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Their eyes met unexpectedly. A clear expression of concern flickered across the golden mouse’s face.

“She’s conscious. She looked at me.”

“Well, she’s drugged to the hilt with morphine, and with these burns she’s not in a state to take in anything at the moment. Anyway, you’re going to be partners, right? You should at least be prepared for her to see you.”

“Generally speaking women aren’t too keen on mice…” The golden mouse’s eyes were a little downcast. The Doctor stroked his little back as if to say There, there.

Balot tried to move herself in order to see them better, but could barely lift a finger and just lay there shaking. She realized in some faint way that she was ensconced in a large capsule. She felt a strange sense of security, floating, surrounded by foam, steeped in liquid, in an egg-shaped portable pod designed for intensive care. Her whole body, scorched through, in fetal position, barely able to lift a finger—floated in that bulky egg.

Shell

The word drifted through her mind, suddenly with different feelings, associations…

And she dozed off the moment she closed her eyes, losing consciousness again.

While Balot lay half dreaming, the Doctor and the mouse held a curious conversation.

“Memory loss?” The mouse’s querulous voice chirped up. The Doctor’s voice answered. Balot opened her eyelids a crack and looked out through the solution she was suspended in to see the back of the Doctor’s head, covered in its tie-dyed hair.

“Yup, that’s my guess, based on the stress and pleasure levels that you sensed coming from him. The side effects of his A-10 surgery. Whenever it feels under stress, part of the brain selectively destroys the gestalt. A sort of suicide of the memory, so to speak. That’s Shell’s dirty little secret.”

“Suicide of the memory…”

“And it looks like it was triggered by the murder of the girl. There’s some connection. Each time he kills a girl, he probably forgets that he’s done so, but then finds another similar girl and kills again. A sort of ritual. Let’s see, something like those ancient Eastern religions that wouldn’t recognize the existence of a widow.”

“What?”

“Widows had to be immolated along with their dead husbands. There were cases when the woman objected and had to be doused with gasoline and burnt to death. I think this is similar to that.”

It appeared that the Doctor was now driving. From the back seat where Balot was placed she could see the mouse perched on his shoulder nodding along to the conversation.

“So, Doc, the death wish I could smell from the man was his memories committing suicide? And the girl was dragged along as part of a ritual designed for stress relief?”

“That fits with everything we know. We’ve never psycho-analyzed Shell directly, so we can’t know for sure in detail. But knowing that you’re about to lose your memories—that’d be incredibly stressful. Part of your mind is going to go. Maybe it’s not surprising he wants to drag someone along for the ride. He probably sees it as romantic in his own way, killing a little girl along with his memory.”

That man will die too.

This was the one fact that registered in Balot’s hazy state of consciousness. My Shell. The man that gave me—a Teen Harlot from the slums—an identity, even if only for a moment. The man that was trying to rise to the top in this city—what a pathetic way for him to die. She felt pity, which then changed into an intoxicating thought: I’ll die with him. Her sort-of compassion.

If there were ever a moment when her compassion for others could redeem her then this was it.

“It’s hardly decent to try and explain away his actions as romantic…”

Balot’s feelings were shattered in an instant by the mouse’s words.

“Death is a solitary thing. It’s not as if someone else’s death is somehow going to add value to your own, or even give solace to your own life.”

Balot unconsciously tried to remove the oxygen mask attached to her mouth. She wanted to say something to the mouse. But she couldn’t even lift a finger.

In her muddy consciousness, conflicting feelings of indignation and gratitude toward the mouse were swirling around together.

“Yup, I’m with you there. And in any case, cleaning up after his romantic notions ain’t half racking up the expenses. There’s lots of upkeep now, Oeufcoque: you, and the girl.”

Balot heard the Doctor grumbling just as she was on the verge of collapsing back into unconsciousness.

Many times Balot’s consciousness floated back into the real world before plunging back down into the depths of sleep. Each time Balot began to fade, she was assailed by incredible anxiety, only to be rescued by a curious sense of relief. That relief could come in the form of the mouse’s voice, or the Doctor’s. The prospect of death was steadily fading away. Reality was coming back into focus, and she would now have to live.

Make your choice.

Someone spoke in a dream. It wasn’t an order. Rather, it was closer to a question.

The choice to choose your path—the choice of existence. You have that right.

Balot was dreaming. She was floating in the darkness, and another version of herself was gradually swooping down on her from above. And her other self asked:

Make your choice—or would you be better off dead?

Her other self collapsed in a tangled heap, right on top of her.

She remembered the noise from the glitter of the city.

I’d be better off dead—the magic spell that made the heart feel lighter. The words closed in on her, hideously familiar. Beyond the noise was a life full of sadness. I want you to die with me—the doll burnt along with the body at a cremation. That was the last need. And she had obeyed.

But—

Why me?

The question surfaced like a bubble in the melange of her consciousness.

There was no answer. When you realized this, truly understood that there was no answer to the question of why me, all that was left was death. Yes. That was the choice. Whether to live. Why me? Why should I live? Such a person as me. The choice: one of two possibilities.

She felt that no one would say yes for her. The burden carried by a person who had never experienced unconditional love. You were either crushed by that burden, or you lived in order to search for that answer: yes. To search for the answer to the question Why me?

Balot’s heart was ripped to pieces, scattered, and sunk beneath the waves.

At length, the thing that she had been protecting—hidden away in her shell—started to rise up slowly from the ruins of her heart.

I don’t want to die…

The moment her heart—protected in its shell till the very end, not yet boiled to death—murmured these words in the faintest of whispers…

…that became Balot’s choice.

05

Josh, crush.

Balot suddenly realized that the little ditty was spinning around in her head again.

Dish, wash, brush, mash.

The awakening happened in an instant. As if the dream state she had experienced had never been.