“That’s actually really cool,” she says quietly.
I grunt. “Thank you.”
The elevator lets us out on my floor, and I scan my keycard at my door. When it slides open, Flicker rushes out with a disgruntled yowl?—
—and Lyn practically leaps out of her skin.
“What the fuck is that?” she breathes.
I look from her to my pet. “She is andraken,” I explain. “Harmless. Her name is Flicker.”
“Flicker,” Lyn repeats, then looks down at her.
Flicker stares back.
“Sorry, she…I thought it was a bigass snake,” Lyn says. “Snakes scare me.”
“They don’t seem that frightening.”
Her eyebrows go up. “You ever seenAnaconda?”
I just peer at her.
“Of course you’ve never seen Anaconda,” she mutters.
I gesture toward the door. “Come in,” I say. “She won’t bother you; she just wants to smell you, then she’ll probably sit on the back of the couch and observe.”
Lyn still looks nervous. “So she’s not friendly?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I say, “but she is selective.”
Lyn swallows hard, but then she steps through the door. I follow her in, make sure Flicker has joined us, then I shut the door behind us.
And then…she’s in my apartment.
The first female who has ever been here besides Shahar or my daughter.
Lyn looks around, and it strikes me suddenly that she is deeply, bizarrely out of place here. My lab is just as tidy as my home, but her station is always chaotic; here, she seems strange in the enforced order.
“Sit,” I instruct her, gesturing toward the couch. “Vitals first. Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
“I could use a beer and a cigarette.”
I narrow my eyes at her.
“Water would be great,” she says with a sheepish grin.
I go to the kitchen to get her a bulb of water, and I come back to give it to her. She takes the bulb with a confused look, brow furrowed.
“What is this?” she asks.
I look over my shoulder to her, now at the cabinet to get my medical kit.
“It’s…water.”
“I know,” she says. “But—how do I drink it?”
“Ah,” I say. “Here, it’s—you just press your lips to it and suck. It’s a biodegradable membrane designed for 0G, low waste?—”
