“That’s her,” a street kid said, jerking his chin and holding out his hand. “That’s old Mrs. Cotton.”
Sadie pressed a small gold bar—no bigger than a segment of Kit Kat—into his hand and said, “If you lied to us, kid, we’ll find you.”
The “we” in question included seven uniformed, heavily armed men who had fanned out on both sides of the street. London had quieted since the worst of the Madness, as it was commonly called, but it was still a wild place where street gangs ruled many neighborhoods. The “we” also included Wilkes, now somewhat changed as well. She still bore the strange flame tattoo beneath one eye, but she had grown out her hair into a simple blunt cut. She was dressed in a zippered black jumpsuit and carried a machine pistol over her shoulder.
Sadie waved Wilkes back a few steps and moved closer to Mrs. Cotton, keeping pace with her.
“I’m not a danger to you, Mrs. Cotton,” Sadie said. “I’m here to tell you about your son.”
The woman stopped. She turned a scarred and ravaged face to Sadie. Such signs of abuse were common among the survivors of the Madness. Sadie could only imagine what this woman had endured.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Sadie McLure.” The name obviously meant nothing to Mrs, Cotton, and Sadie was relieved. A lot of stories were going around the newly revived Internet. There were even ridiculous rumors that Sadie McLure had actually ordered New York City destroyed. “I knew your son.”
“Alex? You were a friend of Alex?” The woman peered skeptically at Sadie.
“No, ma’am, Noah. In fact … we were close. I was with him at the end.”
Sadie led Mrs. Cotton to a small coffee shop, a place the older woman would never have been able to afford on the starvation pension and ration coupons the shaky government was able to pay her. But Sadie had gold, and gold made many things possible.
They bought weak coffee—or at least part of the hot brew was coffee, with just a bit of wheat chaff. And they each had a biscuit.
“Were you his girlfriend?”
“Yes,” Sadie said.
Silence. Nothing but the munching of the dry cookie. The sipping of coffee. Then, “How did he do? At the end?”
“Mrs. Cotton, Noah died a hero.” Sadie did not elaborate. Mrs. Cotton did not seem to need it, and the truth was that Sadie’s memories of Noah at the end were disjointed. Parts of what she thought she remembered seemed unrealistic. Parts of her memory seemed to fit poorly with other memories.
Wilkes stood a distance away, close enough to smell the coffee and overhear snippets of the conversation whenever the room was quiet. She had, of course, been involved in rewiring Sadie. She and Vincent had written a heroic end for Noah, an ending in which he single-handedly took down the Armstrong Twins and stopped Burnofsky.
There were elements of truth—a good wiring always rests best on a foundation of some truth. But it was still a work in progress, connecting images of Noah to heroic pictures gleaned painstakingly from Sadie’s memories of movies and books.
“Your son saved the human race,” Sadie said, and believed it, mostly.
Mrs. Cotton nodded grimly. “He was always a good boy.”
“Yes. I loved him.”
Mrs. Cotton’s composure broke then, and tears filled her eyes. “I couldn’t … I didn’t know how to reach him.… He had this job in New York.…”
“It was an important job. He was an important boy. Man, actually. Because he was definitely a man by the end,” Sadie said.
“I’m glad you told me this,” Mrs. Cotton said, though her face was anything but happy. “Did you tell him?”
“Did I tell him what?” Sadie asked.
“Did you tell him that you loved him?”
Sadie took her hand and squeezed it gently. “Yes. I told him that I loved him. I told him that many times.” Sadie glanced at Wilkes, who blushed and looked down. “He loved me, and I loved him. I think that memory is all that’s kept me alive.”
Sadie sat for a while longer with Noah’s mother and left her with enough small gold bars to take the edge off her poverty.
She and Wilkes walked down streets that still showed the bullet holes, the fire scorches, the wreckage of the Plague of Madness. But London had suffered this badly before in its long history and knew how to put itself back together. Crews were at work. There were police on the streets. Life was slowly returning.
A century would pass before New York City could say the same.
“Now what?” Wilkes asked.
“How much of what I told that woman was true?” Sadie asked.
Wilkes met her gaze and waited, saying nothing. Finally she said, “Now what?”
They were in front of what had once been a pizza restaurant, but was now burned out and choked with rubble.
“How long has it been since you had a decent pizza, Wilkes?”
“Long, long time,” Wilkes acknowledged, peering into the restaurant. “I think those ovens may still be usable. Of course someone would have to clean the place up. Get the gas working again.”
“You have something better to do?” Sadie asked. She stepped over the threshold, bent down, and grabbed hold of a broken table. “Help me with this.”
TWELVE YEARS LATER
Three windows were open in Sadie McLure’s brain.
Her three biots sat immobile in the glass vial she wore on a chain around her neck.
When business was slow at Poet Pizza, she would sit in a corner booth with her old friends, Anthony and Wilkes. Their daughter would tease the cooks while their baby son chuckled on his father’s lap.