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she was feeling stronger. When she was back in a real relationship.
    Veronika reactivated
Wings of Fire
. At first she felt silly and self-conscious, but when Anya burst into the room and discovered her with Peytr, she nearly forgot about the encounter with Nathan.

7
Rob
    “Where are you going? Why are you going in there?”
    Rob turned to face the screen that had been following him since he got off the micro-T—a brown-skinned woman, maybe southeast Asian, young. Until now she’d kept her distance, said nothing, but whenever Rob glanced behind him, she was there. Now she was right in his face.
    “Do I know you?” Rob asked.
    “No, but I know you. Why are you going in there? Don’t you know she’s in there?”
    Rob swallowed thickly, feeling himself redden. Since he first noticed her, half a block behind him on Riverdale Avenue, he was afraid she might be a friend of Winter West. Since he wasn’t wearing a system, locating him could not have been an easy task. Either she’d been watching him since he left the house, or she’d paid a locator service to alert her as soon as he passed a public security camera. That couldn’t have been cheap.
    “Yes, I know she’s in there,” Rob said.
    The woman’s eyes grew wide. “Then how dare you go in?”
    Rob turned, continued toward the big doors to Cryomed’s dating center.
    The woman’s screen swung around to block his way. Rob was tempted to walk right through it, as he’d done with Lorelei, but he stopped.
    “Winter was my closest friend,” the woman said. “I want to know why you’re going in there. If you don’t tell me, I’ll call the police.”
    “The police?” The door was ten feet away. He could duck around the screen and sprint inside before the woman could react. But if he did, she would probably be waiting for him on the way out. Better to deal with her now. He was anxious enough about this without having to face Winter’s friends. “Look, I’m going inside to face up to what I did. No one feels worse about this than I do. I’m doing what I can to make things right.”
    The woman studied him, her eyes narrowed with anger and suspicion.
    “Why else would I possibly be going to see her? Do you think I want to see her, that I’m going to enjoy this? I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
    Slowly, tentatively, she moved aside. “All right. Tell her Idris loves her.” Just before the doors swirled shut, Rob heard her add, “You bastard.”
    Deep in the wall, machinery hummed, and the crèche slid slowly out of the wall, like a drawer opening in a morgue. She came feetfirst, and was covered in a silver wrap that was something between a blanket and aluminum foil. Rob was relieved he couldn’t see her body. He probably should have read what to expect before coming, but as soon as the moneyhad been secured and there was no turning back, he’d wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.
    Raising the money had reminded Rob of their frantic attempts to raise enough money to save his mom when she got cancer, only this time they’d needed far less money, and had succeeded in raising what they needed.
    His chest felt tight, his stomach and bowels were roiling. Another bout of anxiety-induced diarrhea was probably imminent. If he hadn’t been twenty-five years old and in perfect health, he was sure a heart attack would be imminent as well.
    Her face was the only part of her not covered in silver wrap; Rob stifled a moan when it slid into view. She was so terribly white, her lips gray blue, her eyelashes frosted. She was so clearly dead, and he so did not want to see her dead eyes open and fix on him. As the glass between them slid away, he considered fleeing. He could hide in the bathroom, tell his father he’d done it, fabricate a story about how well it had gone, how cathartic it had been for both of them. Of course, he wouldn’t do that, not after his father had taken out a high-interest loan to get him here.
    Some sort of machinery