I share my days between the kindergarten and Duke. Not for long, though. The kindergarten will be closed by the end of the week if my calculations are correct.

And, of course, they are correct.

By that time, I'll be sleeping with Duke, if my calculations are correct.

Okay, who am I kidding? Counting might have a therapeutic effect on me, like I'm in control of the events, but I don't need it this time. Because, in fact, I'm in control of the events. I'll sleep with Duke when I decide to sleep with him, and that's it.

I wish it could be done by the end of the week. I still need a little practice with kissing, and I'm ready to run a trial version to determine the potential fields of further research and development.

It must be done. It's a beautiful part of normal life.

I won't have anything else to do, anyway. With the kindergarten closed, and the children under quarantine, I'll be useless. I'll have lots of free time to practice sex.

I might find a new special interest, too. Who knows? There is a well-defined intersection where my current special interest—safety—and my possible future favorite theme merge. Safe sex. That could be my next obsession. Then I could embarrass people on a daily basis, as a nice addition to simply freaking them out, the old way.

"You are so deep in thought," Duke says, touching my hair gently. My hair doesn't have free nerve endings, so he knows he can abuse it as much as he wants.

"I'm thinking about the kids."

"A kid? Well, your hormones might say—"

"A kid can die in two thousand five hundred eighty-six ways," I inform him. "Did you know that?"

"What?!"

"And the virus is the two thousand five hundred eighty-seventh, though it can be divided into sub-categories, based on the immediate cause of death—never mind. I should be by their side. But I can't, if they close the place."

"Oh, so you're talking about your lambs," he says, with a comically relieved expression. "Okay, then."

"No, it's not okay at all. Their parents only think about the most trivial ones, like being hit by a bus or swallowing a deflated balloon animal. They'll be in danger."

"Yes." He nods, caressing my shoulders very lightly. "But you can't do anything about it. You need to trust them."

"The parents?"

"Hell no," Duke snorts. "The children. You taught them well. They follow safer rules than the vast majority of the adult population."

I smile at him gratefully. He always knows what to say.

"Still, I feel like I'm mourning," I tell him. "This is our last year together, so with or without the pandemic, I must let them go."

"What about your previous class? How did you stop, you know, protecting them?"

"I introduced a five-step withdrawal protocol. You know, copying the one I used at the Agency when I checked in and out. Back then, I couldn't have taken all of you home with me after a mission and tuck you in my wardrobe to keep you safe from all possible dangers, right?"

"Well, you could have, probably, if—"

"Okay, I hope that's something you discussed with your psychiatrist. Anyway. Back to the five-step process, I used with the kids. First, I discarded all the decorations we used and made new ones for the new lambs. Second, I stopped to enumerate their names before going to sleep, saying thanks for them still being alive. Third, I quit assessing their strengths and weaknesses that could possibly prove fatal for them. Fourth, I refrained from peeping at them when they were playing in the yard of their new school. Fifth—"

"For how long have you been peeping?" he asks, sounding a bit unnerved.

"Well, the whole process took three months, so for two months, I guess. I had to, Duke. Just to make sure that they were okay."

"Right. But with us, the old team..."

"Are you worried that I peeped at you?" I ask him. "That's absurd, Duke."

"Other than in the shower?"

"Um... okay. No, Duke, I haven't followed you. When I left the Agency, I started with the fifth step."

"Which is?"

"I made a ritual," I tell him. "To sever all ties and to disband my lambs from my care. I recited the Credo backward, and I sacrificed a sheep at the altar."

"What?!"

"I won't tell you about the fifth step, Duke. It was the most painful thing I've ever done. I don't want to talk about it."

"Well, it was the most painful thing you've ever done to us, too. Just sayin'."

"I know."

"I still have your fucking medal. It says how well you took care of us. Did you, though? It's the only thing that kept me from turning into a full-fledged alcoholic. Just sayin'."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," he sighs. "The fucking system turned you into our collective mother figure, not you. We had no one else we could love. You just played with us to make it bearable, and we took it too seriously."

"You're so clever, Duke," I tell him, without a hint of irony this time.

"Yeah." He grins. "The fifth step, huh? That disbanding ritual didn't prove very effective, did it? I'm still yours. And you can't stop protecting me. Those were formative years for both of us."

"I'm all duty," I admit.

"And I'm all complexes."

"But you're also very hot, Duke," I point out. "Oh, and don't worry, you don't need to answer that in kind."

He laughs and closes the distance between our mouths without warning.

For a second, I think of all those disgusting bodily fluids he has, in his mouth, for example, and I panic. Then, I resign to my fate. It's a pleasant part of normal life. Let it be. Bacteria living in the saliva are mostly benign, anyway.

Just before he reaches the target, he slows down and places the usual soft peck on my mouth, accompanied by a considerate little smile.

He's very considerate to me. That's so kind of him.

In other words, though, he treats me like I'm a psycho. Like he's expecting all the time that my mind would snap, and I'd go postal on him if he were to treat me like a person, not like a porcelain doll.

It makes me feel the same tightness in the chest that I feel when someone calls me weird. And it's a bigger turnoff than bodily fluids.

I'm 99.9% positive that he wants to kiss me like he would kiss a normal person. That's a rare truth. But he doesn't. That's another rare truth. So, all in all, I'm not sure that I'll be sleeping with Duke by the end of the week.

But what will I do, then? Other than consoling a crying Nicole, who will be devastated by then, in the middle of a personality crisis, facing her new life without a kindergarten in it. I'll need something else if I want to stay away from stalking my lambs' families nonstop.

Maybe I should think of something nice, using the law of attraction, which is 87% bullshit but once made the Matrix glitch. I can't think in pictures, though, so it's useless, anyway. I don't believe that thinking of the theoretical idea of good works.

Good. Good. Good. Okay, I did what I could.

"So," Duke interrupts my musings, "back to the case. Mint has the vaccine. But he doesn't have the documentation. What does that mean, in your opinion?"

"That it's time for the guys at the Agency to step up their game because an army is on their way to pay them a visit."

"What?! How do you know that? You can't know that!"

Well, here we go again. Formative years, indeed.