“—Laura Staples.”

“Hi,” shaking hands, “Melody.”

“Did you just move in?”

No, she didn't, Melody said, explaining her current situation (“But where do you sleep?” “In his bed.” “Oh. Ohh.” “No, no, it's not like that … We take turns …”) to the only occupant of Unit C she, up to that point, hadn't yet encountered. A graduate student, in some field or another, studying for her master's.

“By day, at least.”

And by night?

“Call center representative. That's where I'm headed now. Hence …” She gestured down the length of her.

“School and work at the same time? Sounds tough.”

“It was a little tiring at first. But I think I've gotten used to it.” She pointed at the coffee maker. “This helps.”

“Which carrier do you work for?”

“APOP.” (Apoptosis Wireless Communications.)

“Ooh,” said Melody, holding up her phone. “Think you can get me a discount on my contract?”

She would try, laughed Laura Staples, who, a few minutes later—at Melody's query (which had been previously posed towards each of the Unit C tenants, including Noel, who had answered, “Dude, that's seriously creepy. Don't say stuff like that, I'm going to have nightmares.”) regarding the child's voice she'd heard on her first night in the house—laughed again and said, “Oh, that was probably Elysia.”

“Elysia?”

“She's my, um … a family friend. She goes to school downtown.”

“She lives, uh … here? With you?”

“No, her family's in North Chapel,” said Laura, turning off the stove. “But sometimes her extracurriculars will run late, or she'll have volunteer work or something, so she'll come over and I'll make dinner for her.” She took the coffee-maker off the range and emptied it into a tasse. “And usually I'll drive her home after, unless it's too late. In which case she sleeps here.” She took a sip, two sips, and gulped down the rest. Then she rinsed the cup and talked some more with Melody, five-sixths of whose brain was dedicated to the present conversation, with the remaining processing power allocating head-shares and time-slices to an ever-switching cycle of less immediate concerns, such as: When was she going to muster up the courage to talk to her brother? Would he ever take her to the Syllabary campus? How much did rent cost at 58 Petrichor? And would she get to meet Laura's family friend, the intriguingly named—

“Elysia!”

Laura flew past Melody to the unit's open doorway, where a young girl stood, sniffling, eyes tear-welled if not entirely from pain then from its stifling, the national colours and emblems of her skirt and blazer so endemic to a once thriving but now ever-dwindling educational structure, a relic from Reconsituted rule, an institutional mode yet embraced by those families who still spoke among themselves the name of the old country; and, conversely, increasingly vilified by those to whom the name Circadia was merely nothing more than the second half of the First Division's capital—this latter ideological camp being responsible, Melody assumed, for not only the blood and dirt on the girl's clothes, but also the revolting angle at which her left arm was bent.

“Oh Elysia, what happened?”

“I …”—the girl sniffled, hiccup'd—“I hurt myself.”

“Let me see. It's okay. Let me take a look.”

“My clothes … got dirty.”

“Don't worry about that right now.”

“B-but … it's new … and Papa will be mad ...”

“No, he won't. Listen,” said Laura, wiping the girl's eyes, picking her up, “we're going to go for a drive now, okay? I'm going to take you to the hospital.”

Elysia nodded, and asked, as Laura carried her away to the unit's back exit, if they would see him there.

Laura, exiting the unit, the girl in her arms: “I don't know, sweetie. We'll see.”

From the window of the back exit Melody watched Laura make her way down the stairs with Elysia, to the parking area, where the two cars sat, and where, after a screeching of tires, a fuming of exhaust, which dissipation left the BMW the sole occupant of the lot, only one car sat.

Melody, in a low whisper, to herself: “Thought it'd be the other one.”

On the drying rack the upside-down pieces of Laura's coffee maker lay disassembled.