by R. Z. Held
Cyperus gently turned her wrist so her LSF icon displayed. “And I’ve realized I’d rather have this civilian at my back than Henri any day, given the way she’s proved herself willing to walk into fire for her friends and one very, very undeserving retired agent.”
“You wait until I trigger the hidden layer and the foxes see just want kind of mural they’ve gotten themselves,” Sienna said, laughter bringing with it a few more tears before she retrieved her hands briefly and scrubbed them away. “Watch out, I’ll start eyeing empty walls around the Institute, when we get home. Working that big is heady stuff.”
“Say the word, and I’ll move heaven and earth so you can make arts full time.” Cyperus grinned, the grammar mistake another of their inside jokes. Sheer relief, and love, and a little bit of dawning excitement cleared enough space for Sienna to take what felt like her first deep breath in far too long, and that fueled her thoughts enough to remember poor Gentiana. She couldn’t be enjoying being a silent audience to a couple thrashing out their problems when there was no solving the fundamental distance between her and the memory of her dead wife.
Gentiana, however, looked lost inside her own head, but hardly miserable. Focused on the mission perhaps, though when the conversation lulled, she reengaged at a point not too far back, lips twisting in irony. “On balance, you’re probably lucky to have missed your first experience with trying to live without someone being at all of twenty years of age when you were dumped. I’d just joined up, so I spent a fairly unhealthy amount of time at the range, converting targets pretty much into one big hole each.”
Sienna had to laugh herself, thinking back. “Or worse, at the considerably more mature age of twenty-two, you do the dumping and then change your mind two weeks on only to discover that she’s come to her senses and is avoiding your drama. My only recourse was to write bad poetry.”
Cyperus slung an arm across her back. “I didn’t know you wrote poetry.”
“I didn’t say I wrote poetry, I said I wrote bad poetry. It’s a completely different beast. If you ever rescued any of it from the void of deletion, you’d tell me to stick to painting, I assure you.”
The door chime sounded and Sienna’s and Cyperus’s heads both jerked guiltily in that direction. Had Henri been monitoring their apartment—? But Gentiana was grimacing in guilt, not surprise, and getting to her feet. “It would have been more suspicious to keep putting her off than to just invite her here, like she wanted,” she said, inexplicably, then headed to the door.
Cyperus’s knee delayed him, but Sienna jumped up to follow, so she was there when Gentiana opened the door on Valerie, the LSF woman’s hair professionally back in its tight tail and a shoulder bag hanging at her side, rounded with the shape of a wine bottle. Gentiana clasped hands with her with affection that turned awkward a beat before she glanced back at Sienna. “You…two know each other, of course.”
“Hi,” Sienna said, nothing else coming to her as she cranked her behavioral controls to maximum and then scrambled to put everything together. So Gentiana hadn’t been sleeping on Pen. And she’d, what, been seducing Valerie in the name of the mission? If it had been planned, why had she hidden it?
Gentiana stepped into the awkward space in the wake of Sienna’s inadequate greeting. “When I took back Simon’s coat, we ended up talking…It was—I meant it to be casual. She knows about Isabelle’s death.” Gentiana paired the name with an intense look, as if Sienna couldn’t have figured out on her own she was being fed the name Gentiana had used for Isachne.
“I’m sorry about Simon, by the way,” Valerie said, kindly, as she followed Gentiana down the hall. “I know I shouldn’t have meddled.”
“Oh. Well…” This was so absurd, Sienna had to laugh, and Valerie joined her a beat later as Cyperus appeared in the doorway of the living area, looking faintly embarrassed. That finally broke down the awkwardness, and for a while they might have been normal friends, tidying away the remains of the boxed dinners and discussing the merits of where they’d been purchased versus various other restaurants in the city.
When Sienna took the boxes to the kitchen part of the living area, Valerie freed the wine bottle from her bag and followed, utterly unapologetic about her wish for a private word. Not that any such thing was possible with Gentiana’s and Cyperus’s implants, and Pen listening directly to Sienna’s senses. Sienna went along with it anyway, however, bending her head close as Valerie spoke low while pouring out a glass. “Jeanne said you were friends with Isabelle first?”
Not hardly, but universal mercy, how did you translate the complexity of her situation with Isachne and Gentiana into a cover story any other way? “We didn’t always get along, but I certainly worked closely with her.”
“I can see your mural’s nearly done, and of course you’ll be moving on to the next planet, but I just wanted to ask if there’s any hope—if I might entice your assistant into staying, or if I have too much competition from Isabelle’s memory…” Valerie caught Sienna’s eyes, gaze square and unapologetic, one boss to another. “I know you’ll hardly want to let her go yourself, talented as she is.”
Then she transferred her gaze to Gentiana, and Sienna’s chest tightened. To see that love and know it was only going to end in heartbreak—she and Cyperus had muddled through somehow, but Idyll was neutral, and LSF and the Pax Romana were at war. And an agent of LSF had tortured her, but Valerie hadn’t. She was just living her life, and falling in love with exactly the wrong person. “Before she died, I believe Jeanne promised Isabelle she’d help some members of her extended family, if they needed it. One of them is in some trouble at the moment, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that…takes priority for Jeanne, you know?”
“Fair enough. Thank you for the honesty.” Valerie, disappointment deepening the sober cast to her expression, toasted Sienna with one of her two glasses, sipped from it, then carried them both to the table to hand the other to Gentiana. Sienna followed with the glasses for herself and Cyperus.
“So how long has this been going on?” Valerie asked on a lighter note, gesturing with her glass to where Cyperus’s hand had found its way to Sienna’s knee. “Don’t think I didn’t find his face front and center in the mural.” She nodded to Sienna. “Which is beautiful, by the way. Not just Liberty, but all the people at the bottom—you’ve given them a real humanity.”
“Thank you.” Sienna sipped her wine, though she felt a little flushed even before it hit. Of course she’d showed her work to plenty of people along the way, but most of that had been to earn her place in the university program in the empire—the one that had taken her into Pax Romana space, before her ship home was captured by LSF. Scratch that, all of it had been. She supposed no one had seen her art after the camp, besides Cyperus and briefly Gentiana. And Valerie didn’t seem the type to indulge in white lies. “Tell that to Simon’s friend, huh?”
“Let me at him.” Valerie laughed, and looked very much like she would have preferred to mirror Cyperus’s position, only with Gentiana instead of Sienna, but she maintained a close distance that nevertheless didn’t touch.
Sienna hoped, as the night wore on, the wine disappeared, and they moved to the couches to continue chatting, that when the Near-AI cube was discovered missing, Valerie wouldn’t connect that to Gentiana. Let her simply be sad that Gentiana hadn’t been in the right headspace, that circumstances had kept them apart.
She was sure that would be painful enough.
***
Gentiana’s steps dragged as they navigated through institutionally ugly halls of the R&D building the next morning, frown settling deeper into her expre
ssion the longer she had to anticipate what was coming. “You’re sure Valerie didn’t say what she wanted to talk to us about? Why didn’t she send the message to me? She wouldn’t need you if she plans to ask me to stay. Or are you supposed to help convince me? Did you say anything to give her hope I might stay?”
Sienna didn’t bother answering, since it hadn’t helped the first three or four times Gentiana had iterated those questions on the way over here. She had no idea what Valerie wanted, but she was much more worried about running into Ines while they were here. Valerie didn’t make her feel like she’d give away the game just by standing in the wrong manner in her vicinity, like the director did.
When they arrived at the room number mentioned in the message, Sienna didn’t see a chime so she knocked lightly. At Valerie’s slightly muffled “Come in!” she led the way in and more or less towed Gentiana after her.
Valerie gave them a slightly harried flicker of a smile before slipping past to shut the door after them. “Security, sorry. Heaven forbid Ines should walk by and see it open. Please! Sit.” She gestured to what was clearly the meeting space of the workroom, a chair facing a desk, the work surface tilted away from them for the use of the desk’s owner, but no doubt crowded with correspondence and data visualizations. Valerie continued her path in the other direction, tidying bits of tech and circuitry—security again, perhaps—on one of many tables crowded with such things, as well as the equipment to test it all. Sienna considered, then took the one chair herself. There was plenty of other seating, but it was all over in front of the equipment. Gentiana could hover like an assistant if this was business, as it seemed more and more likely that it was.
“I’ve got one question for you, Jeanne.” Valerie’s voice had changed utterly, dropping into flat, desperate betrayal. Sienna whirled in her seat, to find Valerie holding a handgun on her, both hands braced with all the hallmarks of someone who’d not only been properly trained, but had put in her practice hours since. “Did you know who your boss really is? Or did she hire you, unknowing, as part of her cover?”
Oh, universal mercy. Fuck, fuck, fuck—the expletives smoothed into one continuous stream, a bass line to the screaming song of Sienna’s panic. What had she done? What had she done? “Who I…am?” she asked, letting the implant keep her voice confused, not terrified. “I’m an artist.”
Gentiana had herself under similar control, whether through her own skill or with the implant’s help. “I didn’t do a deep dive into her background when she hired me, but it all checked out…” She attempted a smile. “Valerie, I’ve been sharing an apartment with her these last weeks, I can assure you, she really does paint. All she does is paint and sleep, practically. I have to remind her to eat sometimes.”
“So she trained for the cover.” Valerie circled to the other side of her desk and recentered her aim on Sienna’s forehead.
A stifled exclamation came from the doorway of an inner room and Cyperus hurried for their group, as fast as his knee allowed. Valerie threw up one hand to arrest his path, then gestured him to stay behind her. “I’m so sorry, Simon, but it seems she’s had you fooled this whole time, along with all of us.”
“What are you talking about?” Cyperus snapped, which made Valerie’s attention twitch to him—then immediately back to her aim. He’d surprised her by sounding more like his own, real brand of asshole, rather than Simon’s, Sienna supposed.
“Have you noticed her laugh?” Valerie tipped her chin to Sienna. “I did, last night. I didn’t remember until later where I’d read about that before, though. That dead space, around a particular pitch. You can learn to speak around it, but in singing, or in laughter, it’s unmistakable. That’s vocal paralyzer damage. I assumed she was a domestic criminal, looked her up using her face in case it was something that might get you hurt, Simon, but it’s so much worse than that. She’s Pax Romana. She was a prisoner of war.” Valerie freed one hand to bring something up on her desk work surface. “Look! Sienna Prague.”
After all her anxiety, all her guilt at not playing her part the way Gentiana or Henri would have her play it—it all came down to this. Sienna hadn’t done anything, she’d only been what LSF had made her. Rage swept through Sienna. What they had done to her.
She saw Cyperus shifting his weight, getting ready to jump Valerie for the gun, but how was he going to accomplish that when he couldn’t stand without his cane? Gentiana had tensed too, but Valerie was facing her, would have plenty of time to shoot Sienna before Gentiana could reach her.
So she was on her own, for now. The rage left Sienna scoured clean and reckless in its wake. She deactivated the behavior controls so her lips would shape her own damn name properly. “Prague Sienna.” She heard Cyperus’s and Gentiana’s gasps as one. “I’m Idyllian, and if you found that much, I invite you to keep pulling on that thread, and see what else you find.” She put all the vibration of her rage into those last words, squarely in a pitch the paralyzer hadn’t taken from her. The LSF might have erased the records, but Valerie had found at least her name, so who knew, maybe everything was available to someone with Valerie’s access.
And Valerie read to her like a good person. Like there were among both the empire and the so-called rebels, just living their lives. Not that it mattered, usually. It probably wouldn’t make a difference now, but what did she have to lose, trying? If Valerie was even a little distracted, that might make Cyperus’s job easier.
“What—?” Valerie was too wise to lower the gun, but she did touch her work surface again, eyes flicking down to what she found, back up to Sienna. Back and forth. Then she clearly started a video, because sound floated out.
Overlapping voices, a chaotic mess of LSF French. “No, we have no time, we’ll lose the implant if it feels the agent die—” “If I rush this, it won’t take in the new prisoner either—” “This is crazy, they should never have let it get that far with the agent—” “You’re telling me, but now we have to clean up their fucking mess—”
Wet sounds. Cutting sounds. Bleeding sounds. A grunt, then thrashing. “Keep her under!” “She is! This must be the fucking implant—” “Well, the fucking implant is going to get her killed. Hold her down!” More grunts, pure animal sounds of pain, made when the conscious mind wasn’t awake to scream.
It didn’t even sound like her. Sienna felt rather like she was—floating. Dissociative. It could have been anyone in that recording. She was breathing rather fast, though. Not enough air in the air again, heart laboring against that lack. This hadn’t been what she’d meant Valerie to see. She’d thought there would have been—some kind of note, in her file. She was giggling, suddenly, hysterical, and curling over herself to press her hand to her mouth and hold the sound in.
“Why would they do that, to anyone—?” Valerie’s voice broke, and even Cyperus, who knew all about it, was looking rather gray.
“They needed the agent, for a prisoner exchange. Only they accidentally tortured her to death, so they needed someone to put her implant in so it would ping correctly when the Pax Romana came to pick her up.” Sienna suppressed the giggles long enough to get the explanation out, but then nausea crawled up her throat in its wake. Panicked cursing, from the recording. “Turn that off,” she begged, and Valerie did.
Cyperus reached for the gun, absurdly polite, given the situation. Still undercover. “Valerie, let me help—”
“No.” Valerie snapped a forestalling gesture at him with her free hand. “You’re too entangled. I’m not going to make you hold a gun on her.”
“Entangled…and you’re not?” Cyperus said, low and careful. He didn’t look at Gentiana, but Valerie did.
“Jeanne. Please. She just hired you—” Valerie cut herself off and forestalled any answer from Gentiana at the same time, jerking her head in a shake negating all of this, perhaps. “It doesn’t matter. We’re done anyway. It’s just a matter of whether both of you get arrested or only her. After what was done to you, why are you here, Prague Sienna? It’s no
t just to make a patriotic mural—fuck.” Sienna flinched, but whatever had just occurred to her didn’t make Valerie pull the trigger. Her eyes had gone wide. “You can’t see any of their mouths.”
Cyperus murmured another syllable of frustrated confusion, but Sienna knew what Valerie meant and met her eyes, forging a connection from the understanding. “The little people have been silenced. In the mural,” Valerie explained. “How poetic. But you didn’t come here for that.”
“She came here to save my daughter,” said Pen’s voice through the work surface’s speakers. “And damned if I’m going to let you kill her for it. Apparently Sienna thinks your reason can be appealed to, so I’m appealing—no, I’m begging. Let us take my daughter home.”
“Pen, what are you doing?” Gentiana hissed, then flinched as if she hadn’t expected it to be out loud. She’d decided to risk talking on a private channel only to have her own behavioral controls shunt it to spoken French instead, Sienna suspected.
Valerie flinched too, as if confirmation of her fears about Gentiana’s part in this was a physical blow, then she pointedly ignored Gentiana to respond only to Sienna. “A child? Where does she come into this?” She pressed her free hand over her mouth, as if holding back further words could hold back the emotions behind them too. And the damn gun didn’t waver.
Well. They were fucking all in now, that was for sure. “That’s Pen, the only last-jumped AI in the known universe you’re talking to. They cloned her without her consent, and the Near-AI you’ve been working on for the past months is the result.” Sienna leaned forward, trying to persuade with intensity alone, if nothing else. “If researchers who knew how Pen was made couldn’t recreate her, there’s no chance you’re going to be able to. Why not just let us have the Near-AI?”
