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“Hey,” Cora chided. “Not on my floor.”

Twig was unfussed. “I’m sleeping down there, not you.”

“It’s still my floor. C’mon.” Cora knelt down and began to fold the bottom sheet around the top corners of the mattress.

Despite Cora’s refusal, Twig brushed her hands off and likewise knelt down, taking up the opposite pair of corners. She tucked them under the mattress the same way Cora did, which was the same way anybody who’d grown up with Aunt Maisie did. Make a triangle, smooth it flat, tuck it under nice and snug.

“So how do you know Scooter the spike dealer?” Cora asked, direct but with a light touch. Browbeating the kid would accomplish nothing, and besides, as annoying as this extremely fucking Twig turn of events was, Cora was very grateful her sister had come to her. Cora would not sugarcoat and she would not shrug off serious shit, but there was no universe in which she would ever push Twig away.

“I told you,” Twig said. “I met him at Chapter 252.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It was in the link I sent you last week.”

“Which link?” Cora asked. Twig sent a lot of links.

Twig’s mouth flattened. “The link that explained what Chapter 252 is. You replied ‘interesting’ to it. You know, like a person would say if they actually read it.”

Cora winced. “Ah.” Sometimes, Cora did read the links Twig kicked her way at all waking hours. And sometimes, they were okay. A lot of them, though, were hacky mouth-foaming that Cora couldn’t care less about, and in this case, she . . . she hadn’t read that article, no.

Her apologetic grin wasn’t as good as Twig’s, but it came close.

Twig clucked her tongue. “Society’s never gonna get better if people aren’t informed,” she said.

Cora was sick of this particular high horse. She kept waiting for the day when Twig’s loathing of the government, of OCTA, of city politics, and of anything that brushed up against any of those things—which was to say, everything—mellowed into something workable. It clearly wasn’t gonna happen today. “I don’t see how being mad all the time helps anybody,” Cora said.

“Anger is what fuels action,” Twig stated in a tone that suggested she’d picked up the phrase elsewhere. “And action is what drives change.”

“Sure, but jerking off about how many different things you’re mad about isn’t action.”

“Wow. Okay. Fuck you, too.”

“I didn’t mean you, I mean the people who write this stuff.”

“You don’t know what they wrote, because you didn’t even read it!”

“Okay, fine,” Cora said. She slapped the final sheet corner into place, then sat back on her heels. “Inform me. What’s Chapter 252?”

Twig stood and returned to the desk chair and her sandwich. “It’s kind of like a club. A weekly gathering for people who are interested in exploring both the history and potential future of human life on Fortune.”

“Okay,” Cora said. There had to be more to this. That sounded entirely too sedate. “So, like, at the university, or—”

“No, it’s at a smoke shop, after hours. The owner’s really cool.”

Yeah, that sounded more like it. “And . . . is it like a book club, or lectures—”

“There’s a guest speaker every time, and then you can just hang out and chat after. Share ideas and stuff.”

“How many people go to this?”

“I dunno, like . . . there were maybe fifteen people, last time? It’s pretty new.”

“Okay. And so, what? You argue about the Primer?”

Twig laughed. “No, no. Well, I mean, sure, a little bit, but the point is to dig into what isn’t in the Primer. You know, the stuff they kept out on purpose, or that the government doesn’t want us to know.”

There it was. Okay. Cora managed to keep a straight face. “So, conspiracy theories,” she said. “You’ve been going to a smoke shop and listening to people talk about conspiracy theories.”