by R. Z. Held
He could have been lying, but Sienna didn’t think so. Not with the caustic frustration laced through every word of his explanation. She allowed herself a single step forward, and he lowered himself back into his seat. He pushed the tray toward the opposite side of the table, precisely, with three fingertips from either hand, as Galax had. “What am I really doing? Hoping someone else will finish this for me.”
Her willpower, fueled by caution, wasn’t strong enough to stop her lunging to the tray and falling on the vegetables. He’d been eating those, so they had to be safe.
She straightened. So hard to stop now, but she couldn’t trust anything else, not really. How easy would it be for Cyperus to eat something as bait, and drug everything else? “Student visa Prague-one-six-two,” she said, by way of thanks for the bait, even if that’s what it was, and took a step back. “You didn’t see me. Promise.”
“No—” Cyperus pressed his lips tightly together, as if afraid raising his voice would drive her off faster. “You can have the rest. Do you like sweets?” He angled his hand to some sort of crumble. Sienna glanced at it. Completely untouched. “Oh. Oh! Shit.” Cyperus dragged the tray back, skewed, and gathered up bites of each dish in turn.
How long had it taken Sienna to feel the effects when she’d been drugged? Not long. She edged into a seat while she watched Cyperus, but he regarded her steadily and alertly.
Well, then. Sienna perched on the chair and shoved spoonfuls of everything into her mouth.
Cyperus spoke over Pen, and Sienna only tuned back in to the end of his words. “—treatment of refugees. Which is what you are, not a prisoner. No one’s going to hurt you.”
Sienna had her own answer for that. “Ha!” She stood, the better to spit her derision at him.
“No, I promise you. I understand that LSF…” Cyperus stilled between one word and the next. There was something eerily artificial about it, not because it was complete stillness, but because it wasn’t. He blinked, lowered his hands calmly to the table, like a machine parking itself in sleep mode. She would have expected someone holding himself still to shiver a little at the edges with the effort of suppressing natural muscle tendencies.
“…treated you badly, but the Pax Romana won’t do the same.” And then he was back to normal.
A mystery, but not a mystery she wanted to invest in, Sienna decided. He’d fed her, and for that she was grateful. “Goodnight, don’t let the foxes bite,” she said, by way of farewell, at Pen’s suggestion. It drew a shadow of humor around Cyperus’s mouth.
Was this…good? She frowned as she wood-creaked carefully down the dark hallway of the sealed section. Now she had a way to get one whole meal a day, without it being missed. Better if no one had seen her, but now someone had, she could take advantage of that. All she had to do was string Cyperus along long enough for the supply ship to arrive.
Part II
Sienna mostly intended to bolt her food in silence, she really did, but as days added up to weeks, worries about managing the right mixture of pitiable confusion and self-assurance to ensure he wouldn’t call in help took back seat to starvation of another kind: human interaction. She hadn’t appreciated what she’d had, in that regard, at the camp; there the danger had been boredom, petty dramas increased by forced proximity and lack of distraction.
Two more days, though, and she’d be on the supply ship. Then he could think what he liked.
She’d held herself back from answering questions even still, but Cyperus spoke most meals, companionably, about the shows and sports he followed. Eventually, she’d given in and asked a few questions herself so he didn’t have to do all the work. She phrased them like she thought Isachne might have, at least.
“Do you ever go outside?” she asked, tonight, as the vinegar dressing on his salad she was finishing burst bright on her tongue. The depth of flavor to be found in non-camp food remained a minor miracle. Who knew what she’d be able to find as a stowaway, so she’d best enjoy it now. And store up every calorie she could.
“When it’s not raining. So, you know, never.” Cyperus gave her his smile, which was more a lightening of tight muscles around his eyes than any actual movement of his mouth. “That’s not actually…”
He stilled. Sienna waited out the moment as usual, but this time it stretched. She rolled her shoulders while she waited, feeling out the tug to ache as she flexed fatigued muscles. If she was to use the implant properly, she needed to build something for it to work with, and mercy knew she had the time to spare for the exercises she’d set it to pull her through each day.
“That can’t be healthy, Tehran,” she said, in her best Isachne cadences.
“…true. There’s a beach a short flyer hop from here that has a certain beauty even under clouds, and doesn’t require any hiking.” Just like nothing had happened, like he’d never heard her.
The mystery sapped at her energy and attention, like walking on sand along such a beach as he’d spoken of. Easy enough to ignore at first, but soon enough—
Soon enough, she’d be gone.
That knowledge made her bold, though she found herself more interested in coaxing out his humor than approaching the mystery straight-on. “Why don’t you have rave lines?”
Cyperus was silent for a moment, yes, but his face was engaged, processing hard. “What?”
She touched her own temple, drew her finger down to a point before her ear. Those who were higher-ranked around the place all did—Elantine, Galax, others she’d seen in the halls through Pen’s camera feeds—but she’d have thought an intelligence agent would have the most comprehensive int-tech package of anyone. Isachne certainly must have, once upon a time.
He laughed, the emotion sparking into his eyes. “Data paths. I have them, they’re just camouflaged at the moment. Allows for undercover work, and I simply didn’t think about turning it off.” Red-orange drew itself in a narrow line around his face, down his neck, and onto his hands. She hadn’t noticed that on the others. He offered her one hand to examine in detail. The paths arrived from beneath his sleeve, hugged the dip along tendons at the back of his hand, and curled under before the nail to create a circle on the pads of his first two fingers.
With his free hand, he traced orange-yellow along his jaw. “Can’t wear a full beard at any time, the empty line makes it pretty obvious.” He touched his temple next. It also bore a circle, though not much greater in diameter than the line’s width. “Piloting headset.” He wiggled his fingers. “And other miscellaneous controls, if wireless isn’t enabled or working.” Finally, he pressed fingers to the back of his neck. “The paths continue along the arms, across the back, and reach the implant. I can show you sometime if you like.”
“What if I have ulterior motives for getting you to take off your shirt?” In her head, the teasing seemed harmless, but Sienna pressed her lips together the moment she heard the words out loud. That was taking bold too far. She broke their connection of touch, releasing his hand.
“You’re welcome to have motives. No need to feel they must be ulterior,” Cyperus countered, without missing a beat. Teasing, like she’d been. Easy, harmless.
She shoved the rest of the salad into her mouth all at once, and stood. Time to be gone. She needed to finish laying out her plan to Pen tonight, find out what help she could count on. The AI had been noticeably reticent about even discussing the supply ship’s arrival. Sienna supposed she didn’t want to lose her conversational partner, which she certainly appreciated, but Pen would also lose her if she stayed here long enough for Elantine to catch her.
“
What?” Sienna asked, of the air, because it could only enhance her act. Introduce Pen to Cyperus, perhaps? His gaze, rather than follow hers to nothing, searched her face.
That was more than Sienna was going to share with Cyperus. She turned aside from him, instinct prompting her to seek privacy even when there was no chance of him overhearing the private channel. She kept him firmly in her peripheral vision, however.
Sienna’s frustration must have been painted across the tense muscles of her shoulders, as Cyperus cleared his throat. “Sienna? Stay with me.”
And if Pen didn’t help her, she would never escape, Sienna could hear that undertone perfectly well.
And Pen was right. So be it. She turned back, holding herself straight to give the quailing in her stomach no place to take hold. “I have a message for Gentiana. If you make her promise not to reveal that I’m still alive and hiding in the complex to receive it, do you think she’d keep her word?”
“You have—Isachne does? Or Sienna?” She let silence be her answer, and Cyperus’s jaw tightened. “Believe me, I’d make sure she did.” His fingers beat a thinking tattoo on the table surface as he struggled with the thought. “I think it’s a bad idea, though.”
Sienna considered demanding it, as Isachne, but that seemed more likely to make him refuse. Instead, she wrestled herself back into the seat, clasped her hands on the table. “Please.” What was her life now, except the lesser of two bad ideas, step by step?
Cyperus looked into nothing for a second, then dropped his chin. “She promises—in abstract. I told her I got it through intelligence backchannels and shouldn’t be sharing it. She didn’t even hesitate. She’ll be here in a minute.” He surveyed the table, which had one end against the wall, then changed chairs so Gentiana would have the chair against the wall, both of them facing Sienna on the other side. Sienna had seen him walk before, but not often, as he usually arrived before her and left after. Each individual footfall seemed as much a calculation as his arrangement of their positioning had been.
Sienna placed herself standing, hands on the back of a chair, clenched to hold herself still and maybe a little calmer. Second, third, fourth thoughts: how stupid a choice was this really? But deep down, wasn’t it the right choice, the same one she’d made when she thought she was dying? It was right, to give Gentiana closure.
Seen with her own eyes, not Isachne’s memories, Gentiana’s sharp features made her much more the villain Sienna had imagined for Elantine’s voice. Though Sienna could also see the lines around the eyes she’d include, the lines around the mouth she’d omit, if she was sketching Gentiana’s portrait.
That was the kind of thought that hadn’t occurred to her for a long time, and Sienna got lost in grasping after the tail of it as it escaped her once more. Gentiana, for her part, planted her feet in shock inside the doorway the moment she spotted Sienna, though she spoke to Cyperus like Sienna wasn’t even there. “That’s what I’m not supposed to tell anyone about? Shit, you don’t ask much, do you? They could rescue my wife’s implant and I could get all her messages for myself…” Her voice fogged over with ruthlessly suppressed tears.
“That would kill me—” “That would kill her—” They spoke more or less on top of each other.
Gentiana wavered, hands clenched for a few beats. “Fine.” She spat the word as she strode to the dispenser for a mug of tea. She grimaced after the first sip. “You trying to soften me up, programming Penstemon to pre-sweeten my tea?” She came to stand, feet braced, at the end of the table, then sipped again. “I appreciate you got my tastes right, but I don’t appreciate the manipulation.”
Oh, but Sienna knew that wouldn’t have been Cyperus.
“So what message does Amsterdam Genevieve have for me, and why is she hiding in the walls rather than letting someone at least try to download it, if removing the whole implant is out of the question?” Even now, Gentiana didn’t grant Sienna so much as a look.
“Oh, grow up, Gentiana.” Cyperus kicked out the chair beside him in a clear order. “Don’t call her that. Grief doesn’t give you a free pass to be a raging asshole. I’m not even sure why you’re still here, rather than processing it with friends and family at home.”
“I’m here because I’ve been given compassionate leave, so no military transport is going to pick me up until that’s over and I can’t afford to pay for a commercial ship to make a special detour.” Gentiana glared into her tea. “So fuck you too.”
This was going so well already. “I am Idyllian,” Sienna offered by way of de-escalation, so there was some hope of Gentiana wanting to keep her promise now she’d found out the real terms. “We call Amsterdam Genevieve a hero, you call her a traitor, you know how these things go…”
“Yeah, the Idyllian who showed up in Pax Romana territory with a sob story, convinced our scientists to let her work with them on our int-tech, and then used that access to cripple the empire’s army, directly killing thousands of the people who treated her as a colleague, and then millions indirectly as the frontiers crumbled. See the parallels yet?” For all that Gentiana finally looked at Sienna as she spoke, her lashing out seemed undirected. Mostly grief, as Cyperus had diagnosed.
Even having known going in that the Pax Romana version of the story must be wrong, Sienna couldn’t let it stand unchallenged when she heard the specific lies. She couldn’t. “Amsterdam was trying to help the Pax Romana fix the weaknesses in their int-tech, and they attacked her, stealing her research. Then they turned it on a few of their own people they wanted to get rid of, and scapegoated her when it got out of their control.”
That got her a heavy look from Cyperus, his reluctant disagreement easy to guess, but he declined to verbally support either side. “Just sit the fuck down, Gentiana, and we can get this over with.” He kicked the chair again, and this time Gentiana gave in. She placed her tea precisely on the tabletop, sat, and assumed a listening expression Sienna allowed herself to believe was real.
Sienna’s stomach contracted around the lump of her recent meal. “Penstemon? If I run the file, will you broadcast it to the others?” She’d have enough to do on her own, keeping her head above water with the attached sensations.
“Standing by to broadcast,” Pen said in her soulless Near-AI voice.
“This is it, I’m afraid. My last message, recorded in the clear—” The broadcast voice doubled the one in Sienna’s mind, and she curled in on herself, each breath a struggle. The pain was nothing more than distortion in the message, she told herself, as easy to filter out as fuzzing white noise. This was getting her closer to escape.
“—hope you can forgive me for that. Keep going with your life. Be kind to yourself.” Sienna tried to beg Pen to stop it for her, but she couldn’t choke out more than a gurgle. Please. Stop. She wasn’t strong enough for this. The words ceased, blessedly, as the file ended.
“And be kind to the one who brings you this message. They didn’t kill me, Gen. LSF did.” Isachne’s voice, but only broadcast, not inside her head. Perfectly Isachne’s voice, but if anyone could manage that, wouldn’t it be Pen?
“Sienna!” Cyperus rocked the table when he awkwardly shoved himself standing, and Sienna found a reserve of strength somewhere to jerk herself away. She didn’t want to hurt any more, she didn’t want anyone to touch her. She was tired of hurting.
“They must have been torturing her.” Cyperus rounded on Gentiana, who was frozen, face showing the depth and breadth of her grief now, leaving her haggard. “And now another of LSF’s victims inflicted that on herself to get yo
u the message. Congratulations, I hope you’re grateful, you dumb asshole.”
Or maybe it was Cyperus asking her that instead. As well. “Leave Gentiana alone. LSF’s fault.” She was panting, harshly, and still couldn’t get enough air to feed her racing heart.
“I’m sorry.” A tear glinted, already halfway down Gentiana’s cheek, its earlier path hidden by the ravaged emotion around her eyes. “Forgive me…”
“If you want that, keep your promise not to reveal me,” Sienna managed, and then staggered away from her and Cyperus, out of the mess. Her situation may have been LSF’s fault, but that was all she had to give to Pen and Gentiana both, and damn them for asking it of her.
***
The drizzle falling from the sky wasn’t much, but it had been collecting all day, gathering itself along the roof of the covered walkway out to the swath of pavement forming the landing apron, to splatter in fat droplets below. And gathering along each branch and twiglet and leaf currently obscuring Sienna’s silhouette, to plink on her hood. A man shepherded a heavily loaded grav pad into the building, leaving her with a clear line of approach to the ship.
Sienna stepped onto the walkway, out of the range of the building’s cameras, as Pen had them currently set, and flipped back her hood. She was wearing the uniform, her implant pinged with the codes, and by universal mercy, she was going to look like a Pax Romana soldier with every right to be strolling up to a Pax Romana supply ship.
