I drove. The Charger hummed at seventy-eight miles per hour, and the road climbed along the coast through Carpinteria where avocado orchards ran up the hillsides in neat green rows. The air smelled like salt and citrus, and Jace Monroe, formerly dead man walking, currently living on borrowed milk and a combat system designed by an entity who had apparently failed with twelve other subjects across nine realities, drove a car named Consequence toward a conversation he was not sure he wanted to have.
At the seventeen-minute mark I said, "Question three."
"When I picked you for mentorship, I already knew what you were. The question you actually want to ask is why I picked you despite knowing."
"Fine. Why."
"Because you're the first person carrying one of these systems who appears capable of not dying from it."
