudden leap of faith as if it were her own, and her soul fills with the joy of it. She grins, skin stretched tight against muscle and bone. Her hands lift, cradling her lover’s head and she leans forward to feather a kiss over the fair brow. Her eyes close suddenly as she feels her palms grow hot and a pulse of energy, far more powerful than any she’s ever felt before, surges through her. She feels a moment of fear, and then the energy fades, leaving her palms tingling and slightly sore. Quickly yanking her hands away, she opens her eyes to see Kirsten looking at her, wide eyed and slack jawed. “What?” she asks. “Did…did I hurt you?”

“How did you do that?” Kirsten asks, voice rich with wonder.

“Do what?” she responds, confused.

“I can hear again! My God! I can hear!!”

Dakota is saved from having to answer by the loud whoop of an alarm. She looks quickly to the monitors which show the fire, with no androids left to fight it, heading toward them at an alarming rate.

“Come on!” Koda seizes Kirsten’s hand in hers and pulls them both to their feet. “Which way—up or down?”

“Up. There’s less to fall on us that way.”

Koda flashes her a grin, then sobers. Virgilius stands beside the desk, eyes fixed, his limbs frozen. “What about—”

“Not a problem. He turned off along with the rest.”

“Turned off— Okay.” Figure it out later. This is not the time for metaphysical problems or wondering where an apparently sentient android goes when he dies. Koda cracks the door a couple inches, peering out at the wreckage the battle has left. The sprinkler system still operates, spraying water down on broken concrete and twisted rebar, on the limbs and batteries and circuit boards of shattered androids. Through the acrid remnants of gunpowder and plastic explosive, she smells the unmistakable odor of smoke. A thin haze hangs just below the ceiling of the corridor, thicker in the direction of the elevator shaft.

Which is a bit of luck, because the only usable stairway is on the other side of the building. “Okay,” she says again. “Let’s go.”

Still holding firmly to Kirsten’s hand, Dakota steps out into the hall. “Watch where you put your feet,” she says. Testing each step, Koda picks their way across the crater gouged in the floor by the last grenade. Reinforcing steel shows here and there, with water pooling around it. Just as long as we don’t run across a live wire. . ..

She slips twice on their way around the core of the building, once on a loose tile that skates away under her foot, again when Kirsten turns her ankle on a discarded rifle magazine. The door to the stairwell hangs drunkenly from a single hinge, pushed back against the wall. Smoke filters upward through the shaft, still faint, but discernable. Something below them has caught fire, something large, not just the walls on the other side of this floor.

Dropping Kirsten’s hand, Koda rips the rag of one sleeve off and wraps it around her mouth and nose. Kirsten pulls the neck of her T-shirt up; at another moment, Koda might stop to admire the way the wet cotton clings to her body, but there is no time.

She will have to run and admire at the same time. One of the little perks of being alive. . .. She says, “You go first. You know the layout.”

Kirsten squeezes her hand briefly, then sets off up the stairs. The sprinklers have made them slick, too. The safety treads hold, though, and Kirsten takes the steps two at a time, holding firmly to the metal handrail, Koda running behind her. They pass a landing and a right angle turn. At the next landing, a door, clearly marked, gives onto the fifth floor. Two more turns, taken at speed. Fourth floor. The smoke is less thick here, no more than an elusive scent through the stronger odor of blood that washes from her own clothing. Water runs from her hair, from Kirsten’s, to splash on the concrete under their feet. It runs red as it streams from her shirt and jeans, a thin runnel that disappears into the stairwell below.

Another turn, and another. Third floor.

Two more to go.

From somewhere below them comes a muffled rumble like distant thunder. A shudder runs through the walls, a small network of cracks spreading around the jamb of the door that gives onto the corridor that runs around the third story.

“What—”

“I don’t know,” Kirsten pants, swinging around the angle of the staircase. “Something big. Maybe the AC, maybe the elec—”

“—tricity,” Koda finishes for her as darkness suddenly descends on them. “Shit. Hold onto me.”

It takes a precious couple seconds, but Koda locates Kirsten’s left hand ahead of her. Koda extends her own to brush against the wall, Kirsten still holding to the banister. “Don’t run,” she gasps as Kirsten stubs her toe against a riser and topples forward, kept from falling only by Koda’s grasp on her arm. “If one of us falls—”

She does not need to complete the sentence. The flash of fear in Kirsten’s mind—none of it for Kirsten herself—leaps the distance between them like a spark. “It’s gonna be okay,” she says, ” We’re gonna make it.”

Another landing. More stairs. Another landing.

Second floor.

“One more,” Kirsten gasps. “Almost there.”

Almost. Almost . . ..

A second temblor runs through the building, a long, rolling wave like an earthquake. From below comes the sharp, gunshot crack of cement splitting—a wall, stairs further down, there is no way to tell. Koda feels the jerk of Kirsten’s muscles in her own arm, the impulse to run almost overwhelming. But Kirsten’s steady pace takes them onto the next landing, turns them onto the final half-flight of stairs.

The smoke catches them halfway up, a billow of choking fumes that fills Koda’s lungs despite her mask. Beside her, Kirsten coughs, hard, but her pace does not slacken. “Chemicals,” she chokes. “Lots of industrial stuff—”

The floor suddenly levels under their feet, and Kirsten pushes through the door into the first floor hallway, pausing half a second to secure it behind them. A faint haze of light comes through the skylight above, enough to show the empty corridor, inhuman human shapes arrested in mid-motion or collapsed in mechanical rigor mortis to the floor.