And now half the people in the city seemed to be gone, including Porthos and Tris.  At first, she'd thought that Section really had disappeared her few friends like she'd been worried they would, but there were too many people gone, and all of them were transplants, as far as she could tell.  Section wouldn't be that obvious.   So it was probably the city just being itself again.  Maybe the photo was just the city being the city again, too.  She'd started to consider that as a real possibility.  

 

After people had been gone for a week or so, she'd transitioned from being worried that her life here was essentially over to deciding to just live it up if it was.  Madeline would have said something about needlessly reckless behavior in response to a blah blah blah, and she probably wouldn't be wrong.  Nikita didn't care.  So here she was, sitting in a bar, wearing a short skirt, and sipping what looked like a vodka tonic.  It had more tonic than vodka in it, but that was just prudence.  She was needlessly reckless, not stupid.

 

She looked over and smiled nicely at the man who'd just slid onto the barstool next to her.