I found Sienna at a storage unit on Westheimer.
She was packing her equipment—cameras, tripods, the lighting rig she’d hauled to a hundred interviews. The documentary was done. Released. Already spreading through the networks I could feel dying around me.
She’d destroyed me. And I was standing in her doorway like a kid who didn’t understand why he’d been sent to the principal’s office.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said without turning around.
“I know.”
“The feds are going to come for you. Tonight, tomorrow, this week. You need to disappear.”
“I know.”
She stopped packing. Stood there with her back to me, one hand on a pelican case, shoulders tight.
“Then why are you here, Kale?”
I didn’t have an answer. Or I had too many answers, and none of them were things I could say. Because I wanted to see you. Because I’m about to do something I can’t undo. Because you’re the only person who ever looked at me like I was worth figuring out, and I need to know if that person still exists, or if I killed her too.
What I said was: “I wanted to see if you were okay.”
She laughed. Not a real laugh—the kind that means you’re too tired to cry.
“Am I okay.” She turned around. Her eyes were red. “My documentary is about to make me a target. Everyone associated with you is lawyering up or disappearing. I’ve had three death threats this week.”
“I can help—”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand. “Don’t offer to protect me. Don’t offer to fix it. You’re the reason it’s broken.”
I stood there. Taking it. Deserving it.
“I’m leaving,” she said. “Tonight. Oakland. I have a friend with a couch and no connection to any of this.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not coming back.”
“Okay.”
“And I need you to not contact me. Ever. No calls, no texts, no showing up at my door. Whatever happens to you—whatever you do next—I can’t be part of it.”
I nodded. My throat was tight.
She looked at me for a long moment. And something in her face softened—just a crack, just for a second. The Sienna I’d known. The one who used to steal my hoodies. The one who’d put her hand on the back of my neck and hold it there like she was keeping me from floating away.
“Why did you do it?” she asked. Quietly. Like she actually wanted to know. “The jury thing. All of it. You were building something real, Kale. Something that mattered. And then you just—” She shook her head. “I keep trying to understand. I can’t.”
This was the moment. I could tell her everything. About Dom’s threat. About my father in the facility. About the way the machine got bigger than me, and I got smaller, and by the time I realized what I’d become it was too late to become anything else.
I could tell her about Marcus’s offer. About the device called Unavailable. About the choice I was about to make—to upload myself, to become something inhuman, to sacrifice my body for a chance to fix what I’d broken.
I could ask her to give me a reason to stay. To be human. To choose her instead of the machine.
But I looked at her face—exhausted, hurt, still somehow hoping I’d say something that made sense—and I knew.
If I told her, she’d try to stop me. She’d argue. She’d fight. She’d put herself in danger, trying to save someone who didn’t deserve saving.
And I couldn’t do that to her.
I couldn’t make her responsible for my choice. I couldn’t burden her with knowing what I was about to become.
So I lied. One last time.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I got lost. I couldn’t find my way back.”
She stared at me. Searching for something. I don’t know if she found it.
“That’s not good enough,” she said.
“I know.”
Silence. The hum of the fluorescent lights in the storage hallway. Somewhere outside, a car alarm. Houston sounds. The last sounds I’d hear as a man who could still feel the weight of his own body.
“Goodbye, Kale.”
She said it like a door closing. Final. Complete.
I should have said it back. Should have walked away and let her go. Clean. Simple.
Instead, I crossed the room. She didn’t move. Didn’t stop me. I wrapped my arms around her, and for one moment—five seconds, maybe ten—she let me hold her.
She smelled like cocoa butter and exhaustion. Her hair was in braids, the way she wore it when she was too busy to think about anything else. I could feel her heartbeat against my chest. Fast. Scared. Angry. Alive.
I memorized everything. Knowing I’d never feel it again. Knowing this was the last time I’d hold anyone. Knowing I was about to trade the ability to touch another person for the ability to touch the entire world.
She pulled away first.
“Go,” she said. “Please.”
I went.
At the door, I turned back. She was standing where I’d left her, arms wrapped around herself, watching me go.
“Sienna.”
“What?”
I wanted to say I love you. I wanted to say I’m sorry. I wanted to say you were the best thing that ever happened to me, and I destroyed it, and I’ll spend eternity wishing I’d been someone who deserved you.
What I said was: “Take care of yourself.”
She nodded. Once.
And I walked out of her life.