Once, and only once, had Plath gone to look at Lear.
Lear sat chained in the dungeon that had once held Suarez. Plath had asked for the door to be opened so that she could see her. See the monster. The mass murderer.
But Lear had not responded to Plath, had seemingly not noticed that she was there.
Plath stopped using that name, and reverted to Sadie. She had tried and mostly succeeded in accepting Noah’s death. But she could not reconcile herself to what had happened, what she had done, to New York City.
Four months on, Wilkes found her on the floor, choking on her own vomit after drinking an entire bottle of Lear’s bourbon. It was terribly clear that Sadie McLure would, sooner or later, manage to kill herself in expiation of her sins.
Wilkes would not allow that. She went to Vincent, and to Bug Man, and slowly, so very gently, the biots went to work. And little by little, Sadie McLure forgot.
TWO YEARS LATER
The woman was probably in her early fifties but looked much older. She was dressed in clean but tattered clothing, layers of it, as if she had to be ready for any sort of weather. In the pocket of her patched coat she carried a crumpled black trash bag to use as an umbrella. London was out of umbrellas.
“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.…”