He kicks. He’d bite, but whoever has him is wise to that trick. He’s held tight. “Close your eyes, Angel,” Mama says, but he doesn’t listen. She’s not looking at him. He dreams his name the way she said it again, the fond short form nobody else has ever called him. Whoever’s holding him says something, some words, but he’s screaming too loud to hear them, and then Mama takes a deep breath and nods, and there’s a pause, long enough that she opens her eyes and turns as if to see why what she was anticipating has not come to pass— —and she falls apart. She makes no sound. She doesn’t show pain or even squeak; the Governors are programmed to be humane. But one moment she is whole and alive and letting out a held breath and taking in another one to speak to him, and the next she pitches forward, boneless, her central nervous system disassembled. Within moments, the thing that was Angel’s Mama is a crumbling dune in the middle of a broad white empty floor, and the man who is holding him, too late, thinks to step back and turn Angel’s face away.
