The road back to Dodoma was paved with the skeletons of my old life. Every mile we covered in that stolen, rusted pickup truck felt like a countdown to a collision I had been avoiding for five years. The air changed as we climbed away from the coast the humid, salt-heavy breath of Dar es Salaam was replaced by the dry, searing heat of the central plains. It smelled of dust, burnt charcoal, and forgotten secrets.
I sat in the passenger seat, my head leaning against the vibrating window. My body felt empty. The Archive was gone, purged in that white flash of agony at the clinic, but the phantom limb of the technology still twitched in my mind. I kept reaching for data that wasn't there, looking for thermal signatures that no longer highlighted in my vision.
I was just Esther now. A woman w
