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THE HAYES RESIDENCE

Tucson, Arizona

Pia Hayes arrived home early from a pitch meeting with the production team at WNXC, singing a show tune. Her producer had taken to her idea with gusto: They were running with the Zodiac Princess story; they were organizing the night's program around the news segment, Pia's new segment. She just had to get her facts together—should be easy—and she was on the move. If there was good social media feedback, she might be able to parlay this into an ongoing feature with several follow-ups. Daytime Emmys, here we come.

She sang louder, the sun will come out tomorrow, happy once more to have moved out of the shithole apartment she'd shared with her college roommates to a place of her own. She felt like a whole new woman, now. In a whole new town with a better name and credentials in place of the question marks she'd grown up answering for.

"Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow,

There'll be sun..."

She whirled around her condo on stockingfeet, depositing her purse on the coffee table and her coat on the back of her favorite easy chair. This day called for a glass of red wine to assuage her singing soul. She'd need it to work through the night. Sleep would be long in coming. Burning the midnight oil would do that to you. Other things, too.

A fine mouton cadet in hand, Pia plucked her ultrathin laptop from her desk and fell upon her favorite chair to see what social media had for her tonight. Emails first, then Twitter, with Facebook and other more time-intensive outlets left for last. Pia answered all her fanmail and made a note of all her haters. For motivation. Ellen DeGeneres had taught her that was the best way and you couldn't go wrong listening to the one woman in America almost as influential as Oprah. Pia didn't aspire to be the best, being best brought all the wrong sort of attention, but if she managed it despite her best efforts, she'd take it.

"I love ya, tomorrow

You're only a day away!"

She'd gone through her whole social media routine and was preparing to switch off for a bit of Netflix and autoerotic chill, when she saw that she had another email. This was one sent care of some kind of emailing service out of a clinic. These services were usually used in places where outgoing communications had to be monitored: psych hospitals, prisons, detention centers. Pia had gotten her fair share of those time and again, crackpots and would-be informants typically, but they weren't common by any means.

This email was from the Kildegarde Rehabilitation Facility, by way of Patient Services. This was a facility she knew. She'd almost forgotten. She'd ignored at least five others from here after skimming the first. A wise person refrained from inviting ghosts into their lives via their inbox.

Pia was especially gifted at allaying the attention of ghosts and loan sharks who wanted their payment for taking her soul off her hands. Pia was the worst sort of borrower; she took what she needed and then she washed her hands of the debt. She'd survived so far. These messages could change that. Technology was her friend, her job demanded she be aces wild at making the internet and all that came attached work for her benefit, yet it could just as easily turn against her. The bugs she'd seen that allowed the sender to get a GPS hit on the recipient as soon as it was opened could out her as somebody she wasn't anymore, somebody who should have died in Wyoming. That person was dead to Pia, and she most certainly needed to stay dead to the world.

She deleted the email unread and felt no guilt in taking the action. She did what she had to do to stay alive; it was the Scorpio way.

She then became steeped in watching Good Girls Revolt on Amazon (her budget had said Netflix or Amazon and she'd gone with the one that had free shipping, so sue her), which went splendidly with wine and Tim Tams. She was going to recommend Tim Tam Slamming red wine to her Instagram followers the next chance she got.

When her GChat beeped, she grudgingly switched tabs to see who it was from. Her workmates sometimes reached out this way when they were too lazy to pick up their phones and text her. She narrowed her light brown eyes at the glowing screen. Same sender as the emails.

It was a dumb decision, she knew it was idiotic and Pia was no fool, but she clicked the pending message and read it.

LeaMeAlone: I saw what you did to Mini on the news. Leave her alone.

She knew that name. She'd known it a long time, the way a horse knows the flies that never entirely buzz off. Shouldn't have answered, but deep down, she couldn't resist her own real life troll.

With a triumphant smirk, she typed a pithy response:

PiaHayes: Still obsessed with me? I thought they'd take care of that.

LeaMeAlone: Still obsessed with haunting the people who escaped? Who's helping YOU with that?

PiaHayes: I'm doing my job. I follow the story.

LeaMeAlone: You're doing THEIR job. You're punishing her for wanting anything but what we already had. She's suffered just like you. The difference is she got away. LET. HER. GO.

Pia's nostrils flared. How dare that ingrate from Hell on Earth tell Pia what to do? Pia made the decisions in her life. Nobody else. No more. Not even—no. No one else.

PiaHayes: Make me.

LeaMeAlone: My therapist called me stunted. He says I stopped developing when I became indoctrinated to DZD's way of life. But he hasn't met you yet. You're worse. You're brainwashed.

Pia's hand was at the hollow of her throat before she realized she had moved it. A stylized M hung from a golden chain. People often asked her as a joke if she couldn't spell her own name; she smiled at their insistent idiocy and said it was a gift from her late mother. True enough. But mostly she just liked watching them squirm as they backtracked and apologized.

PiaHayes: Don't write me again.

LeaMeAlone: Don't give me a reason, Scorpia, and I won't.