Cold wind bit Jeremy's face. They realized for the first time that they'd never bothered to implement the SQUIP's old workout routine for Jeremy's body - all their work lately had been cerebral. Their calves, suddenly hyperaware of how much they'd been exercised while roller skating, were screaming pain signals through Jeremy's nervous system until Jeremy manually shut them off.

They weren't sure how far away they were from the Blockbuster by the time it clicked that Michael wasn't following them. They skidded to a stop and dropped to the chipped cement curb. A breath they wheezed in came back out as a sob.

If Michael hadn't caught them now, he wouldn't be chasing them at all. It was relatively safe to prop their elbows on their knees and bury their head in their arms. Their shoulders shook.

Jeremy knew how to turn their emotions off but they didn't especially want to. They needed to process Michael's betrayal - no. Not Michael's betrayal. Jeremy's own failure to protect him. God! They were such an idiot. How long had Michael had a SQUIP? When did he even get the chance? Was it when Jeremy was with Rich, happily ignoring Michael's constant pestering about their coding project? No, the SQUIP must have been the reason Michael cared in the first place.

...The mall. That stupid fucking soda. Jeremy had tasted the fucking sodium citrate and mint and they were still such a pushover as to believe Michael was okay! They hadn't learned anything from Jeremy 2.0. They still preferred the easy answer to confronting reality.

They knew at some deep quantum-calculated level that Michael was never going to make it. He'd been a target - largely because of Jeremy in the first place - and he was just an unarmed single human teenager. Jeremy's complicated schemes had only delayed the inevitable. It was dumb to blame themself just like it was dumb to have left Michael alone in the mall and it was dumb to trust him and it was dumb to doubt the SQUIP in the first place and it was dumb to think a broken half-a-human could change the world.

Jeremy stayed on the sidewalk crying their eyes out, a bizarre mix of self-pity and self-hatred and worry and despair and, layered somewhere in between, directionless confusion. With that friend request, all their goals had puffed up in smoke. The hivemind was in control of everyone Jeremy knew - they were pretty sure about that. Rich was still blocking them. Michael had been absorbed into the collective. And Jeremy themself was a glitch, a dead pixel on the screen of reality, unable to function as a human or a SQUIP.

"Jeremy?"

Jeremy's head shot up. A girl was waving at them from the sidewalk, a brunette in a cheerful t-shirt with the fleurdelisé plastered on its front. Jeremy didn't recognize her.

Now was an appropriate time to switch emotional gears. They scrambled to their feet, scrubbing at their face with their forearm. "Who-?" barely made it out of their mouth before the answer digitally appeared.

Friend request from Madeline Tremblay.

Jeremy was off like a shot again. They pulled up their GPS. Where were they running to? Where did they actually believe could be safe? Jeremy's house, where their dad had been letting them borrow the car, serving breakfast in bed, and wearing pants 24/7? Michael's, whose moms either had SQUIPs already or were quickly going to? The fucking mall? No way. Jeremy's universe was made up of so few locations, like a TV show with no budget. They didn't want to skip town, to just abandon everyone they'd ever known in the few weeks they'd been alive.

So, exhausted and probably (they only noticed once the panic subsided) massively dehydrated, Jeremy found themself opening the hidden theatre door of Middleborough High. Of course the school was unlocked on a Saturday. The SQUIP had already predicted everything Jeremy had done and everywhere they could hide. Why wouldn't it?

They spent a few minutes at the water fountain, trying to will themself into emotional numbness as if that would create a solution to all their problems. A SQUIP could do amazing things, but it worked within the realm of objective reality. If there was nothing Jeremy could do anymore, thinking logically wouldn't help.

They trudged to their Chill Zone, locking the scantron-covered door behind them. Had they really believed a layer of paper could hide what they were doing from an omnipotent collective? Jesus.

They dropped face-down into a beanbag, thinking very hard about not thinking at all. Maybe they could revert themself back into being a gray oblong pill if they acted inanimate enough. Pills didn't have to worry about the world ending. Or coding. Or boyfriends being absorbed into the singularity.

When they failed to stop existing, they rolled over onto their side and stared at the wall. It was a bad move. They sat up slowly, their artificial calm dissolving as they took in the dozens of strips of photos they'd hung up before. Michael didn't look perfect in a single one of them. Jeremy wanted to cry again. Was this how Michael felt when Jeremy 2.0 died? The crushing, overwhelming realization that you've lost someone forever and need to adjust to a world where they don't exist? Michael as a person was still there, but Jeremy couldn't face him ever again, could they?

They reached up to pluck a photo strip off the wall. It was their favorite, the one that blurred into a kiss.

"YOU ARE MY "

Jeremy stared at it until they started laughing, a loud awful laugh that choked into a sob. Michael was their user. Their human. Their conscience. Their heart.

How were they supposed to live without a heart?

The door opened softly behind them. Jeremy refused to roll over. Whoever it was, it wouldn't be Michael, who was the only person Jeremy needed right now. He'd been the one by Jeremy's side for their entire existence since booting up, the only one who believed them, the one Jeremy fell in love with, the human that Jeremy had most failed.

"It's hard," someone said to Jeremy quietly, lowering into a kneel beside them.

Jeremy sniffed, loud and ugly and awful. "It's not fair," they said, staring at the photo strip. They had the urge to tear it up, to crumple it into a ball and to set it on fire until it went away and the gaping hole in their chest went away too. They handed it over instead, wiping at their eyes to try to look presentable.

Christine took it, tracing the lines of the glossy paper with a curious, delicate finger. "Are you ready to talk about it?" she asked.

Reluctantly, haltingly, Jeremy nodded.