“I just worry that we’re doomed to failure. We’ve been down this road before; there are so many reasons that we don’t make sense.”

Cord leaned against the doorway, crossing his arms over his chest. “Doomed is a pretty strong word. What are all these reasons, if you don’t mind my asking? And don’t say that I never come downTower, because I’m here now.”

Rylin’s anger and resentment were crumbling away, falling in useless hollow pieces down into her chest, to settle there, forgotten. She felt her throat clog in a strange hybrid of laughter and tears.

“I have one very big reason that we will work. Which is that I love you.” He smiled, his eyes on her, as if he was willing her to smile too. “I love you, and I have this foolish hope that maybe, possibly, despite all my countless dumb mistakes, you might love me too.” He lifted an eyebrow, and suddenly he looked just as cocky and full of himself as he did last year, when Rylin fell for him the first time.

She couldn’t hold back the words anymore.

“I do love you. Against my better judgment, might I add.”

“Let’s hope your better judgment never wins out.” Cord laughed and reached into his back pocket. “I brought a peace offering, by the way.”

It was a miniature packet of Gummy Buddies.

“Remember that night? The first time I kissed you?”

As if Rylin would ever forget. “You mean when I slapped you and called you a rich, entitled asshole?”

“Yes, exactly,” Cord said evenly. “The night it all began.”

“Maybe one.” Rylin reached for a bright cherry-red Gummy Buddy and bit into it. The miniscule, digestible RFID chip embedded in the gummy registered the impact, causing the candy to begin twitching and screaming. Still laughing a little, Rylin quickly swallowed the other half.

“Those are just as weird as the first time.”

“That’s because you insist on torturing them,” Cord countered, unable to suppress a grin. “Not that I’m complaining. Better them than me.”

“Really? Because I think it’s your turn.” Rylin smiled and tipped her face up to kiss him.

Maybe happy endings were real, as long as you understood that they weren’t endings, but steps on the road. Value changes, Cord had called them.

If Rylin had learned anything by now, it was that in real life, you never quite knew what was coming. You had to take the bad with the good. You had to take a chance, hold your breath, and trust people.

After all, the fun of real-life stories is that they’re still being written.

WATT

WATT STOOD AT the edge of Tennebeth Park in Lower Manhattan, gazing out at the Statue of Liberty in the distance, her torch lifted determinedly into the flurry of gray skies. The snow hadn’t stopped. It caught in the folds of Watt’s jacket, dusted the tops of his boots.

He lifted a hand to just above his right ear, where a crinkly Medipatch was the only evidence of the surgery he’d just had. His head throbbed with a confused pain that was physical and emotional at once.

“You again?” the doctor had asked when Watt opened the door to his unmarked clinic. The self-styled Dr. Smith, official medical consultant of the black market—the person who had installed Nadia in Watt’s brain several years ago.

And now the doctor had uninstalled her.

Watt glanced down at the palm of his glove. The entire city lay behind him, vibrant and busy, but Watt’s focus had zeroed to a tiny fixed point: the disc he was holding.

There was something oddly intrusive about seeing Nadia this way, her qubits laid bare before him, almost as if he were seeing a girl without her clothes on. To think that this tiny quantum core, this warm pulsing piece of metal, contained the vastness that was Nadia.

It felt weird, not having her voice in his head. She had been there for so long that Watt had forgotten what it was like without her.

He was going to miss her. He would miss her sarcastic sense of humor, their constant chess matches. He would miss feeling as if he always had an ally—as if there were someone in his corner, no matter what.

But maybe he didn’t need to stop feeling that way, Watt thought, as a figure detached itself from the shadows to step toward him.

“Leda? How did you know where I was?”

“You told me,” she said, her nose wrinkled in adorable confusion, and Watt realized what must have happened.

Nadia must have messaged Leda for him, intuiting his emotions the way she always did. She had known that he would need a friend right now.

Or maybe, he amended, Nadia had known that Leda needed him.

The ambient light reflected off the snow to illuminate Leda’s face, which was bright with grief. Her features were drawn, her eyes glassy and brilliant with tears. Huddled into her puffy green jacket, her hands stuffed into her pockets, she looked frail; yet there was a new quiet strength to her movements.

“Are you okay?” he asked, though it was patently obvious that she wasn’t.

Leda threw her arms around him in response. Watt closed his eyes and hugged her back, hard.

As they stepped away, they both couldn’t help glancing up at the top of the Tower: too high to see properly from this close, but it didn’t really matter. They knew what it looked like up there.

“I still can’t believe what Avery did for me. For all of us.” Leda’s voice fractured over the words.