The atmosphere in the meeting room was awkward, and that's leaving aside the trace amounts of poison that could still make your throat itch. The people sitting across the mahogany table seemed just as unhappy to be there as I was, though my annoyance was slightly tempered by the sheer fear in their eyes.
It was nice to be taken seriously for once.
After a bit of shouted debate, we'd settled on a detente. I was still armed, while the people who were waiting on me weren't. Not that the ones outside weren't packing, but I was reasonably confident I could shoot my way out, assuming they weren't mindless fanatics. A big assumption, but one borne out by observed behavior.
I'd rescued three of them from an unpleasant death, and someone had managed to get to the man choking outside in time to save him too. Of course, it would be unreasonably optimistic of me to expect that gesture to mollify them, but as my sordid tale can attest, I live by "do no harm" first and foremost.
They had a well stocked medical bay bought second hand from some spaceship, and it was happy enough to keep three of them ventilated till the toxins wore off. The fourth, Raul Graham, hadn't had quite enough of the beatdown I'd delivered and insisted on being present to debrief me, he had an air of natural authority to him that was only slightly marred by the medical exo that kept him from toppling out of his seat.
The others had been in no mood for introductions, resentfully glaring at me, most of them still askance that I'd murdered a bus-load of their buddies and would be getting off scott free for it. I for one, with my Buddha-like patience, forgave them for the kidnapping and attempted murder, expressing my sanguine attitude by laying my legs across the table, sidearm in one hand and a cup of much appreciated whiskey in another.
"So, you're telling me that BULWARK was an inside job?" I asked, feeling better than I had in ages.
"Well, that's how it started. Nobody asked them how they felt, so when Lumen came calling.."
My hands itched for pen and paper notes, an atavistic instinct born of interminable ward rounds where wizened ancient wizards (the consultant) shared arcane potions and invocations (updated drug charts) and proceeded to engage in plot-derailing exposition. Nah, I didn't miss it, I don't know how I ever lived without a lace.
It was a long story, beginning somewhere around the time of the Secession, and the period of existential dread that befell the plucky colonists on Mars. Gone were the massive swarms of Starships that would ignite the Martian skies like clockwork cicadas, as dead as Elon. While many of the old American colonies or even the SpaceX company towns yearned for independence, it wasn't coming while the planet was blockaded by FedUS warships operating from Deimos, and those wishing to leave were offered only the clothes on their back and a pickaxe. Despite the romantic paeans to the spirit of the New West, that wasn't enough to make your own way, not even if you threw in a wagon and an ox.
Nasty time, the less said of it the better. But that squashed secessionist spirit hadn't vanished, and when the final partition was signed, a good chunk of the population switched allegiance from the Federal US to the hundreds of micronations that sprung up in its wake, leaving aside larger defections to Lone Star or the Californian Republic. Still, many didn't even get the right of exit promised to them, forced to remain in USMA settlements on various technicalities like work bonds and the like. A bad Idea, it's not like you need humans to run the colonies, so why imprison an embittered populace? OK, not that bad a idea, because what Mars farmed was people, a fertile crop of new metahumans the harvest. You wanted as many as you could fit in your fancy arcologies for that.
Cue the Patriots, still fighting for independence, now for USMA as a whole rather than individual polities.
What Mars was good for was a place to run the kind of experiments you didn't want to do anywhere near a functional biosphere, black ops juju bullshit and experimentation with superpowers and alien technology. Sure, a quarter of Mount Olympus just vanished one night in '36, but nobody was really using it were they?
The planet was riddled with relics from pre-secession days, and plenty more built since then. And USMA had been naughty, circumventing the UN treaties on reverse-engineering alien technology outside the aegis of multilateral organizations. That, and their mucking about with alien AGI would earn them a paddling from Turing, should the charges stick.
BULWARK was the running name for a certain experiment, attempting to use metahumans to crack the secrets of the most esoteric alien tech, often with unfortunate consequences for those involved. The aliens had some serious black boxes, and their tamper-proof mechanisms occasionally consisted of unstable and actively levitated antimatter. They did odd jobs on the side to keep up pretenses, and most of that was legit. Even when obsolescent in the face of newer computational technology, the chip foundries in Hellas had been critical for continued US hegemony on Mars.
"They found a Centaur core that wasn't properly deactivated? And it spoke to the the tech guy?"
"Yes. It had one of their AI on it, or a mind upload, though I don't think they draw a distinction themselves." Raul mused, and after staring longingly at me sipping on my drink, caved in and poured himself a shot.
Things moved swiftly. The AI had the insane technowar suites the Centaurs were famous for, and it successfully hacked into the shackles of the indentured metahumans, freeing them from USMA control while averting suspicion. The subversion was swift and insidious, the awakened Centauri intelligence slipping whisper quiet through military and civilian networks alike for months before it hit an updated tripwire and forced BULWARK to show their hand.
I couldn't help but whistle in awe as the full extent of the subversion was made clear. Hundreds of biolabs and autofabs had been working around the clock, and given that there was little to no human supervision, they'd built up enough materiel to sponsor a mid scale war.
And that's leaving aside the couple hundred nukes in their hands.
"Wait, you guys have nukes? That one you used on the fab wasn't a one-off?"
Raul laughed before his aching ribs forced him to downgrade to a chortle. "Yes, Doctor Sen. The Old States' left quite a bit behind, black sites that were lost during the reconsolidation and restructuring. But we stole more than a few from USMA, and built more with stolen material."
He settled back, favoring the side with fewer broken ribs. "Worst part was sitting on all of this and keeping it secret. I lost so many good men and women, and I couldn't tell them what they were dying for, and worse, that they didn't have to die scared and alone because we couldn't save them without blowing our cover."
He glared at me, the memory of our recent duel fresh in both our minds. I remained impassive, I was far from sorry, even if I did wish things had gone differently.
"Anyway, you're just in the prelude. We activated some of the drone swarms, laid hints that BULWARK was operating from underground bases instead of, well, underground bases that belonged to the same assholes hunting us. Just enough to draw more of the USMA and USSF forces into play, ready for the coupe de gracé."
(If my use of FedUS and USA confuses you, you wouldn't be the first. Right after the Secession, the 46 states that remained in the Union temporarily rebranded as the Federal USA to draw a distinction from the original entity. But, almost a decade later, the Winters administration decided that an entity still holding most of the continental US might we well use name-brand. It certainly marked a new phase of pressure on the secessionist states, with every President since running on the ticket of eventual reunification.)
"I've heard enough. I want to speak to BULWARK, or at least Lumen. But first, how did they get in touch?"
He shrugged. "They never told me, but sometime after the Centauri AI freed them. Ok, you told me in no uncertain terms that "metahuman fuckery" would result in you killing me, so I'm going to ask your kind permission before someone here burns their link with Lady Purple."
"It's a one-time thing? The possession?"
"Why don't you ask her?"
They had two more people with untapped links, and after some discussion, brought in a girl who looked like she was better suited for art school rather than an insurgency. She looked down her nose at me, the sneer mildly disrupted by the glowing nose ring, but then she adjusted her hair, took a seat, and let a meditative look pass over her face.
The effect was immediate, I felt my hair stand on end as that crawling sensation of unreality returned. She had bioluminescent purple hair in the first place, so it took me a bit to spot the point where she was puppeted. Or at least, I didn't think her eyes had always glowed purple.
"Dr. Adat Sen, we meet again. You certainly played hard to get." Her voice was different now, deeper, more sultry and seductive.
"Send me an email next time. So, am I supposed to just call you Lady Purple?" I asked her, defiantly downing another shot.
She laughed, it was a sexy laugh, the kind Anjana often let out when my idea of pillow talk went into dad joke territory. "My real name is Lucille West, if you really want to, you can call me Lucy." She winked, the gesture incongruent with the girl's snooty face.
"I'll stick to Purple for now. What the hell is going on?" I stood up, staring at her amused face. That old familiar black rage was simmering.
She resumed a more neutral appearance when she saw I wasn't feeling the humor.
"Revolution, Adat. When this is all over, we'll escape to the stars, and there will be no catching us." Her power amped up a notch, and another globe to match the first she'd conjured for me appeared, this time of Mars. If the beautifully rendered pinpricks of light were any suggestion, it was getting busy in orbit.
"How? You're going to use that teleporter of yours to spirit everyone away?" I remembered the sharp-edges holes between dimensions I'd stepped through to meet Lumen.
"I wish it were that simple. Do you know about Dr. Fang Shen?"
That question spurred buried memories, my lace demanding my assent before opening Pandora's box.
MNEMONIC LOCK: Imagine pink elephants on parade for thirty seconds and then blink slowly, twice.
USER NOTE: Hey, past Adat here. This isn't critical, but we end up drinking way too much in order to forget afterwards. Don't say I didn't warn you.
I imagined the fucking elephants.
Dr. Shen. Oh. That Dr. Shen.
"He's here, isn't he?" I asked.
In response, one of the tiny dots in orbit got the zoom treatment, enlarging to show the sleek brutalist lines of a Chinese warship, now flying UN colors.
It shimmered with the waste heat from droplet radiators forming a butterfly in the void, the glow of particle cannons and the radiant redness of the railguns suggesting recent use. But by far of more import was the lobotomized brain of Dr. Fang Shen aboard, now slaved to the AGI in charge.
Dr. Shen, metahuman inventor extraordinaire, the creator of the Reality Anchor, an artifact that could dampen powers on demand, with the later protypes being tunable. Shame that he got ideas, joined the losing side during the Winter of Red Rice and White Bamboo, and later down the line, someone in the reformed CCP decided that he'd be better off as the literal figurehead of an interstellar warship.
This was a regrettable decision in hindsight, without his direct intervention in the manufacturing process, you simply couldn't build more Reality Anchors, and you could bet that several hundred billion USDC and hundreds of Crafters and Technomancers had tried. Instead, after the Florence-Sen procedure, he acted as the Reality Anchor to end all the others, capable of extending his unconscious influence to envelop entire worlds. At least I hoped he was unconscious, that wasn't a given with what some powers needed to stay active, and we hadn't perfected the technique at the time. And sometimes, being wide awake while your brain was subsumed by the AI was the point.
Suffice to say that the remaining portable anchors were rare, and worth their weight in the rarer lanthanides. You just didn't see them around all that often, they were irreplaceable relics.
The fact that Lady Purple was even having this conversation with me was proof they hadn't ramped his powers up to full blast. I suspected even Consul would fall out of the sky if he got close. Instead, it was in a more targeted mode, suppressing teleportation and certain Technomancer powers, trying to avoid crippling the guys with flags.
"So your portals are no bueno?"
"Smart man. Yes, we can't just take everyone and bail, so we're going to have to go for a more R-selected strategy."
Ah, R-selection, where you made babies faster than they could be eaten. Highly reassuring to hear, no doubt.
"The details will come soon enough. Listen, this conduit is almost burnt out, and I can't multitask very well while I'm doing this. Stay with the Patriots, they're about to pack up and leave for a sanctuary where, if you're in time, you can wrangle some signatures from BULWARK."
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
There was the stink of ozone, and then, she was gone, leaving a bleary eyed art-ho in her place.
The Patriots packed fast. I wasn't invited to the quick funeral they held to memorialize their dead, instead settling for perching on a mound as automated diggers dug deep graves. The 21 gun salute brought back memories of dead brothers-in-arms, and so I let my thoughts roam to long still battlefields and their restless dead.
Before the dust had settled, we were on our way, another bus our ride, this one with fewer bullet holes in it.
Nobody bothered to chat me up on the way, I had a distinct sensation of being ostracized, not that I could think of a good reason. I took the downtime to explore some of the functionality of my lace, the words "Dolphin Mode" catching my eye. When activated, instead of turning me into a psychopathic pedophile rapist as might be reasonably expected, instead it just put half my brain to sleep at a time. It was a queer sensation, like the comfortable fuzz of prolonged sleep deprivation, and the sensation of my consciousness shifting from one hemisphere to the other was plain weird. I alternated from being so bad at math I couldn't count my fingers, to knowing what fingers were but unable to name them. Still, it did the job, and my exhausted neurons rejoiced at the micronaps.
We followed the endless highway till the reddened sun began peeking up from the horizon, and then turned sharply to enter a disguised tunnel that ran miles and miles at a shallow slope.
There were respectable automated security measures in place, ceiling mounted machine guns, laser scanners and the like, but we were evidently expected and drove right past the hulking security bot manning the checkpoint.
I'm not sure what I expected inside, likely a combination of practical utilitarianism and Texan kitsch, but my initial reaction was deja vu provoked by feeling like I'd walked right back into a USAF FOB. A hundred people in fatigues watched us walk in, all of them armed to the teeth. I felt the hot gaze of a massive combat cyborg track me, and stared right back.
Thankfully, someone had mercy on me and the others, and instead of an immediate debrief, we were lead through decon showers first. I luxuriated at the sensation of clean, hot water running over my skin, getting days of fine grit and soot out of my joints. Marginally refreshed, I headed back to the cafeteria near the entrance, and demolished three servings before someone came to get me.
As I jogged through the halls, the disposition of the Patriots reminded me of some Jihadists I'd fought in the late 20s. They had that same sense of determination combined with grim fatalism, the garb of a martyr who didn't really expect to die, but if they did, they'd say it was worth it. I could respect that, even if I disagreed with some of their goals.
The facility was buried deep within the Martian bedrock, at least a kilometer or so, if not more. I don't think we'd survive if someone dropped a bunker buster nuke or we came under sustained orbital bombardment, but it provided a sense of security I'd lacked over on the surface. The familiar decor helped too.
After being waved through by keen eyed guards in front of a robust blast door, I found myself in front of the first member of BULWARK.
Beacon was hot. Sure, he was a a looker, but I meant it in the literal sense. Even a dozen feet away, heat washed over my skin, and the less augmented were keeping a safe distance. In my limited thermal vision, he glowed like an incandescent bulb, albeit in the normal spectrum he wasn't bright at all, more like the sullen heat of dying coal ash.
The person opposite him was a literal polar opposite. I use literal literally, because that was Frostbite, the metahuman with cryokinetic powers. His breath emerged tinged with frost that quickly became hot vapor as it approached Beacon, and the combination of the two of them in one place seemed at least partially out of deference to the complaining thermostat.
"Sen, is it? We've been expecting you." Contrary to expectations, Frostbite greeted me warmly, while Beacon gave me a cold look. Who pissed on his pancakes?
"One and only. I'd shake your hand, if that was advisable." I told him, and he laughed heartily. "Yeah, I mean, I can warm up to room temperature, but excuse me, someone needs to keep this hot head from burning the house down." Frostbite explained, leading me further into the sanctum-sanctorum.
If it wasn't clear already that this place was a leftover from before the Secession, it was obvious now. I'd never thought I'd feel nostalgic for beige walls and chunky flatscreen monitors, but the emotion arose nonetheless. I could almost hear my CO berating me for getting my squad lost on a land nav course.
Waiting inside was a woman in almost classical Greek dress, the gown hanging off her shoulder like a waterfall of plantlife. A doubletake revealed that it was indeed flora, she was wearing living weave. Who else could it be but Florette?
"Hi, Dr. Sen. I'm Natasha, you can call me Flo if you like." Her smile was winsome, and while I wasn't entirely a fan of the small ladybugs and other creepy crawlies living their best lives in her outfit, it was a killer aesthetic, and what's a good superhero or villain without one?
"Not a fan of Florette?" I asked her. She crinkled her button nose in response. "Didn't choose that name, don't think I want to ever hear that again. I'm a person, not some Poison Ivy ripoff, and a real name helps."
"Here, take a seat." She offered me a wicker chair, and I rested my sore ass for a moment, stretching out my legs.
"I heard you were here to take us in?" Beacon asked, amused.
"Hey, don't sleep on my augments. I'm tougher than I look." I didn't look particularly tough then, as I was petting a cat that had decided my lap was the most comfortable of the lot. To be fair, the options were frostbite, second degree burns, and I half-imagined that there was a fucking snake slithering about in Florette's outfit. We had a cat on base in Armenia, a bitter and combative beast that had outlived half my platoon. Still consented to scratchies behind its one remaining ear if you paid up with some of your MRE.
"Undoubtedly. Did you really have to do such a number on the Patriots back there?" He asked. I shook my head. "Like I always tell people, the solution is peaceful dialogue, preferably before they fry your brain with a Parrot and bundle you off to who knows where."
"Right. Perhaps I'd have stayed in therapy if my shrink was packing, or such a hunk." Florette shamelessly flirted while reaching out to pet the cat herself.
"Thanks, but I'm taken." I held up my finger, showing the wedding ring I wore. It was worse for wear, the diamond cracked and clouded from the hundred or so lethal engagements I'd experienced since the more pleasant kind of engagement. Still, I wore it when I could, and I hoped its counterpart on her dainty fingers was doing better.
"All the good men are." She sighed dramatically, making an orchid bloom bedazzlingly in the palm of her hand. The cat wasn't amused, hissing at something, which I was ever more certain was a real fucking snake.
"Where does she live? Cushy penthouse loaned out by the UN?" She inquired, making herself a herbal tea, sprinkling in some shredded leaves that I suspected she'd grown on her person.
I laughed bitterly. "If a space station somewhere in AC counts. She's a supe too, grade 5, national asset, you know the deal.."
That provoked some sympathy, even from the standoffish Beacon.
I told them the sordid story, and when I was done, they were noticeably warmer towards me. I needed to vent, and I doubted anyone was in a better position to commiserate than this lot, the incision scars from their implanted explosives still fading.
A knock on the door heralded the entry of a man in power armor. I was taken aback, it was clearly of Centauri origin, while they didn't hew to a single aesthetic, the sleek and seamless white plastic and almost biological curves was a dead ringer. He was tall, tall enough that I pegged him as a spacer, if not from birth then at least puberty. He wasn't wearing a helmet, but instead had a platinum circlet encircling his brow without making contact, levitating via unclear means.
I recognized him straight away. Gerald Green, or Machina.
He stopped, appraising me. His circlet emitted a faint buzz, like a ultrasonic scalpel, before gradually spinning up until it was a blur.
"Not bad. Hyundai joints?" He asked. He was quiet, speaking softly as if we were in a library instead of a bustling base. I suspected he was a nerd at heart, most Technomancers were. Something about his mannerisms suggested that if he wasn't autistic, then he was at least on the spectrum. Call it intuition built out of counseling hundreds, at least till the prenatal screens and gene therapy made it a rarity.
"Close. Boston Dynamics ultralights. Wait, Hyundai still owns them doesn't it?"
"Correct. Interesting drug glands, do they come with nano fabs? Those ultracaps, are they just twisted graphene or something more exotic?"
We talked shop for a while, discussing my augments. Let's be honest, I'm a nerd too, the day drinking just masks it. I was extolling the virtues of battery fat over less organic energy stores when a thoroughly bored Florette patted him on the shoulder and drew us out of it.
Nice guy, I hoped I didn't have to kill him later.
"Lady Purple phoned ahead, if you want to have a proper conversation, now's the time." He fished out a small device that glittered under the LED lights. A twist of a cap, and it sparkled to life, revealing a hologram of the woman. Her usual regal air was a bit scuffed since it caught her mid yawn, but she recovered her poise swiftly.
"It's like 4 am here, excuse me please." She fished around off screen for a caffeine bulb of the type often preferred in zero g.
"Right. Adat, meet Bulwark. Kids, say hi to Adat." Only Florette responded with a teasing "Hi Adat", the others rolled their eyes, but I could tell they held Lucille in great esteem, approaching outright reverence.
"So, are you guys a part of Lumen right now?" I asked.
"Well, we're on the same page, and assuming this works out, we're going to be shacking up for the foreseeable future." Machina explained, the joints of his suit eerily silent as he drew up his own chair.
"Jolly good. Now, I'm rocket lagged as fuck, I need my skull remodeled, and most importantly, I want answers." I reminded them, since nobody seemed in any haste to bring me up to speed.
"You can get that dent out with one of the autodocs, I'll supervise it you like." Machina offered.
"I was going to suggest more coffee first, but you've got a drug gland right? Alright, let me explain.."
She spoke at length, my jaw practically hitting the floor and bouncing by the time she was done. Halfway through, the cat, the name tag proudly declaring it as Staff Sergeant Fluffers, had enough of my lax attention to the work of petting, and strode off with the haughty air of a career NCO.
"You can't be serious. You're putting the lives of a million people at stake." I shouted, making Florette flinch and then wipe away the spittle.
"There's no better way. If we had more time, and if Shen wasn't in orbit, we could have done this differently. Lumen has precogs on staff, but they're not gods Adat, we don't see a way out of this that doesn't spill blood. Rest assured that we're not trying to hurt people." Lucille explained, her kind eyes scanning my tense expression.
"I'm not having any part of this. You're crazy, each and every one of you." I stood up and stepped back, heart thumping in my chest.
"You can sit this one out if you really want to, but face the facts Dr. Sen, we're on this course with or without a single augmented Blue Man. Do your part, and you save lives while also working on your debt to us." She offered.
I'd been microdosing meth in my system when I didn't get my coffee, but the anger that welled up inside me was all natural. She was lucky that she wasn't in the room. I could feel the others tense up, Beacon got fractionally hotter, lighting up in my rudimentary thermal vision, the heat slowly warping the thermoplastics of his chair. Machina was still as a rock, but that suit of his almost certainly had me dialed in. Florette fretted, fingers anxiously messing with her locks as she shifter closer to the safety of Machina's bulk.
"Fuck you. Don't think I don't know. El Presidente wasn't the first job I did for you. You tried to activate me at least once before, and I bet I've already done more shit than I want to remember. You need to get me my wife back, and now."
She remained quiet, mulling over my words. I set my lace to highest sec, filtering my own thoughts like pulped juice through a strainer, desperately seeking any signs of thought patterns that weren't mine. Nothing rang that bell yet, but you could never be sure.
"I am sorry. I truly am. Yes, you've helped us before, but when we demanded three favors of you, it goes without saying that they're big ones. And trust me, we've done what we can for you, did you think your rise through the ranks went so smoothly without good reason?"
"The fuck do you mean? I worked my ass off to get where I am, I'm on track to get to Assistant Director in a year or two. Fuck that. Where. Is. My. Wife." Emotion inhibitors kicked in, putting a ceiling on my rage without alleviating it. My second brain was alarmed, and seemed to think I wasn't thinking straight.
"If you believe that your station is entirely the product of your own labors, so be it. That's a trivial effort on our part, you don't have to share credit. But I promise you that your cooperation now will count for us getting your wife back. Think about it for a moment Adat, control your rage. Without getting us to the stars, how did you really expect us to just jaunt into AC and get a top-tier military teleporter out without getting her and ourselves killed?"
Deep breaths helped. The feel of my ring in my clenched grip grounded me for a moment, reminded me why I'd shed blood, sweat, tears and shit to get this far. I double checked my lace, no signs of intrusion yet, but the neuromorphic computer had taken it upon itself to release substances to take the edge off. I didn't like it, I was coming to enjoy the rage that preceded violence.
"Tell me how that works. Tell me how you'll pull her out." I demanded, my voice hoarse, my eyes blinking away tears that threatened to break the dam of my crumbling composure. I wanted to curl up into a ball and sob my heart out, ideally with Gator, if not, then SSgt. Fluffers would do. I wanted my wife back. I needed her.
Florette sighed with sympathy and patted me on the arm. I let her do so without complaint. Lucille worked her fingers, and conjured a view that was captured by the holographic projector.
"Step one. We establish Lumen as an interstellar player. We get heavy hitters, teleporters, better clairvoyants. We organize an expedition to AC, break through the cordon, and then we retrieve your wife. Does that sound concrete enough to you?" She paced back and forth, and I recognized Hu Junya's blasted ship from the background.
Yes. It was concrete, the kind that had been attacked by metahuman termites and riddled rotten.
Step One: Build your own interstellar craft, free delivery from the IKEA factory, some assembly necessary.
Step Two: Recruit the metahumans we need from under the watchful eyes of every fucking government and supergovernment on Earth.
Step Three: Make it through the Solar System, the second most heavily guarded patch of space-time in the known universe.
Step Four: Break through the most heavily guarded patch of space-time around, in the form of the security at Sedna or Gongong.
Step Five: Do I even care to quantify the amount of shit we've got on the AC side? It's a vignette from Warhammer 40k out there.
Step Six: Retrieve my wife.
Step Seven: ??
Step Eight: Profit, or stop day dreaming and get a real job.
I walked over to the table and collapsed back into my seat, my head in my hands, gripped tightly enough that the metal creaked and the pressure almost drowned out the pain.
If I helped them, tens of thousands would die. Worst case, millions, and Mars would go back to being a dead rock. If I didn't, what fucking leverage did I have over Lumen? I could bluster and boast about bringing the full weight of UNSEEN and the UN down on their backs, but that would be distressingly little change from the status-quo. Let's face it, they could sink me long before I got a shot in.
I didn't know how long I was there, almost catatonic as bad ideas jousted with terrible ones in my head. I almost kicked the cat away when it rubbed against my leg, prompting it to meow in distress and look at me with limpid eyes.
"You're mind controlling the fucking cat aren't you?" That inane observation was all I could muster.
She cocked a fine eyebrow. "Perceptive. But it does like you, for what it's worth."
It meowed in response and got around to licking its paws daintily.
"Okay. Okay. You're going ahead with or without me, endangering the whole planet, and I at least have the option to come along and mitigate some of the damage. Yes, when I tell myself that, it doesn't sound so insane that I'm about to get myself committed. But Lucille-" She looked at me thoughtfully, -"fuck me over one more time and I swear I will kill you."
"I don't need to read minds to know you mean that Dr. Sen."
With the fizzing of static, her hologram vanished, leaving me in tense silence, Florette's sympathies no more able to bridge the yawning gap between all of us than I could paddle on a boat to find my wife in the stars.
I'd do what they asked. I had no choice. Right? Right?