“What are you going to do now?” I ask.
“Well, I’ll deal with Anton, manage any fallout from that. You’ll never have to worry about the corporation again. I’ll see to it. I’m just sorry Raven won’t be here.” Valentine makes it sound so final, as if Raven is never coming back. Sadness rolls off of her, and I appreciate how much she cared for our friend, even though she never got to know her outside of her head.
“We’ll stay in touch,” Valentine says. “But for now, I’m on adeadline.” She stares down at Anton, who has fallen unconscious.
Marcella offers to help Valentine move Anton’s body, and to make it easier, they roll him in the dusty wool blanket from the back of the couch.
“It’s an asshole burrito,” Brynn says, and we gasp at her vulgarity. She laughs and tells us she’s allowed to act human sometimes.
I walk into the kitchen as Sydney announces she’s going to make tea, and we watch Marcella and Valentine team-carry Anton out to the waiting car. Annalise grabs a box of cereal from the cabinet, tears it open, and starts eating it by the handful.
“Is it wrong to say I’m disappointed that we didn’t kill Anton?” she asks. She crunches on a pile of marshmallows and sugared shapes.
“Not as wrong asactuallykilling him, no,” Sydney points out. Annalise nods and tosses a few more cereal pieces in her mouth. Sydney finds a kettle and rinses it at the sink before filling it and setting it on the stove.
Lights flash on the trees outside, startling me, but then I realize it’s a car backing out of the dirt driveway. Valentine, off to end the corporation once and for all.
The front door opens, and Marcella walks back in. She joins us in the kitchen, taking her own handful of cereal from the open box before sitting on the barstool. Brynn comes to stand behind her, resting her elbows on her shoulders.
“At least we’re not covered in blood this time,” Marcella says. “This has to be a first.”
“Not yet,” Annalise adds with a smile, yanking the box of cereal away from Marcella playfully.
“Can I tell you my latest theory?” Sydney asks. She opens a cabinet to grab several mugs and starts lining them up.
“Ooh… I wantWORLD’S GREATEST GRANDPA,” Marcella says, pulling that cup in front of her.
“My theory?” Sydney repeats, and we ask her to continue. “Well, when Anton couldn’t activate the kill switch because of the lack of signal, it made me think of you, Annalise.”
Annalise lifts her head. “Me?”
“You haven’t mentioned a headache once since you arrived at the cabin,” she says.
Annalise pauses, and then nods. “I haven’t had one,” she says.
“What if the damage to your brain left you with an exposed signal of some sort?” Marcella points out. “That means when you’re near other networks with their constant barrages of information trying to get in, the signal might be aggravating your system. And then your brain interprets that interference as pain. Headaches.”
Annalise runs her palm over her fuzzy scalp, her brow furrowed. “The headachesdidstop the moment we got out here,” she admits.
The kettle begins to hiss and then whistle. Sydney takes it from the burner and slowly fills the mugs. She drops a bag of chamomile tea in each one, and the smell is comforting. I take a mug gratefully when she passes them out.
“You’re really good at theories,” Brynn says, smiling at Sydney. “You should become a forensic psychologist.” Marcella lookssideways at her, half laughing. “What?” Brynn responds. “They were offering the class at the community college in Connecticut. I thought it sounded interesting.”
“I’ll read up on it,” Sydney tells Brynn, patting her hand.
We’re quiet for a moment, drinking our tea, when Annalise sets her mug down on the counter with a clank. “I can do it,” she says with determination.
“You’re going to be a forensic psychologist too?” Sydney asks.
“No,” Annalise says, leaning against the counter. “I can fix our programming. Raven said once that I was a quick study. With the right tools, the directions, I’m going to prove her right.”
Although I trust Annalise implicitly, I’m not sure she’s ready to take our lives into her hands, literally. As I open my mouth to argue, she shakes her head.
“I’m serious,” she says. “I can do this. But… But there’s something else.”
“You want to be an astronaut, too?” Marcella suggests, making Brynn snort a laugh. Annalise knocks Marcella’s arm with her elbow, and she quickly apologizes and tells her to continue.
“I’m going to stay here at the cabin and study,” Annalise says. “As long as it takes. I’ll figure it out here where there are no distractions and no pain.”
