I remember long stretches of childhood spent waiting for him, sitting on the porch swing long after dark, asking Mom why he wasn’t home yet. “He’s working, dear,” she would say, as if that explained the silence that I kept begging him to fill with his saxophone. I hated the long nights and the empty chair at family dinner. I thought he worked too much. I thought he didn’t want to spend time with us. I wanted his place to be at home, beside us, not out in the world chasing responsibilities I couldn’t begin to imagine.
Now, standing above a gleaming blade meant for people like me, I finally understand what should’ve been obvious. Dad’s absence wasn’t neglect. It was love. It was the only kind of love a man like him could offer as he tried to stop the world from devouring its own children and calling it justice.
The guillotine waits below, gold and merciless, and in its reflection, I see myself over the past months: walking past it as if it weren’t there, more worried about my own safety than the headless bodies carried off these steps.
With trembling hands, I zoom in on the guillotine using the binocular feature in my Bond. For the first time, I don’t look away. I force myself to watch every execution, every drop of low-citizen blood spilled across the platform. I need the reality of our world burned into me in a way I can never deny or forget.
More than anything, I force myself to face the dark emotions coursing through me. Fear and horror, yes.
But strongest of all, shame.
Before I leave my suite to meet Professor Jerome, I call Charlotte and tell her what happened between Edmund and me on the tram. After all the days she sat beside my hospital bed and comforted me when I couldn’t comfort myself, I owe her the truth. I swear up and down that I’m fine now. I tell her all I want is to get through this meeting, then hole up in her suite with her for the rest of the day.
We meet in the Green Dormitory parking garage at 8:45 a.m. I added Charlotte’s name to my hovercar’s biometric scanner, so when I arrive, she’s already inside, seated in the passenger seat, turning around every few seconds to search for me through the windows.
Despite every promise I made to her on the call, the way she’s looking at me suggests she didn’t believe any of it. I scoot into the driver’s seat, and before I can shut the door, she leans across the console and wraps her arms around me. Then she pulls back to study my face, clearly searching for the tears I drowned her in back at the hospital. I can tell she thinks I’m broken. And she’s right. I’m just not shattering across the floor anymore.
“Lore.” She squints at me, disbelief etched in her voice. “Why do you look so… okay?”
“Because I am,” I say as I power on the hovercar and lift out of the lot. “And you’re half the reason why.”
Charlotte nods, still doubtful. Her eyes keep darting over my face, as if checking for hairline cracks. But when I swipe the control panel on the dashboard, and Big Band Beats drifts out of the speakers—a slow, honey-thick jazz croon—she softens. Her shoulders dip an inch, then another, before she settles into a quiet relief that echoes back into me.
She turns to the windshield, unscrews her coffee thermos, and takes a sip. “So,” she says, calmer now. “Which professor are we seeing?”
“Jerome. Second-year Cloning Theory and Genetic Engineering. He’s gonna help me make up my lost Cloning Theory credit. I checked the university registry, but there’s nothing on him. Less than nothing. It almostmakes me wonder if someone deliberately scrubbed his info.”
Charlotte lifts her head a fraction, the thermos pausing halfway to her lips. “Yeah, because someonedidscrub his info. Lore—he’s a Glass.”
“What?”
“A Glass. Jerome Glass. He’s Winston’s son.”
The words clash with the saxophone moaning through the speakers, each note curling boldly in my ears. When the meaning finally lands, it hits like a joke that’s been pulled back on a slingshot for months, snapping the punchline straight into my forehead.
But I’m not laughing. That brash, back-alley hustler in a professor’s coat built the Florence Engine.MyFlorence Engine. The one I relied on so much, I practically built my backbone out of it.
Charlotte keeps talking, oblivious to the explosion in my head. “Never met the guy, but the rumors about him could power half the damn energy grid. Word is, Jerome created the Florence Engine, and Winston loved it at first. Wanted to splash it across every city until Jerome let slip what he really designed it for.”
“What’d he design it for?”
Charlotte lets out a half snort, half laugh. “He built it so couples could see what they feel while they have sex.”
The jazz purrs deeper through the speakers, the bassline rolling like warm breath against my ear as I cut sharply through a yellow light. I accelerate, flying past the speed limit, anything to outrun the humiliation ripping through me so hard I almost burst into laughter. But I’m not surprised. If a man like Jerome built the Florence Engine, it couldn’t have been for any other reason.
The saxophone drifts through the speakers, circling me like a lover’s mouth, until I flick off the radio. For once, I’m glad Charlotte doesn’t notice. She wasn’t there when Edmund gave me the Florence Engine. She doesn’t know I use the device or how much I love it. That’s a relief. She’d never let me live it down.
“Winston flipped his lid,” Charlotte continues, turning the jazz back on as if she’s secretly in on the joke. “Launched a whole lawsuit to get ownership. He hates that it exists.”
“I don’t see how Jerome can winagainst Winston,” I say.
Charlotte takes another gulp of coffee, distracted by the traffic drifting past on tiered streets. “Yeah. Nobody beats Winston Glass. He wants to change the name, too—Florence was Jerome’s mom, and that’s half the reason Winston was so pissed.” She brushes her lip with her thumb, her gaze slanting sideways at me. “Sorry you got stuck with Jerome, Lore. He’s… well, ‘muddy reputation’ barely covers it. Word is, he sleeps with half his students. The Orange ones, anyway. A real skirt-chaser.”
“Word is?” I cut in, glancing at her. “Who the hell isword is? How do you know all of this?”
Charlotte arches an eyebrow. “Don’t you read Tattletale?”
“Yeah, but not every day.”
