Anthemone told herself she was going to meet up with Cal at Hanover's. Her mother's warning to avoid 14th fell on deaf ears compared to the singeing sting that made her face red and wasn't shame. Her birthday griddle cakes had tasted of blueberries and cinders. Bally'd plopped her head on Anthemone's lap, her little voice a sullen "Don't be mad" across her frontal lobe. She wasn't mad yet, she was scared. Just the same, she'd lifted her younger sister into her arms and shared her finger bowl of jam with her; and when Kimmy scrambled up wanting equal time, she split the remainder between them.

"Don't make a mess for momo, okay? You have nursery school."

Kimmy licked her fingers. Bally nodded on her behalf, too busy sucking the strawberry preserve smears off her arm.

Anthemone ducked her head guiltily under her mother's harried scrutiny.

"Sorry, mom."

Her mother waved off her apology. "It's fine. Paperwork day and all. You'd best be going; we don't want you late."

Anthemone gave her mom a quick hug before leaving to retrieve her stuff upstairs. Were she in her usual headspace she'd be ready by now, but she'd been afraid to crawl out of bed and face her reflection. She'd been scared to move and face the pain.

She paused at her con display. Part security system, part vanity prop, the plasma vid program reflected real-time footage of her standing in her bedroom and would continue to record the premises once she'd gone for the day. The image it was streaming back to her was unusual. Her rounded eyebrows sat low over her eyes, her medium brown skin was undercut by a faint shade of sickly grey. She touched her face. I must be sick. Awesome, sick on my birthday. Figures.

On looking around she realized she'd left half her stuff downstairs to begin with. This isn't my day. She hurried downstairs.

"All right, An?" Her dad asked while she was gathering her slate and coat.

"Yeah, great. I'm sixteen. Great birthday breakfast. I loved it." Anthemone tried to mean it, kept her head down knowing how convincing she wasn't.

"I know you've got some kind of test today. We can celebrate tomorrow after you've got some sleep. God knows me and your moms could do with some."

Anthemone gaped, glancing up at her dad. "How'd you know I didn't sleep?"

"You woke your mom with your galloping."

Anthemone winced.

"Leave it alone. It didn't bother her much. Just take over the family room next time; it's closer to the kitchen and you won't keep anybody awake with your cramming—and, yes, I know you cram. Your generation didn't invent the concept."

"Are you sure you're not a seer?"

"I'm married to one; that's pretty close."

"Fair enough." Anthemone's band alarm sounded. Crap, I still need to stop by 14th Street to check on Ef. I have to text Cal to wait for me. "I have to get going."

"Knock 'em dead, kid."

"I'll settle for unconscious. Bye, Dad. Kiss momo again for me." Anthemone scampered out back to retrieve her ride and set off for the main street at a marathon pace.

Sweat mingled with morning dew clinging to her temples. She breathed a little harder climbing ground-level tram tracks, swore at strangers too distracted to safely drive. She rode her bike from the working-class 'burbs of Belleton, down from the iron-ore 25th to the pretty 14th street, her gut churning whilst the thicket of walkers and hoverers thinned at every turn, grumbling in the same tenor of discontent as yesterday. Another detour.

Cornermasters stood at intersections, redirecting traffic and handing out verbal cautions. Some listened. Others carried on, aware and willing to invite their own risks.

With her stomach in her throat, Anthemone nodded her hellos and pedaled past. Synthetic grass was long behind; nevertheless, the smell lingered in the threads of her gold-buttoned oxblood romper, the humid insides of her suede shoes, obscuring the ozone smell of anti-grav high-altitude autos shooting ten-plus meters above her head.

Her bike trundled to a stop outside her second home. Hanover's boasted a busted front window and closed until further notice sign that caused her shivery heart to kick over into an irregular staccato beat. How?!

The coffee shop was a waterlogged nightmare. Spanish tiles and smashed bricks drowned in man-made puddles on the floor. Singed benches joined tables in cracked-apart piles all tossed together, kindling awaiting a pyromaniac's nascent spark. This wasn't what I saw.

Laser police lines barred her from shimmering inside to rifle through the rubble for answers. I didn't see this. I stood outside, nothing else was damaged. I know it. Unless her eyes deceived her, it turned out she didn't know much.

Soot stained the Robin's egg blue walls, rubbed raw in places by the force of high-velocity fire suppressant. There was a hole where the bar had been, gaping her dream stranger's height and six of him wide. Whatever had made it had obliterated the counter where she'd eaten yesterday. Granite dust powdered grey what soot hadn't painted black.

On the other side of the void, the perfume shop was spotless in comparison for all that it had been destroyed beyond recognition.

Eau du Pur was ashes, mint top notes, and nothing more—and yet, nothing less.

There was a shell where the perfume shop once stood. The floor above where Efram had slept hung by the hollow grace of anti-grav generators. They were supposed to make the area safe for emergency intervention. But where were they when Ef needed 'em?

She dumped her bike in the middle of the walk when she saw a trainee cornie in her grey shock vest and helm policing members of the public who leaned too far into the restricted investigation zone. Anthemone had an acrimonious relationship with restrictions.

"Excuse me, can you tell me what the news is about the store attendant, Efram?" The look the woman gave her; she could have been a student and yet she regarded Anthemone as a kid. Curling her toes in her shoes, she ignored it. "Cahill, Efram Cahill. He should have been here. He's about so tall, brown, looks like a high school dropout?"

The woman's superiority slipped into awkwardness belied by her height. Anthemone read the name A. Huxley on her chest plate.

"Did you hear what I said?"

"D—uh, don't think I saw anybody matching that description," the young cornermaster stammered, going pallid and shooting panicky looks at the investigators canvassing the boulevard in their deep blue sleeves.

"Who did? Who can I ask? He's my friend, I need to know if he's all right." She snapped her fingers to mitigate her nerves. He's fine. Maybe he was out to visit friends and he'll be back before noon. He'll be devastated, but he'll live. She didn't have a good feeling about her wishful thinking.

An older male cornermaster in blue wearing the insignia of a Master Inspector pulled himself away from the rubble to intervene. Like I'm some kind of trouble. 'Course I am.

"What can we do for you, young lady?"

I hate being called that. If experience had taught her anything, it had taught her that diminutives weren't signs of respect, rather reminders of who held power and when.

"I want to know about my friend, Efram Cahill. He works here at the perfume shop. I haven't seen him today."

The master inspector accessed his holo-tab. "You said Cahill?"

She stood ever so slightly taller to see what he was doing but was thwarted by his angling the mid-air security screen toward himself. What's the point of holographic projections if they're identity-locked? She hated government-issued technology.

"Yes, Efram. E-F-R-A-M. Cahill. C-A-H-I-L-L. Mr. Forever Young," she added last of all.

The man flattened his lips into a line

Not much for nicknames? He seems fun at parties.

"You're sure that's who you want?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Where is he?"

"Gone. He's out of town. You don't need to worry about him anymore."

"Why would he be out of town? He doesn't have any family and I saw him just yesterday."

The inspector fixed her with a penetrating stare. "Did you?"

Anthemone returned the look, steady in her ability to say one thing and know another to be true.

I did, didn't I? First, I went to Eau and then...no, I didn't go to Eau, I went for sweet. I never stopped in the shop. She hadn't laid eyes on him at all yesterday, now that she thought about it. Someone had been exiting the shop at the same time she had been trying to enter, and when they collided she'd run away to escape the public embarrassment of being labelled a dunce. She hadn't seen brawny hide or tawny hair of him. I didn't look. Was he there?

Anthemone twisted the strap of her shoulder bag.

"Is he okay?"

"He's fine," the elder officer assured her, assured them both if the frantic widening of the junior cornermaster's eyes was meant to be seen. The young woman nodded. Anthemone didn't. Then again, she didn't tend to respond to lies; they were something she had a Sixth Sense for. What she'd heard didn't ring true, only she wasn't clear on why. Mom says cops don't lie. Some, I'll grant, but these two are full of it.

Not for the first time she wished she'd gotten more of her dad's intimidating stare and less of her mom's deceptive softness. People underestimate her all the time. I do it, too, but I wouldn't want to meet her in an alley at two in the morning. Most criminals who had would say the same.

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely. You can check the Pages."

Anthemone hadn't thought of that. "I'll do that. Thanks."

"You're welcome," cornermaster Huxley replied, her grimace turning into a shy smile.

"The Pages aren't all good news," the master inspector warned her, interjecting where he wasn't wanted. Anthemone read his name sewn onto his placket. B. Sewell. "Might give you a complex."

As if being stared at by melanin-poor cornermasters like I'm a walking case file in the making can do me any worse. There would be nothing new in Anthemone watching over her shoulder for suspicious characters, for all that those characters were draped in grey or blue and claimed to want to keep the peace.

"I can handle it."

Dad had taught her at a young age that nothing good could come from gaining the attention of the cornies. Truth, Justice, and the American Way was a very old message applied unequally to all who had lived before the Wars. Equality hadn't precisely materialized post-conflict, either.

He had explained it to her during Seers & Visionaries Observance Day when she was nine: 'That's because gaining true equality means that somebody has to give something up, be it a perceived sense of supremacy or real tangible power and authority. Some folks can be bitter about that, and that's what they teach their children who grow up to join a more equitable world with the belief that they're being deprived.'

Entitled SOBs are the ones that go above and beyond. The status quo is their playground and their religion. Anthemone wasn't much for fighting where she couldn't win. Sensing a lie though she did, she didn't have the evidence on her side. But I will. I'll find it. I just have to plan for stealth.

"I have to go to school."

Sewell crooked a tattooed eyebrow. "Don't you want to talk some more about your friend?"

"No, he'll be okay. It's just like you said, he needed some time to himself."

Huxley wore an expression of equal bafflement.

"Thanks for your help. Good luck with your investigation."

She skipped away from the laser cordon to retrieve her bicycle. The diffuse crowd allowed Anthemone to vanish from sight somewhat more easily, as she preferred. Not that the cornermasters would have to do much to put a name to her face. Low-altitude satellite security tech was legion and band ids were forever sending out locator signals to aid individual identification to be used in the event of mass-fatality disasters, though they were decent for fugitive apprehension to boot.

Don't have time to think about that now. Cal, food I can eat, and Tanaka. The apprehensive twist in her gut would have to wait for a better time. School waits for no one.

Anthemone pumped her legs in a furious rhythm frantic enough to startle the masses into making way for a girl and her 2017 bicycle on a 2039 road. All kinds of standard-bearers were yielding to treatment, why not the public just the same when Anthemone was the natural disaster blowing through their day?

Once she'd crossed the Tri-Belle bridge leading to other police regions, her concerns began to recede slightly to the background of her mind. She hadn't been followed. I'm just being paranoid. How embarrassing. Given the nightmare she'd had she was sure she had to be allowed some concessions. Anybody would be shaken up dreaming of burning to death. It was just a dream.