Dawn used the silent elevator ride to recompose herself. The ice in her voice always crept its way in when accusations of ‘boyfriends’ and the like came around. Alas.
It wasn’t fair for the new girl, just because she asked the question that everyone else knows damn well enough not to ask. There was a coffin in the back of her mind that had been sitting for years and occupying it was someone who looked almost identical to Jake. None of the three got any closure. Janissaries didn’t get closure.
She inhales and exhales and forces her now-primed muscles to release – her shoulders lower and jaw unclenches itself not quite on command, but after enough convincing from the commander-in-chief of her nervous system.
Gotta be one hell of a way to start Day 2 of your Janissary life, huh? Asking the forbidden question, aimed towards your deeply unsettled boss. Gotta be better. At least, be better until she can deposit the kid at Xiuying’s feet. She’ll be a better parent, her and Tecumseh. They’re the functional ones in this place.
The doors ring and the elevator’s doors open to reveal the Burj Wolfe’s seventy-third floor. So Dawn steps out and left the miasma in the metal box for someone else to find. She notices that Jasmine doesn’t move until there’s a few stride-lengths between the two. She has the height and temperament of a baby giraffe.
Two pairs of footsteps echo through the empty room. It’s small, hexagonal, the blue and white carpet, hexagons within hexagons within hexagons, forming a ‘Y’ as it splits in front of the attendant’s desk. The desk lies empty.
It’s dark in a calming way, dark with blue undercurrents, the floorboards gently lit to guide tired souls through the hallways.
Dawn swings behind the attendant’s desk and taps on the computer’s screen. One of the rooms is occupied, almost as far as possible from elevator as possible. Xiuying wants space. Dawn wants to talk to the person who used to talk to presidents. Wonder if she’s ever bitter about the demotion?
And so the duo move silently through the hallways. Each path branches off into smaller and smaller ‘Y’s until the very last one, which ends with a floor-to-ceiling window. The sun still hasn’t risen, the slightest hints of orange and red starting to appear over the horizon. The neon lights of Nineveh are still as bright as they are at midnight. Jasmine keeps her distance.
“Hey, Jazz,” Dawn finally asks. She does her best to blunt the blade within her voice.
The tall kid makes a panicked eep! And freezes up. Dawn turns, she’s almost frozen still.
I really have a fucking project. Correction. Xiuying’s about to have a fucking project. Dawn has an immediate future that involves her boss and about a dozen of the most powerful people in the city.
“Have you ever liked someone?”
“Ma’am?”
She’s still saying it. Tech would be furious. She has the most adorable voice, like she’s always trying to be as formal as possible despite the circumstances. It doesn’t much reflect her height. Reflects her age, though. Dawn feels like a mother lion with a cub all of a sudden. A very, very tall cub.
“As, you’know, more than a friend.”
The kid’s tracksuit is wrinkled like she exercised in it previously. Three stripes, Adidas, black and white. Her shoes are white and flat-soled, sort of like Dawn’s own but much less colourful, much more worn. Jasmine’s green eyes are red, bloodshot from lack of sleep, her hair is strawberry blonde and rumpled and ruffled, split-ends gnawing away, down past her shoulder blades.
“I would prefer not to talk about it, ma’am.”
Dawn nods.
“Alright. Want to meet Xiuying?”
“Should, well, should I call her Miss Li still?”
“Your call.”
Dawn opens the leftmost door and strides into the small room – square, framed by two tile-laden walls and two windows, floor-to-ceiling like the one outside. Dawn questions the reasonability of windows in a room like this, with a small pool and an even smaller hot tub. But she isn’t the one occupying it at five-thirty in the morning.
The one occupying it at five-thirty in the morning is half-immersed in water, staring up at a holographic chess board floating above the hot tub. The projection originates from the opposite side of the hot tub, from a cube positioned precariously close to the edge, maybe two or three inches away from hundred-and-one-degree water. A hand wears a skeletal glove, rings between her first and second knuckles on the index and middle fingers of her right hand, connected to rings between the second and third knuckles with a stiff chain, then further connected down to her wrist, like a cyberware hathphool. No jewelry here, though.
Dawn’s ears are greeted entirely by the bubbling of water; not even the slightest hint of music, just sitting, grinding out games of bullet chess in silence. Dawn circles around, Jasmine following, both making sure not to break Xiuying’s flow. Jasmine sticks to the walls and windows, Dawn tightropes between the hot and cold pools.
White’s rook moves from a1 to d1.
Now with a non-flipped view of the hologram, Dawn can properly survey the situation. Both sides have their queens. Black has a 12-11 pieces advantage, as well as both bishops, knights, and rooks. White is missing a knight. Black’s queen moves from h5 to f3, capturing White’s other knight.
<
White’s rook moves from e1 to e7, capturing one of Black’s knights and putting Black’s king directly in check. At this point Dawn figures that Xiuying can see the end game, five or six or seven moves ahead.
Black freezes. His clock starts to tick down. Dawn moves in.
“Howdy.”
Xiuying’s brown eyes dart away from the hologram. Scans Dawn. Scans Jasmine.
“Hi,” she croaks back. “Hey, Jazz.”
The tall kid still looks like she can’t get over being called ‘Jazz.’ Hits her sideways like a rogue gust of wind every time.
“Feelin’ good?” Dawn asks.
“Feel tremendous,” Xiuying responds, all while sounding like a terminal throat cancer patient. Pack-of-cigs-per-day voice, actual cigs, not the vape that she has. Her head is resting on the plastic of the tub, a folded robe hanging half off the edge to cushion. She really thinks of everything.
Black’s knight to e7, captures White’s rook.
“Can you talk?” Dawn asks.
“What about?”
Xiuying hesitates. She taps the screen in two places and White’s queen accordingly moves to d7. Captures a pawn, puts Black’s king in check.
“Well, do you think you can go out today?”
“I have to go out today,” Xiuying replies. “Library. Massage studio.” Her words are exhaled under a deep sigh. “You want Jazz to tag along?”
“Pretty much. I need you to use the library’s Mosaic, too.”
“Why?” It’s said with utter disdain for the hardware.
“Janissary records on, you’know…” Dawn trails off, cocking her head in the direction of Jasmine, off to her side. The other kid, Cyrus, is unspoken of but understood. After Jake and Sophia, Dawn’s known Xiuying the longest. Fifteen months, maybe sixteen.
“Stupid thing barely works.”
Black’s king moves to d7 and captures White’s queen.
“I think you can make it work.”
“And this, what, Mateev guy?”
“You read the file?”
“Jake dropped it off. What kind of name is Khanpasha anyways? It’s like naming your kid Kingsultan.”
“Not my problem. Can you find out anything on him?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Xiuying moves her bishop to f5 with the sweep of a hand. Puts Black’s king in check. He probably feels like he’s drowning.
“How’s Tecumseh?” she asks.
“Good. Asked if he could come along and see you.”
Xiuying smiles in the dark.
“You tell him no?”
“Told him we need his eyes inside his head.”
A short, sharp laugh is Xiuying’s response. Dry as a desert, leads to a short coughing fit. Dawn swipes a nearby water bottle and tosses it to Xiuying who catches it out of the air and immediately, desperately, downs half of it.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I’ve felt worse.”
It doesn’t sound like it.
Black’s king moves to e8. Retreating, of course he’s retreating. His username is ‘metalgearosama’ which just feels masculine. Then again, Xiuying’s is ‘Historys_Greatest_Criminal’ so who really knows.
“But, one more thing. I read the shipping manifest.”
“Did you sleep at all last night?”
“No. Why else would I read a shipping manifest?”
Dawn gently rocks her head from side to side. Good point.
“Anything stick out?”
White’s bishop to f8. Check. She’s got this poor bastard in the stranglehold.
“Lots of weapons. Guns, ammo, all properly registered, bought for the Republican Army. But…”
Black’s king to f8. Dead to rights. Black’s rook at g8 and pawn at f7 pen him in, White’s bishop and a pawn at f6 hold him in place, keeping him from escaping.
“Three Vulcan-Four ballistic missiles. No registration. No buyer.”
Vulcan-IV missiles have a range of twenty-five hundred miles and are small enough to be stored in an average-sized shipping container. They can carry nuclear warheads, but nowadays aether-enhanced explosives, TNT and RDX and occasionally ANFO, are more en vogue. Occasionally a Russian warlord somewhere in Siberia will break out a thermobaric warhead just for fun.
Dawn narrows her eyes. There’s no way that they just missed a trio of ballistic missiles.
“We didn’t catch that yesterday?”
“The ship was carrying enough weapons to start a war,” Xiuying replies. “We’ll check with South Seas Shipping. The whole ship’s cargo is locked down, unless they managed to offload it before we arrived. Was it there overnight?”
“That was Tech’s job, not mine.” Way to handle authority, kid.
White’s bishop to e7. Captures Black’s other knight. Checkmate.
Xiuying pulls up a keyboard and types in ‘gg :)’ and the other player replies with the same. At least they’re a good sport about losing.
Then she puts her hands behind her, up on the plastic ledge of the tub, and pushes herself upwards until she’s sitting on the ledge, her ankles and feet still in the water. If Tech were here his eyes would be on the floor. Dawn feels like hers might about to be. And yet, she sits down at the nine-o’clock to Xiuying’s twelve, takes off her shoes and socks and rolls the compression tights up past her knees. The heat stings at first, but fades away. Feels nice. Almost relaxing.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Dawn watches Xiu’s eyes scan her lower legs, specifically the myriad tattoos; mainly the rose mandala on her right knee and the Icelandic Ægishjálmur on her left. There’s also sleeves on each calf, black and white, a black skull a pocket watch embedded in its forehead and a shrike perched victorious over an impaled snake, and the further up you went the more elaborate they got – her left leg held a sleeve ankle-to-hip, three-headed Cerberus as the centerpiece, a quote –
“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”
- from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian in small letters in the negative space above her patella, ancient Anubis with a hammer and sickle crossed, dozens of smaller ones to fill in the space without resorting to random, nonsensical geometric patters, roses, tigers, a thunderbird forming a band ninety-percent of the way up her right thigh, right above a black band with the phases of the moon. Thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours in chairs to turn her legs into a canvas, and most of it always hidden behind shorts and compression stockings.
In hindsight it looks absurd. It makes her fiddle with the nautical compass inked on her right hand, the fingers of her left following black arrows from her knuckles to arrowheads about to pierce her fingernails. Then she looks to Xiuying, her skin ivory and pair, flawless like Ming porcelain aside from a trio of beauty spots below her right eye, one below her tear duct, two further down near the outermost of her cheekbone.
Her waist curves inward from her shoulders almost perfectly and out again to her hips, her stomach is flat and you can see the twin crests of abdominal muscles taut against skin. She makes Dawn think of a ballet dancer, lean and graceful and calm with a tremendous pair of legs. She’s gorgeous, the same way Sophia is, the way that’ll rip your breath from your lungs and keep it until you look away. She’s twenty-seven and has a bachelor’s degree from Fudan University and a master’s from Peking, both in Chinese history, has co-authored a pair of award-winning books with more senior scholars about the An Lushan rebellion and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and Dawn has them on her bookshelf because she considers herself a good friend even if she can’t be bothered to give a fuck about Chinese history and Dawn knows that if she wasn’t here, or even if she wasn’t Davison’s little kid within Davison’s little death squad, Xiuying would be in charge instead. Tao Shu Conglomerated paid nearly half-a-billion dollars for the rights to her contract, the most out of any Janissary in recorded history, even if you adjust currencies to present day. She’s spent ten years making herself worth that much and more.
Then Xiuying pulls her hair out of the bun atop her head and shakes it out – it tumbles, wet and dense, almost to her waist. She nearly doubles over, with her posture akin to a shrimp’s, and grimaces at Dawn.
“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh,” is the noise that she makes, a deep, crackling sigh, brittle like spiderwebbed glass. Dawn can’t help but smile at the poor woman’s misfortune. The circles under her eyes are as dark as the ones under Dawn’s own.
“You don’t have to go out today,” she tells her.
“Yeah, I do.” Resignation in her voice.
Xiuying fishes somewhere behind her, hands searching blind. She pulls the vape of hers to her lips, inhales, then exhales a cloud of smoke that integrates itself with the rest of the steam floating around the room and vanishes beyond the comprehension of the human eye. Her posture slowly straightens out, until she’s back sitting up straight. She repeats, aiming the cloud over her left shoulder as to not engulf Dawn or Jasmine in it’s maple syrup-scented cloud.
At least Dawn doesn’t smoke indoors. And yet, her hands absentmindedly search the pockets she doesn’t have for her cigarillo case, the one that she emptied yesterday.
The holographic projector bleeps and bloops, and the projection flickers and transforms into an unused 2D chessboard. Xiuying’s new opponent is named ‘hentaiterrorist,’ and she’s assigned Black by the machine. Dawn chokes down a laugh at her opponent’s name. Xiuying takes it deadly serious – a person who willingly chose the name hentaiterrorist must be confident in their abilities.
Mr. hentaiterrorist opens with a pawn to d4 and Xiuying counters with a pawn to d5.
“Do you need to focus?”
She shakes her head, side to side. The first few moves are autopilot – White’s pawn to c4, Black’s pawn to e6, White’s knight to c3, Black’s knight to f6 – and fourteen entire turns pass in the blink of an eye. Jasmine draws ever closer to watch, and eventually sits herself down at two o’clock respective to Xiuying’s twelve.
“I can multitask. I don’t think this guy is all that good.”
White’s bishop to d5, capturing Black’s knight. Black’s other knight to d5, capturing White’s bishop. A fair trade. But what does Dawn know about chess?
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Jasmine quietly asks. “But, um, was I on this, shipping manifest?”
The corners of Xiuying’s lips curve upward at the return of ‘ma’am,’ almost malevolent. She exchanges a look at Dawn and the smirk disappears.
“You were, but you were classified as ‘cattle.’”
“Cattle?”
“I’m surprised too,” Xiuying replies. White’s bishop to e7, captures Black’s bishops. Black’s knight to e7, captures White’s bishop. “Usually, when people traffic humans, they bring them in legally with visas, then they force them to overstay those visas.”
“But, cattle?”
“It’s the way it is. Get over it.” White’s queen to b3, Black’s bishop to c6. “Sorry. That’s not what I meant.”
Jasmine nods. Being faced with the first-hand knowledge that you were trafficked probably breaks your brain. She’s already been through the wringer and she’s been free for, what, fifteen hours?
“So, the boat I arrived on also had weapons?”
“Yeah,” Dawn replies. “Bunch of small stuff, like assault rifles and grenades. Stuff for the Army, all brought here legally. Yeah?”
“Yes,” Xiuying confirms. The hentaiterrorist has yet to make a move.
“But, why is the port on the other side of the river? Why don’t we have it?”
Dawn and Xiuying share another glance. We, huh? Quick to tribalism, factionalism. The river is a false terminus, enemies over there, enemies over here too. The ones over here have political power, Dawn thinks, which makes them more dangerous. Does an 18-year-old know that? An American? She realizes that she sounds like fucking Anastasia.
“When the city was divided in two, there was an agreement. Mosul’s side of the river got the port. In return, Nineveh gets to drop bombs on them whenever they want and all the rights to aether synthesizing,” Xiuying explains.
“That, can’t be true.”
“About sixty percent of it is. It was a concession, to make it look like it wasn’t a naked colonial conquest. Which it was, but that’s old history. Before I was even born. It makes more sense if you think of the world as a repeating process; one side get together and one gets the resulting petro-mineral rights.”
“And the other side?” Jasmine asks.
“Dead.”
White moves his knight to c6 and captures one of Black’s bishops, and Black moves a pawn to c6 to take that same knight. The next few turns are a flurry, and Xiuying sacrifices a rook to take one of white’s rooks. hentaiterrorist settles down again, and Xiuying continues her lesson.
“So, Nineveh get the port. Because it’s surrounded by poverty, that means that best way to get anything done over there is bribery, but the Army has deep pockets, so it works out fine.”
“Until…” Dawn leads her on.
“Until some idiots bring in unmarked, unregistered ballistic missiles. Why would they do that? If they have the proper documentation they’ll pay a small fine and go on their way! Now it’s our problem!” She starts coughing again.
It’s a good question because it asks two. Who exactly are they, and what is their deal?
Xiuying slips back into the water. Her swimsuit is simple, a lemon yellow two-piece, the strings looping and taught at her hips and nape and back. Breathes a deep sigh of relief as her strained muscles relax.
“Do you have a phone, Jazz?” Xiuying asks.
“Um, uh…”
“That’s a no, I assume.”
“No, ma’am, uh. I don’t have a phone. I was in a shipping container twenty-four hours ago.”
“Davison didn’t get you one?”
Jasmine shakes her head.
“You can go to the fuckin’ Walmart and grab one for twenty bucks. No plan needed, who city’s got wi-fi,” Dawn mutters. “Well, you’re on the team, so you’ve gotta be in our group chats.”
“Do we need teenagers in our group chats?” Xiuying asks.
“How else are we going to co-ordinate?” Dawn asks back.
Xiuying exhales, slowly. Black moves her queen to d2, capturing White’s queen. White captures with a rook, then the two sides exchange pawns at b3.
“Fine. Just the regular one. None of the auxiliaries.”
“Auxiliaries?” Jasmine asks.
Xiuying shares another glance with Dawn. You tell her, her look says.
“We use the main one just to co-ordinate stuff. Dinners, outings, errands, business. All the others are for pictures.”
“What, um, kind of pictures?”
The two adults share another look. Dawn doesn’t want to say ‘explicit,’ but three quarters of all posts in the group’s GirlsChat is Sophia and Anastasia – and occasionally Xiuying but she’d kill you if you said it – posing in swimsuits and lingerie they probably won’t purchase. The other quarter involves stalking and reposting pictures from hot guys’ Instagrams, and then posting unhinged things like ‘would’ or ‘id let him do horrible things to me’ or ‘I need him to hit me with a 2102 Dodge Champion so I can die happy’ or ‘i bet hes forklift certified.’ Dawn has yet to see Jake posted there but that’s because his social media is private and used exclusively for scenic photography, digital art that he never finishes, and sandwiches. Dawn has seen Tecumseh, multiple times, and frankly much more of him then she ever imagined she wanted to see. Then again, she didn’t not like seeing it –
“Girl stuff,” Xiuying says and Dawn shakes her head to get boxer-brief-clad Tech out of her head. “Adult girl stuff.”
“O-oh.”
“Well, there is the one where we just put videos of animals-”
“That one’s good, we’ll add you to that one,” Xiuying says. “When you get a phone. That’ll be the commander’s job.”
“You can’t swing by the Nexus store?” Dawn asks.
“Don’t have time,” Xiuying responds. If I have to do one more thing today I am actually going to die, it means. Dawn figures she’s overreacting. Probably.
“I’ll pick one up for you, then. Nexus has this extended family plan, we have room for a dozen, so, about three left,” Dawn tells Jasmine. The tall girl listens obediently.
“Um, ma’am?” she asks.
“You don’t have to call me ma’am.”
“Do, um, am I, ah…required? To get one of those tattoos?”
Dawn looks at Xiuying. Xiuying looks away from the board at Dawn. The right thing to do would be to tell her the truth – no. But the truth would be boring, and more importantly, not very funny –
“No,” Xiuying quickly replies, shutting out any opportunities for humour. She would’ve one-hundred percent believed it, too. Xiuying probably knows that which is why she smothered it so quickly. She’s just no fun. “If you want one, we’ll pay for the first one.”
“I’m okay, ma’am.”
By now, the board has evolved to the point where Xiuying has the position advantage over the soundly befuddled hentaiterroist, despite both sides having their king, a rook, a knight, and a scattering of pawns across the board. It’s all movement now; Dawn and Jasmine watch in silence as the opposing rook and knight dance across the board, White unable to stop a slow advance of pawns from Black. The hentaiterrorist can’t afford to lose any more pieces, but if he attacks one of the pawns another pawn will jump on him. Black puts White’s king in checkmate; White’s king moves down a row, Black’s knight jumps into check, white’s rook slides in the way. Another of Black’s pawns move downward.
And then the message appears across the screen:
“OPPONENT RESIGNED”
A small ‘gg’ appears in the chat box. Even a man named hentaiterrorist is graceful in defeat. Xiuying responds with her own ‘gg :)’ and that’s that. She closes the screen and unlatches her skeletal glove from around her hand. Closes her eyes, puts her head back against the towel that she’s turned into a pillow. Deeply exhales a ragged breath.
“Is that everything?” she asks.
Dawn looks at Jasmine, who seems befuddled.
“Yeah. That’s it for now,” Dawn replies.
“So. Library, Mosaic system, the new guys, Khanpasha Mateev. All sound right?”
“Sounds right.”
“Anything else?”
“Not unless you want there to be.”
“Good. I don’t.” She sinks further in the water, to where only her eyes are sticking above the water, and she remains in this crocodilian state for a white. Occasionally she rises a few inches and exhales and inhales through her nose, but that’s all.
Dawn looks back at Jasmine and cocks her head towards the exit. The two leave Xiuying alone with the mist and they wipe their legs using spare towels at the front desk before putting their shoes back on.
“So, first impressions?” Dawn asks.
“Of Miss Li?”
“Who else?”
“Umm,” Jasmine starts and Dawn isn’t sure whether she took it literally or not. “She’s very, ah, intense.”
Dawn can’t help but laugh. She doesn’t know the half of it – hard to be actually intense when its five in the morning and you’re recovering from aether poisoning. Harder still when you’re in a hot tub.
“I thought she was pretty mellow, all things considered.”
“Mellow, ma’am?”
“Do you not-”
“I know what mellow means, ma’am, just, she talked herself into a coughing fit. Twice.”
“You haven’t seen her when she’s healthy, no?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You’ve gotta stop calling me that,” Dawn mutters. She puts one of her Air Force Ones on the desktop – her soles are clean; dirty soles mean a dirty soul. “How do you not have a phone, anyways?”
“I was in a shipping container twenty-four hours ago, ma’am.”
She’s got you there. “But, why didn’t Davison-”
“Ma’am, if I may, we were sent to the hospital and then Davison gave us a backpack’s worth of clothing and he drove us to your apartment.”
“He didn’t bother getting anything between then?”
Jasmine shrugs “I assumed he was busy, ma’am. He’s, um, the one really in charge around here, right?”
Nobody is really in charge around here, but Jasmine seems comfortable with established hierarchies. Very American mindset. She is American, you idiot.
“More or less, but he delegates authority to me,” Dawn explains. “So I’m in charge, unless he’s here then he’s in charge.”
“If you’re not here, then-”
“Jacob, then Tecumseh or Xiuying. If it’s Tecumseh and Xiuying, then you’re on your own.”
“That doesn’t make sense, ma’am.”
“They, er, get distracted around each other, you’know? If you separate them, they’re better than me. Together their brain cells kinda, you’know, cancel out. Negate each other, or something.”
Jasmine makes a silent ‘aaaaah’ and nods. “So, they’re in love?”
Dawn chokes down a cackle, lest Xiuying hear. “Don’t say that around them, but, I’d be surprised if they weren’t.”
“Do, um, is that allowed here?”
Dawn looks at Jasmine. “Listen. Kid. I do not give a fuck about that.”
Jasmine nods. Dawn wonders if she’s thinking of someone in particular. Then Dawn realizes that the elevator call button is dark – did she ever bother hitting it?
She gives it a good smack and it dings immediately, and the doors slide open.
“So, where to?” she asks her apprentice. “Back to the gym?”
“Um, actually, ma’am, I-I’d like to check out the greenhouse.”
Dawn cocks her head at Jasmine. “Greenhouse?”
“Is that, not, it, ma’am? With, the, ah, the, um, the plants?”
Does she mean aquaponics?
“Do you remember the floor?”
Jasmine freezes up entirely, her green eyes fixated on the smattering of numbers along the wall. There’s too many, and two-thirds of them lead to empty office space or unused real estate. The landlords get tax breaks or something, which is why they can afford to hang onto it and rent it out on a short-term basis. Building also has its own housekeeping but Dawn keeps them out of the two floors designated for the Janissaries. Janissaries don’t need housekeeping, they’re not bourgeoise and bourgeoisieism is the enemy of self-sufficiency.
Her hand very, very carefully presses the button for floor 94. It’s not a fucking landmine, kid.
“Aquaponics! That’s Dimitri’s project.”
The girl seems puzzled. “Dimitri?”
“He’s a real, complete bastard. Blonde guy, shorter than me, you saw him earlier. You’ll get along great with him.”
It’s a half truth. Xiuying can’t get along with him – some esoteric beef between one brand of left-wing politics and another brand of left-wing politics. Anastasia can’t sit within six feet of him without a fight breaking out, which is why she always puts the two on the same team. But he is a complete bastard. Real lightweight when it comes to booze too, goes down from a pair of vodka coolers. Looks sideways at any and all attractive women he comes across – which means he spends a lot of time looking sideways given the overabundance of attractive women in this mental hospital masquerading as a death squad. But he’s up in the gym, and they’ll be in the greenhouse filled with prawns, crayfish, and regular fish.
Dawn can talk for days about most of what the building has to offer – a small movie theatre with aggregation software connected to just about every pirate website in existence, a bowling alley, tennis courts, a high-end mini-mall on the third-to-fifth floor – but aquaponics is beyond her knowledge. All she knows is that it’s where they get most of their fish and prawns and vegetables.
Maybe she’ll let Jasmine surprise her this time – she seemed intrigued on her own terms. Good to let the new puppy explore her new home.
The doors slide together and as they ascend Dawn swears she can see Jasmine smiling to herself. Maybe she’ll fit in after all.