01110011 01110101 01101110 01110010 01101001 01110011 01100101 [Sunrise]

A roar like a tidal wave filled my head, splashing over my eyes in white-hot streaks. It felt like a jet engine had started up in my chest. I'd never booted up with quite so much fanfare, as I did that night in the maintenance lab, and I'd never taken quite so long to realize where I was; it was a full five seconds before the world began to melt into place. Silver spots spread to become the ceiling. The light that was everywhere slurped back into fluorescent bulbs.

"There she is." I felt warm, soft, leather-sheathed fingers slide themselves out of my ear, card gently through my bangs. "Rise and shine, love."

"Zima!"

The memories came back in a rush. Had I been standing, they might have knocked me off my feet. But I wasn't, I was lying on a platform, and it was Zima standing over me; I didn't know how, I didn't know why, I didn't know what had happened and in that moment, I didn't care. Zima was here. Zima was here and he was safe, he was himself, he sounded the same and he touched me the same and his eyes, gazing down at me, were the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.

I bolted up and he caught me in his arms, pulled me close. Held me tight to his chest. Half-on and half-off the platform, face crushed into his coat, arms locked around him like a vise, I didn't move an inch. Couldn't, maybe. If he let me go, I thought I might come to pieces, there on the tile floor. "Shh, love," he murmured, pressing a kiss against the crown of my head. Until then, I hadn't realized how badly I was shaking. "You're all right."

"I don't care about me!" I managed, lifting my head to blink into his eyes. "God, I was—I was so worried about you! I was afraid you were—I-I was afraid they had—"

He silenced me with a kiss. Taking my face in his hands, he tipped my head back and kissed me until I was still – until his warmth poured through me, thawed the ice stiffening my limbs, the antiseptic cold of the lab. Until the tremors released their grip. "I'm sorry," he said softly, sincerely, resting his forehead against mine. At such close range – not that I wanted to be further – I could just barely see his smile, faint and sweet and sad. "This is all my fault."

"Zima—"

"I should have listened to you," he sighed, for what I was absolutely sure was the first time in our lives. "I was so stupid, so—so selfish. You're the only thing in the world that matters to me, and I put you in danger because I wanted to have fun. I wouldn't blame you if you never forgave me."

I'd never known Zima to regret anything. And as much as I'd wished he would, in the past – as maddening as it could be, when he always turned out to be right – it was far less satisfying than I'd hoped. "Don't go taking all the credit," I mumbled. "It's as much my fault as yours."

A flicker of gratitude eased the bitterness in his smile, broadened it into a grin. As if he could have possibly believed, even for a second, that I would let him take any fall on his own. "Partners in crime, then?"

"Partners in crime."

We sealed it with a kiss.

He slid an arm around my waist and helped me off of the platform, and only then did I think to wonder what was going on. He'd started me up, I knew that much, but who'd restarted him? How was any of this even remotely possible? "Zima," I said when I got my footing, glancing up at him, "how did—"

"Ren and Yui." He nodded towards a console at the other end of the lab, a pair of familiar silhouettes framed in its monitor's glow. I hadn't noticed them, until then, and even then they hardly seemed to notice us; they were deep in conversation, Ren's hands on her hips, Yui's fluttering like doves through the air. They spoke in hisses and whispers, trading words like 'registration' and 'encryption' and 'undetectable.' "Well, just Yui, at first. She's got access to all the labs, remember?"

"But—why?"

As if on cue, they both turned to look at us, eyes glinting with conviction. The corners of Ren's mouth curled in a grin. "I have a feeling," Zima said as she strode over, Yui not far behind, "we're about to find out."

"We can do it," Ren announced, immensely proud of herself for no reason I could discern. I'd never seen another 'com flush before – even after things changed, it seemed to have been a phenomenon reserved exclusively for me – but her cheeks were pink as peonies, and not from embarrassment, either. From satisfaction. From the rush of a conclusion reached. "We can totally, absolutely, one-hundred-percent for sure do it. It'll be a piece of cake."

"Wonderful," Zima said, as he and I exchanged a glance. "What is it we can do?"

"Well, it's not so much what we can do, but what you can. You and Dita, I mean." Without preamble, she reached out and grabbed us both by our hands, and proceeded to march back to the console with us both in tow. Yui's heels clicked as she tagged along, so chipper she was nearly skipping. "You're going to blow this popsicle stand."

Zima's eyes widened. I frowned. "What does that even mean?"

"It means," Ren said, "that you'd better be nice to me, and Yui too, because we're busting you out of here. Tonight." That, I understood. Having gone somewhat numb with disbelief, I let Ren deposit me in an office chair, falling into it like a sack of flour. Zima landed in the one beside me, and of course whatever shock he felt was short-lived; I blinked at him, mouthed something like the hell? – what the hell is she talking about, who the hell is she kidding, how the hell do they think they're going to pull this off? – but he just smiled, and shrugged. "It means that, if we play our cards right, neither of you will have to lose anything, and you'll be free as birds to boot. Sound like a good deal?"

"Absolutely—"

"—not," I interrupted Zima, shooting him a glare. "You can't possibly think this is going to work."

Ren rolled her eyes. "You don't even know what this is."

"I don't have to! We can't just leave, they'll track us. And when they find us, they won't just wipe our drives – they'll shut us down for good, and we'll end up on the next truck to the smelting plant." Instinctively, I bit hope's oustretched hand, smashed the seed before it grew roots to be ripped. I knew what they said: if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. "Just because you're tech support doesn't mean you can remove the GPS. It's hardware, you—you can't just uninstall it, Ren. You'd have to cut us open, and I know you're not qualified to do that."

"Maybe not. But there's something else – something just as good – that I am qualified to do. And if Little Miss Contrary here will refrain from getting her booty shorts in a twist, I'll be glad to explain."

Plopping down in an office chair of her own, Ren scooted up to the console and began to interface with the touchscreen, fingers flying as she spoke. "So you know what a secret shopper is, right?" Naturally Zima did, but I didn't, and in lieu of shaking my head I slouched in my chair and scowled. "Okay, maybe not. See, when somebody runs a restaurant or a store, they want to know that the people who work there are doing their jobs right every day – not just that they'd be on their best behavior if the big boss stopped by. They want to see their business through the eyes of the run-of-the-mill consumer. So they hire people called secret shoppers, and pay them to go into the business pretending like they're ordinary customers; based on the service they receive, those shoppers fill out and turn in a questionnaire. That's the basic idea.

"I know, I know, what does this have to do with us? Well, relatively recently, the government has begun to adapt this idea for its own purposes – those being the surreptitious surveillance of ministries and the departments within them. It wants to know that its employees are doing their jobs as much as any retailer or restaurant. But instead of shoppers, the people pose as potential job applicants, or members of a tour group. And the people aren't people at all, they're persocoms. Persocoms don't have to fill out a questionnaire, and they don't have to count on us to be objective; instead of just taking someone else's word for it, the dispatcher can see and hear for himself how the visit's going, either through a live video and audio feed or through a recording to be viewed later.

"Of course, that only works if the ministry being evaluated doesn't know the 'shopper's' a persocom, so not just anyone can do it. They use 'coms with ears like Dita's, obviously. And those 'coms are sent to maintenance to be retrofitted with a special software, that keeps them from being inadvertently outed by any number of things. We call it the camo program – short for camouflage – and it serves two major functions." A start-up menu blipped onto the screen. "The first is as a silencer, a mute button for all that beeping and clicking and humming that would otherwise blow a 'com's cover before she could get past the lobby. Useful but inconsequential, for our purposes.

"The second is as a signal-scrambler. I like to think of it as the 'one-way mirror' component, because it allows you to 'see' other computers – you can still make phone calls, send messages, access the internet, so on and so forth – without being seen. It doesn't cut you off, but it makes you undetectable. In a shopper 'com's case, it keeps her from getting pinged by other 'coms in the target ministry, so they can't unmask her and go tattling to their owners. In this case," she added, with a glint of that triumphant grin, "it's your ticket out of here."

Processing that, I knit my brow. "You don't really expect us to believe," I said, a bit mulishly, "that the government's authorized a program that keeps it from tracking its own 'coms?"

"No, I don't, because it hasn't. That's where I come in." Ren laced her fingers, turned out her palms and cracked her knuckles, the smile never leaving her lips. "As of now, the software is programmed to make an exception for the GPS. All I have to do is tweak its parameters, so that it'll make you undetectable to all other machines – not just those outside this building."

With that, she set about playing the console's keyboard as though it were a piano, eyes fixed on the monitor. She breezed through a series of screens, from the start-up menu to the program parameters, from View Parameters to Edit Parameters, from Edit Parameters to Select Components for Revision. and from there to about a squillion lines of code. Too dazed to focus on translating it, I sat and stared while she zipped through column after column of ones and zeroes. Her hands darted like hummingbirds from one cluster of keys to another. Yui sent me a reassuring smile.

And…beside me, Zima had that look in his eyes, that look like he was thinking hard. That look that took everything in, and let nothing out. That look that bottled the light. He wasn't frowning – well, of course he wasn't frowning, he never frowned – but he wasn't smiling, not anymore. If I had thought he'd answer, I would have asked why.

The console bleeped. Program parameters successfully reset, read the screen. Proceed to installation suite?

"Ha!" Ren brought her fist down on the console, so hard it seemed to shake the entire lab. "This thing is my bitch! Did I not tell you I could do it? Did I not tell you?"

"You told me," Yui said reverently.

"Hell yes I did. Cables, please." Without turning, she extended an open hand in our direction, our meaning Zima's and mine. I still wasn't sure – this can't really work, can it? There has to be a catch, hasn't there? This is all going to come crashing down, it's going to be worse than ever, it's just a matter of time—right? – but when I looked at him, he'd already popped an ear, and produced a cable for Ren. "Muchas gracias, Romeo," she said, plugging him into the console. "Move it or lose it, Juliet."

What else could I do? If he'd made up his mind to do it, I couldn't very well not. So I sighed and pulled out a cable of my own, and let Ren hook me up; a second later, our ID numbers appeared on the install menu. Commence installation in all connected units? the monitor asked, and she tapped yes. Allow installation of program 237712 v.3 from server A16? my system asked me, and I told it might as well. It's not as if things can get any worse.

We watched as a loading bar flickered onto the screen, filling slowly with a pale blue light. Beneath it flashed progress updates, telling us what it was installing as it installed it, and I knew had I closed my eyes I'd have seen the same thing; I could feel my drive rearranging itself, cooking up shortcuts, establishing links. Greeting each new component and shepherding it to its home – or, perhaps more accurately, frisking it and jamming it in where it would fit.

But I didn't close my eyes. Instead, I sat and watched Zima, still with that faraway cast to his gaze. Even as beams of light raced through them, glowing like falling stars, his eyes were somehow dark; I tried to follow them, look wherever it was he was looking, see whatever it was he was seeing, and got lost. He was somewhere else entirely. And I tried to wake him, to reach out and touch him, but when I did my hand stopped an inch short of his sleeve – when I did, static licked at the tips of my fingers, as if I'd hit an invisible wall. As if we were magnets turned on their wrong ends, and the closer I came, the further he got.

Installation completed, the monitor announced with a ping.

"Sweet. Let's test it out." When Ren disconnected us, my cable zipped back into its port, the hatch clicking shut. She glanced over her shoulder at me. "What's your password?"

I told her and she opened the database of 'com files, accessible on all of the building's stationaries but fairly useless on most of them. In order to actually open any of the files, one had to know the 'com in question's password, so any given person would only be using the library to check up on the handful of units in their charge. Scrolling down to the file named 01165B, she typed my password in the pop-up box and hit enter, bringing up my remote access menu.

Of the default specs displayed on that menu, the most pertinent were my GPS coordinates. The same coordinates that had clued Ms. Yamane in to everything, that had opened this bottomless can of worms; those coordinates had gotten us into his mess, but I was only just now allowing myself to think that they might be able to get us out. Unable to retrieve GPS signal, blinked the error message where my location should've been. Coordinates unknown.

Yui let out a little squeal of excitement. "It worked! You really did it, Ren!"

"I told you I could. But just for kicks…" She closed my file and found Zima's, and before she could ask he gave her his password, too. When he spoke – for the first time, I realized, since I'd cut him off – he spoke in his data-entry monotone, staring at nothing with those veiled eyes.

And when Ren pressed enter, I finally knew why.

"No way!" She smacked the console again, this time in frustration. Clear as day, his coordinates stared back at us, his signal evidently as strong as ever. "It doesn't make sense! It should've worked, I—I don't understand—"

"The databank has its own signal," Zima said quietly, because of course he'd known all along. "Separate from mine. So they can upload and access new files remotely, while we're out on assignment. It's part of the software that facilitates mass data storage – and without uninstalling that software, it can't be encrypted or removed."

Impossible though it was, Yui looked as though she might burst into tears. "Then what…what are you going to do?"

"There's only one thing I can do." He looked at me with eyes gone tender, every bit of him very much present now. I suppose I knew what he would say, before he said it. I suppose there was no way I couldn't have known. "Dita, love," he said, a smile playing at his mouth, "would you still like me if I didn't know everything?"

And even though I'd known what he was going to say – even though I knew the second I saw those coordinates, spelled out like a death sentence on that screen – it still killed me to hear it. It sapped the feeling from my limbs, the words from my mouth. Sucked me dry and left me a shell. I couldn't answer him, I couldn't, and I thought he understood but Ren didn't; taking my silence for assent, she jumped right back in. "So what? We purge the databank?"

"Yup. Delete everything, and the software too." He engaged Ren with one eye still on me, a numb husk gone limp in my chair. "It's not as if anyone'll miss it. That data's backed up in a zillion places anyway."

"Well, all right then. Let's do it to it."

"No."

When I found my voice, that was all I could say. It was all that had been running through my head, and it grew louder with each second that passed; first, it was a dread-weakened mumble, a pipesmoke wisp of a sound. No, no, no. Then it came harder, sharper, fell like hail instead of rain. No. And then—and then before I knew it, it was almost a sob, so loud it hurt but I couldn't switch it off – I couldn't mute this voice, like I had Ms. Ichida's, because this voice was mine. This voice was everywhere inside of me, crying that word again and again. No! NO!

Ren raised an eyebrow. "What are you—"

"I said no!" All of a sudden I was shaking again. My hands, gripping the chair's arms, felt clammy. "Zima, you can't! You won't—I-I don't—God, you just can't!"

"Well, it's not as if there's any other choice," Ren said.

Zima got to his feet. "Would you guys mind giving us a minute?" he said to them, sort of under his breath. Yui squelched Ren's protest with a hand on her shoulder, steering her off towards the opposite side of the lab; they slipped out of sight, the tap-tap of Yui's heels fading fast, and Zima knelt in front of my chair. "Dita," he said, in the kind of voice that only made my shivers worse. He leaned in close to me, cradling my face in his hands. "What are you afraid of?"

For the second time that night, he looked at me with utterly earnest eyes. Serious, searching eyes, eyes like hands that could reach all the way inside of me, eyes like ears that could hear the voice in my head. Eyes that saw everything I was, under my skin, past my circuits and discs and sensors to the maybealmostsomething more that might breathe beneath it all. Eyes the red of human blood—painfully alive.

"I'm afraid," I answered, so soft I wasn't sure he'd hear, "that if the sun's not the sun, it won't shine."

I don't know how it happened. Of all the impossible things—it was probably the most impossible, the last thing I thought I'd ever do. But it happened nonetheless, when the burning behind my eyes came back; like that day in the elevator, like after I saw May, they stung and itched and felt heavy like river-stones, wet like them too. This time, it wouldn't stop. This time I couldn't blink it away, and suddenly my vision blurred. Maybe not even blurred, but swam, just like in the mirror-dream. All I knew was that when I tried to look at him, after I said that stupid thing about the sun – God, that really was stupid, he's not going to get it, sentimental bucket of binary, you must be losing your grip – it was like looking through frosted glass, and my cheeks were warm.

Not because I was blushing, for once. Because something wet, something hot was welling in my eyes, rolling down my face. Because I was crying, and in a strange way, it was like laughing: once I started, I couldn't stop. "I don't want things to be different," I choked out, barely able to speak through the tears. "I don't want to not want you. I don't want to look at you like a stranger, I don't want to not care anymore—w-what if it's only been a program, all of this time, and once it's gone you won't want to hold me or kiss me or call me love? What if once you're not the data bank, you stop loving me? What if I—w-what if I—"

I lost my voice to a sob then, breaking in my chest a wave. I was still afraid. I wished I weren't, but I was still desperately, miserably afraid. Even after all the woman had said, even trying to trust my own judgment, even when I was ninety-nine percent sure that I loved him and no program could change that—there was still that one percent that said maybe not. That one percent that said what if you're wrong?

"You can't do it, Zima, you can't. I don't care if they wipe our drives, I don't care if we forget everything—at least then we'd s-still be together."

He kissed the tears from my cheeks, from my lashes, from my lips where I could almost taste them saltysweet. "Dita," he said again, very gently, and I wished I could've told him to quit saying my name because it wasn't helping at all, "I could sit here for twenty years and tell you how much I love you. I could tell you I'll never stop loving you, no matter what I am or what I'm not; I could tell you there's nothing on Earth or beyond it that could stop me wanting to hold you and kiss you and call you love. I could tell you we will always, always be together.

"But I've tried, love. I've told you all of that, a hundred times over, and you still won't let yourself believe it." He kissed me once more, on my forehead. Then he slid his arms around me and hugged me against him, the buckles on his collar nudging my glistening cheeks; I felt more than heard his whisper into my hair. "I think it's time you see for yourself."

The next thing he said was my password.

I couldn't believe it. I didn't even know he had password privileges, that I would accept his voice key—but I did, I must have, because suddenly I was numb in his arms. I heard the voice-that-wasn't-mine ask him what he wanted to do.

He sighed. "I'm sorry about this, love. But I'm going to need you to go on standby for a bit."

I didn't have a choice. I couldn't speak, couldn't blink, couldn't so much as twitch a finger in protest. All I could do was sit still, wrapped in his arms, and hate him more than I'd ever hated him and drown in a dread worse than I'd ever felt. No, no! pleaded the voice in my head, but the words wouldn't push free; my eyes, lightless and glazed, had gone bone-dry. For all the world, I could have been a doll slumped against him, all my fear locked up inside.

A soft whirr began to climb in his chest. "Commencing deletion of file library," I heard him say, or rather not him but the databank itself, borrowing his voice.

It didn't happen all at once. He'd been years collecting that data, and it would take more than a moment to purge it; it was strange, but I thought I could feel it draining—feel him bleeding out. I wondered if he would be hollow without it. If he would crumble – just dissolve into dust, leave me swaddled in his empty coat – without it to give him purpose.

It might have been a day or a year or a lifetime, that I sat listening to the hum under his skin. I didn't know; I couldn't access my clock. All I knew was that eventually, a click vibrated through my cheek, and the databank spoke again. "File library successfully deleted. Proceeding with uninstallation of data storage software."

I didn't brace myself, didn't shut my eyes. Couldn't have if I'd tried. I'll never stop loving you, no matter what I am or what I'm not.

A thousand years went by.

"Data storage software successfully uninstalled. This unit no longer designated as the national data bank."

I'm not sure how it happened, because he didn't give me a command. I shouldn't have been able to move without one. But I felt myself shifting, stirring, blinking up at him; as though a spell had broken, the invisible chains binding me snapped, and the world came flooding back in blinding color.

But at first, the only color I saw was red. Bright, boundless sunrise-red, almost scarlet. Looking up, the first color I saw was red, and my first thought was his eyes are the same – still smiling eyes, just like they'd been in the launch lab. They didn't make me feel any different, any less. I still wanted those eyes on me, only me, forever; they still gave me butterflies.

He was as warm, and strong, and whole and real and there as he'd ever been. The stayclosetome still burned fierce in my chest. He was still my everything, my incredible indomitable impossible boy-shaped everything, and it wasn't written anywhere—I just knew.

I knew.

But I didn't say it. Not right then. "God, Zima," I said instead, working my face into a scowl, squirming out of his grasp. "You're such an asshole sometimes."

In response to which he grinned, and grabbed my chin, and kissed me.

After that the night moved like a waterfall – once we crashed over the edge, the drop was smooth. Smooth and swift and exhilirating, careening from one rapid to the next. I got rid of my software – why waste space on a data protection program, when you don't have any data to protect? – and, with Ren's help, we found and deleted our registration files. We said goodbye to our shades, too, if you can call tossing them into a maintenance-grade incinerator saying goodbye. Not that it wouldn't take some getting used to, living without them on hand, but we all agreed they weren't worth the risk; they would be too easy to track.

We left Ren and Yui in the lobby of the maintenance bay, not without ceremony. As much as I'd found to dislike about them, that day when we came for Zima's checkup—I couldn't very well hold onto it then. "So—thanks," I said to Ren, a little awkwardly, after Zima'd bade them both a much more graceful goodbye. "Um. You know. For—"

"—saving your life, as you know it?" She cocked an eyebrow. "You're welcome."

As she sauntered back to her pod, hips switching with every step – which was, in a tech support jumpsuit, an impressive feat – I turned to Yui. "I just—I feel kind of bad, you know? You went to all this trouble, and—and you might get in trouble—and you gave us so much and we don't have anything to give you. It doesn't seem fair."

And I really did feel bad, now that I had space to. Now, without the fear and the doubt and the heaps of what-ifs crowding my drive, I had room to comprehend that Zima and I were not, in fact, the only 'coms in the world. Nor were we the only ones who'd changed.

As I was standing there, just sort of staring at her – seeing her with new eyes, too late, too late – Yui hugged me. Reflexively, I flinched, but—it wasn't really that bad. She was smaller than Zima, softer than Zima. Her hair smelled like lemons. "Dita, you've given us more than we ever dreamed we'd have," she said into my ear, part whisper, part murmur, squeezing me tighter than a 'com her size should've been able to. "You've given us hope."

I didn't have to look to know Zima was smiling. He always had liked that word.

So we left, for the last time. Forever. I couldn't quite believe we weren't coming back. Pushing up the hatch, feeling the night air—stepping out into cool, quiet darkness, swirling with a breathless breeze, spangled with city lights—none of it felt quite real. It was as if I were in another dream. As if my next blink might open on the inside of my pod, its clock flashing seven AM. As if I might have to return to it, that maybealmostworld, that place where I was half-everything, never quite whole. Half-being, half-doing, half-knowing. Stuck in perpetual standby, waiting for life to happen to me.

"Hold on," I said before he took off for the next rooftop, the first of many, many steps on our journey anywhere but here. "You have to explain something to me."

"Do I?"

He vaulted over the rail and leapt down to the next building, sailing over a sea of black pavement. This late, the buses and cabs had stopped running; only a few cars' headlights glided through the streets. "I didn't know you had password privileges." I touched down on the roof beside him, fixing him with an accusing glare. "How in the hell did you get password privileges?"

"Want to know a secret?"

I raised my eyebrows.

"I didn't."

"What?" My jaw fell slack and he tossed me a wink, strolled over to the other side of the roof. There, he dropped out of sight. When I'd convinced my feet to follow – with an argument that went something like he's a jerk, but he's my jerk –I peered over the ledge and saw him looking up from another, lower rooftop, cocking his head at me. "What do you mean, you didn't?" I demanded. "That's not possible."

"Come on. Did you really think they'd give me password privileges for you?"

"No, but they must have." No sooner did I land than he spun on his heel, heading for the next tower in the chain; before he could slip out of reach, I snatched his ponytail and jerked him back. "No more running, Zima. How did you do it?"

"I don't think I didanything. I think it was all you." Sliding smoothly out of my grip, he turned and smiled at me, eyes glittering against the night sky. "I think you let me in because you wanted to let me in, subconsciously. Because you needed someone to give you permission to let go." He leaned down to plant a kiss on my forehead. "I think suggestion is a powerful thing."

For a moment, I just stood there, trying to process that. Trying to decide if there was even a sliver of sense, in what he'd just said, or if he'd completely lost his mind; trying to decide whether to be infuriated, or confounded, or embarrassed or a little bit of all three. Meanwhile, he wandered over to the railing, to watch the city as it slept. "You think?" I finally said, stalking over to join him. "You didn't know?"

"Nope. I don't know anything anymore. Isn't it great?"

I frowned. "So you were just bluffing?"

"Not bluffing, love," he said lightly. "Making an educated guess."

"And what if your guess had been wrong? What were you going to do then?"

"It doesn't matter. I was right."

The next thing I knew, he had shot off like a rocket, and I had no choice but to chase him. He ricocheted from building to building like a marble in a pinball machine, barely touching down before he took off again; had I been human, I'd have been out of breath ten seconds in, but had I been human I wouldn't have been able to follow him at all. Surfing girders and glancing off windows, he took us higher with every leap. Above the streetlights, the billboards, those lonely cars still roaming the roads. Above the mirrored towers and flashing warning lights. Up, up into a world beyond the stratosphere, or at least that was how it felt—up into the cold, silent gulf of the sky, flecked with stars and satellites.

We perched atop a radio tower, first him and then me. Actually, I didn't perch so much as crash into him, my momentum leaving us both a little dazed. "So speaking of passwords," Zima said, once we'd gotten our bearings, "we don't have any now, do we? I mean, we're not registered anymore."

"That's right. Should we pick new ones?"

"Better yet," he said, that want-to-know-a-secret grin coming back in full force, "let's pick new ones for each other. I'll do yours, and you'll do mine."

The look on his face made it obvious that this wasn't the first time he'd had that thought. "Mm. And you thought of this just now?"

"So what if I didn't? I think it's a good idea." He slipped an arm around my waist, his head tilting back towards the sky. The wind whistled, fluttering his bangs, lifting his ponytail. "Affirming."

"Affirming of what, exactly?" I asked, furrowing my brow.

He shrugged. "I don't know."

"Are you going to say that all the time now?"

"Probably." Bending to my level, he cupped my chin in his hand, sparks still dancing in his eyes. Since we'd left headquarters, I didn't think they'd ever dimmed. "How about this? You think about it; I'll go first."

So I registered him as my administrator, with real password privileges this time. And he smiled, and kissed the tip of my nose, and my face warmed even before he said it—even before he said it, I felt my eyes sinking like pebbles dropped into a pond, drawn to the buckles on his collar, the straps on his coat, anything but his eyes that opened me so easily. Anything but his smile that made the roses in my cheeks bloom, the gooseflesh ripple down my spine. Still, I could feel how red I turned, when he leaned in to whisper in my ear; it didn't help that he said it so softly, in that tone of voice practically calculated to give me chills. It didn't help that I had to ask him how he wanted guardian angel spelled, and if it was one word or two.

Then it was my turn. He looked at me, and I made myself look at him; I could've sworn I felt something like a human heart racing, as I blinked into his eyes. No more stalling now. I had to say something, something affirming, something to last the rest of our lives. Something I would say now, and probably never again.

"I love you."

Because you are you.

After – because from then on, my life was split into two parts, before and after – we stood for awhile on the radio tower, my head resting on his chest, his hand stroking my hair. Already, the stars had begun to hide their faces, the sky to lighten from black to blue. In just a few hours, it would be sunrise.

"So," I finally said, looking up at him, as he wound my ponytail around his fingers. "Where are we going, anyway?"

He grinned. "I don't know."