The pratikriti squats beside him on the terrace. Now that he is able to see again through his borrowed eyes, Neel is surprised at how obviously inhuman it looks. Then he remembers a briefing from a long time ago: the AI implants filter the appearance of artificials.

It is 3024, and there are no longer shrines. They long since washed away by nature’s fury in the form of quakes that split across continents, countries, cities, down schools, fields, homes neatly in two. You are to receive the memories of a late mother, a late father.

As children, we circled the crow chick that fell from its nest. Its wings were splayed heavenward like a saint’s, its brains streaked like veins of quartz across asphalt. Its neck arched back at a fossil-like, impossible angle. That was when I learned how fragile birds’ bones are.

You revere your patron saints. Your Marys. Your Joans. Your Catherines. You should fear them. If one ever heeds your prayer, and she arrives stripped of skin, of fingernails, of every organ and every last fuck to give, her halo a boiling crown of furious yellow flames.

I am running out of Words. I stumble down the temple steps, clutching my wounded side. I had been too slow to use my fourth Word and the prison guard’s spear had drawn blood before he choked to death under the weight of my suffocation spell.

They come on trains; they come on buses; they come on planes to our municipal airport. A handful even arrive on foot, having walked the whole distance to our City with what scant possessions they could carry on their backs—only a few, to be sure. But more than have ever walked away.