In the After

strange if you weren’t sad and distracted right now.” I thought about Dr. Reynolds and my body tensed. “If you’re worried, though, try to focus on the good of New Hope, like all the great things Vivian accomplished before she . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say it. “Vivian was pretty kick-ass,” I told her.
    Tracey smiled weakly. “Yeah, she was. I just miss her so much.”
    “I miss her too.” My voice caught in my throat and I swallowed hard. “We’ll be okay,” I said. “We’ve already survived the end of the world. . . . We can get through this too. There’s nothing to worry about. We have a strong community here.” Tracey looked at me like she believed what I was saying. For her sake, I hoped she did.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
    The next day, a girl with black hair and pale skin is wheeled into the common room. I stare at her until her face blurs. I know her, but I don’t know how. I try to concentrate, but it doesn’t come to me. Frustrated, tears well up in my eyes .
    “Amy, why are you crying?” Dr. Thorpe bends down in front of me. “Are you in pain?” She holds my wrist in her fingers, checking my heart rate .
    “No . . . I . . .” I look to where the girl sits in her wheelchair. “Who is she?” I ask, motioning toward the newcomer .
    “Just another citizen who needs to get better. We’ve moved her from another floor.”
    “Do I know her?” I ask, frowning .
    “If she’s upsetting you, we’ll have her removed.” Dr. Thorpe finishes examining me and walks to the girl, swiftly wheeling her from the room .
    I stare after her, but I can’t trigger a memory. I hope I can remember to ask Rice when he comes. Maybe he knows who she is. Maybe he can help me remember. I try to think back again, and this time Kay comes to mind. I let myself focus on her instead .
    • • •
    “They’re bringing in a group of post-aps if you want to tag along,” Kay told me a few weeks later. “I can show you our protocol for arriving survivors.” Something shifted that night when the sonic emitters broke. Her nasty edge was gone, and while she was still on my ass in training, she was more serious than sadistic. She even promised to take me out in the hover-copter so I could learn the controls. It was like she already considered me part of her crew.
    We headed over to the hover-copter landing pad and waited for the post-aps to arrive. “Don’t touch them,” she warned me. “A lot of them aren’t used to human contact. And obviously, keep the noise to a minimum.”
    “Obviously,” I confirmed. I remembered too well what it was like to emerge from the hover-copter, freaked out and helpless. It was only a few months ago.
    “It doesn’t seem like you took this much care when you brought me in,” I commented.
    “I already knew you were a special case . . . and I wanted to punish you for shooting me. Twice.”
    “You’re never going to let that go are you?”
    “Not anytime soon, sunshine,” she told me with a smirk.
    “Kay, how did you make it here?” I asked. I’d never thought about it before.
    “I was here when it happened, visiting my brother.” Her expression changed and I wondered what she was remembering.
    “Your brother worked for Hutsen-Prime?” I asked.
    “And now he works for New Hope. He’s such an overachiever. My parents always loved that about him.” I detected a hint of jealousy in her voice.
    “They didn’t care that you were a superstar?” I had a Kay Oh and the Okays poster when I was twelve. I loved her blue hair.
    “I was a joke.” She didn’t sound regretful exactly, more annoyed. “I’d rather be here, doing this.” It almost sounded like she preferred the After. “I mean, it was awesome at first, don’t get me wrong. They remade me, turned me into a sex symbol. I had stylists and assistants and assistants to my stylists.”
    “Sounds awful,” I said sarcastically.
    “It was, after a while.”
    “I don’t understand,” I admitted.
    “No one ever does. You know, I wanted to be a cop,” she told me. “When they started the Guardians, about a month after they announced the world was over, I was first in line to try out. It was great. Everyone thought I would fail horribly. People don’t expect a small Japanese girl to be able to break a man’s arm.”
    “They didn’t assume you were a ninja?”
    I was rewarded with one of Kay’s rare laughs. “No. Of all their assumptions, ninja was not high on the list.” She