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  "How long has it been, Jared?"

  He shrugged. "I've ceased to keep track. A month, maybe."

  "Since you met me, right?"

  He nodded.

  In time, it will change. We'll come to accept them, make provisions for them, learn how to synthesize what they need. But for now, only the old ways will do.

  "Melissa's not going to make it, you know."

  She would not have believed that he could become paler still, but he did. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes," she murmured. "Jared, would you... change her for me?"

  His mouth dropped open. "You honor me more than I can say, Ann."

  Not half as much as you deserve.

  "It will have to wait until after the hearing on Monday, though. I can't risk it before that. I've grown too weak."

  Ann gathered both the lawyer's hands into her own. "Thank you, Jared. For everything. When..." A rush of grief flooded through her, momentarily washing away all her words. "When she wakes up as one of you, I didn't want to have to fear my own daughter."

  "Or for her to fear her mother," he whispered.

  Ann Mears came to a decision. She gestured Tillotsen across her threshold. "Come in, Jared."

  His eyes clouded with confusion. "Why, Ann?"

  She reached up and pulled his head down to hers, brushed her warm lips across his cold ones.

  "I want to fix you something to eat."

  ====

  Francis W. Porretto is an engineer, fictioneer, and commentator. He operates the Eternity Road Website (https://eternityroad.info), a hotbed of pro-freedom, pro-American, pro-Christian sentiment, where he and his Esteemed Co-Conspirators hold forth on every topic under the Sun. You can email him at [email protected]. Thank you for taking an interest in his fiction.