. . .

Tom is sitting alone on a bench. He is admiring a stand of mutant pipe cactus. The blooms have opened in the night and are releasing a rich and alien scent.

She turns sideways. She appears sitting beside him on the bench. He startles three feet rightwards.

“I need it,” she says.

“What?”

“I need it,” she grits out. “The hat. I can’t kill them. I can’t keep fighting. I can’t breathe.”

He looks her up and down.

“You’d just wind up joining them,” he says, dismissively.

Edmund verges onto the scene. Bethany kicks a cobblestone from the ground into her hand, throws it, beans him.

“Not mad scientist material?” she asks.

“The correct term is ‘innovator,’” says Tom peevishly. “Or merely ‘scientist.’ And no.”

“All right,” she says.

She stands up.

She looks down. She looks up. She takes a breath.

“You’ll have to watch me die,” she says, “then.”

“Actually,” says Tom, “I can just go home —”

“You are a complete and total jerkface,” she says.

He ponders this.

It is, as it happens, not true.

“Fine,” he says.

He tosses her his hat. She puts it on.

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